Let’s explore what sets Dynamic Neuromuscular Assessment apart from other modalities and how this assessment tool can complement the other modalities you already employ with your clients.
DNA™ Core Concepts
- DNA™ recognizes the most important quality in a therapeutic intervention: keep the container safe. To do so, we honor the highest priority of the limbic system. Keeping the container safe has a fundamental premise: displace maladaptive compensation rather than remove. If that compensation was put in place by the nervous system as a means to keep us safe. When we remove it, then the nervous system will need to come up with another strategy to fulfill the perceived need. This occurs within any combination of the emotional, physiological and structural aspects of our nervous system’s main priority, keeping us safe.
- DNA™ redefines muscle testing by combining both direct and indirect movement assessment strategies to provide a global picture of organization. Direct assessment strategies incorporate both the feed-back and feed-forward aspects of the proprioceptive feed-back loop. Indirect movement assessment, also known as indicator movement, allows the practitioner to assess movement, structure, physiological, and limbic functions that could not be accessed with direct testing strategies. When we combine Indicator movement with direct assessment, we can uncover hidden dysfunction within the neurological organization of the input/output feedback loop. Accurate evaluation of the response by the nervous system allows the practitioner to appropriately apply their corrective strategies.
- DNA™ progressively challenges the structure to assess the response of the nervous system and structural integrity. Movement is a tangible benchmark, or yardstick, to evaluate the capacity of the nervous system and the ability of the structure to respond. There are two elements we are working with, the tangible and the non-tangible. The sensory motor system is non-tangible. The effects of the neurological inputs are affecting movement whether we are consciously aware of them or not. When we apply a corrective strategy to the sensory motor system, the only means we have to evaluate if that intervention is effective, is through movement. Movement will reveal three responses, whether: the movement degraded, the movement stayed the same, or the movement improved. When the movement degrades or stays the same, we recognize that the corrective strategy is ineffective. However, when we see that the movement improves, we see a positive change resulting from a corrective strategy.
- DNA™ uses the template of movement to compare how the involved players are working together in cooperation. The global/local/global model of assessment allows us to map the organization of the nervous system. Feed-forward movement assessment provides the opportunity for the nervous system to capitalize on compensation strategies. This allows the practitioner to then uncover maladaptive compensation. In DNA™ we introduce movement through the template of The 5 Primary Kinetic Chains. Both the kinetic chain organization and the governing principal action provide a lens to evaluate optimal movement.
- DNA™ honors the symptom / causation relationship. DNA™ follows a line of reasoning that every symptom has a causation. And, that causation is then potentially a symptom of another causation. This line of reasoning allows the practitioner to follow the “causation bread crumbs” by using a laser-focused approach to identifying the source of dysfunction. The process of mapping dysfunctional movement provides the practitioner with the optimal entry point to introduce a corrective strategy.