Learn More About ABC™ and Why it Works
Importance of posture and how it relates to general health is becoming more prominent.
In this page you will find more detailed information particularly about ABC™, how it came to be and why it works as well as the importance of posture. We highly recommend reading through it as it will deepen your understanding of the technique as well as change your outlook on how you approach your everyday life.
As you read through you will learn the importance of body structure and how some of the habits you adopt can help or hinder your long term health and well-being.
Table of Contents
Importance of Posture
Like most things in life, the importance of posture is key to good health as it creates balance and homeostasis in the body. As bi-pedal creatures, it is therefore paramount our delicate spines are perfectly aligned. Most other creatures are quadrupeds (four legged) or more. This makes them more stable and less prone to some of the injuries that we as humans suffer.
Think of it this way; would you sit on a chair with 2 legs or 4 legs? Which is more stable? Our bi-pedal nature creates torque and twisting forces on our spine as we move. This is just mechanical physics. Over time these forces take their toll on us.
Here’s another analogy; Ever heard the phrase…’you don’t build your house on sand’? Sand is poor ground to build foundations upon for any building as its walls and frame would move around and eventually fall apart. Similarly, if your body frame (skeleton) is crooked or misaligned things just won’t function properly and YOU begin to fall apart also. This misalignment or ‘bones out of place in a direction the body cannot self-correct because there are no bones pulling in the direction needed’ is the root to almost all your health problems that are not cancer, infection or diabetes etc.
In his book; The Power of Posture’, Naudi Aguilar highlights how he came to realise the importance of posture. I myself used it as a source for much of my own efforts to get my body well. The MFR (myofascial release) techniques were most helpful in rediscovering lost mobility. Although as I say the techniques helped some, they eventually became futile in the long run as, like most methods they failed to acknowledge the fundamental problem that only ABC™ actually tackles.
What is ABC™?
Excerpts taken from https://www.abcaustralasia.org.au/what-is-abc/
Advanced Biostructural Correction™ is a full-body, manual protocol-based method of correcting and optimising the biomechanics of the human skeletal framework. Aimed at detecting and correcting biomechanical misalignments that the body cannot self-correct as there is no muscle (or combination of muscles) that can pull in the direction needed. When this occurs our body “twists”, or uses other muscles pulling in other directions, to compensate.
–American Journal of Pain Management 1994, 4: 36-39
When correctly applied, ABC™ practitioners world-wide frequently observe consistent and predictable improvements in postural stability, marked by the ability of the patient’s body to stay more “effortlessly upright”. Due to the influence of postural balance on human physiology and function, patients frequently report improvements in other areas, such as pain levels, improved mobility and ease of breathing.
How is ABC™ Different?
Excerpts taken from www.meningealrelease.com
When people first started noticing that bones out of place caused problems with health, they noticed that some spinal bones (called vertebra) appeared to be out of place backwards. The concept was simple. Find the bone that’s backwards and, with a person face down on a table, push it forward. It seemed to make sense and that has been the theory behind most methods of manipulation since the beginning — even going back thousands of years to ancient methods used in India and China and especially in more modern times, with methods developed in chiropractic, osteopathy, physical therapy and others.
In the animation notice that the person is face down. Notice the two misaligned bones in the center of the spine. One is clearly forward and one is relatively backward. What is taught is to push the backward bone forward (the blue arrow coming down — a typical chiropractic, osteopathic and physical therapy treatment and widely taught in all their schools and by most independent teachers).
At the end of the treatment notice that rather than being lined up correctly there are now two bones stuck forward. This is why people continue to slump. With Advanced BioStructural Correction™ you will see that changes immediately. Bodies immediately are more upright with no physical effort.
That backward vertebra, before treatment, will often feel stuck, swollen and tender to both the practitioner and the patient. Pushing this area of the spine forward, though painful for a second or so during the treatment, often leaves the patient feeling better at that spot because it unsticks the bones. However, the bones have been pushed more forward overall. If you ask that person to let their body relax, you will find they now fall more forward at that spot.
Practitioners put people face down and push on their backs all the time. So do massage therapists even though they don’t thrust. Many exercises and stretches by physical therapists have the exact same effect on their patients bodies of pushing bones forward.
If you’re in a profession where you touch people’s backs then you know that some people have very healthy, flexible spines, but most do not. You also know that in the same person some areas of their spine move really well and other areas feel like tree trunks. Treatment goals usually involve manipulation of these stuck joints to free them up or strengthening and stretching of tight muscles that are causing the person pain.
So how does Advanced BioStructural Correction™ take a completely different approach to healing?
What would happen if instead of pushing forward on the bone that was backwards, you could push the bone stuck forward backwards? Would that have a different outcome? How would you even get to the bone to push it backwards? You clearly couldn’t pull it backwards because there’s nothing to grab hold of right?
Take a look at the animation. The same bones are forward and backward on this patient. To get the forward bone to move backward into the correct position the practitioner creates a fulcrum using a fist. Putting the fist below the vertebra that is forward creates a fulcrum that can be used to lever the forward bone backward if you push on the front of the body.
You have to be careful not to push too hard because the fulcrum is the same vertebra that appears backwards in the above animation. If you push too hard you might get the forward one to move backward, but you might also get the backward one to move forward.
The standing patient wraps their arms around their body and from the front the practitioner stands close in front of the patient, asks the patient to relax and adjusts the person against the wall. In this position, the force comes from the front, through the ribs and to the forward vertebra which pushes it backwards. Very different wouldn’t you say?
Which version is right? In both cases the practitioner is moving bones and probably getting some audible crackling noises out of the joints. But which version would you want for yourself? You’re probably saying, “The one that works.” And I would agree.
However, what does “works” mean? Are we just interested in relieving pain temporarily? Can one get relief from pain but make the body mechanically worse — adversely affecting breathing or movement in other parts of the body? These are things to consider beyond the pain that most people miss because they are so focused on getting relief from the pain. It is also why many use drugs. They know drugs do not change the body and might be harmful, but they do relieve the pain.
Turns out that if vertebra get shoved forward there are no muscles or groups of muscles that can pull the bone backwards. So why would you ever want to shove them forward purposely even if it helped reduce pain?
Forward is the enemy. This is the same reason you see the elderly bent forward. Have you ever wondered why there are no walkers for people that are bent backwards or to the right or left? Why are the walkers designed for people that are bent forward only? It’s because you never see people any other way. They are always forward. And now you know why. As more and more bones get pushed forward in a person over a lifetime, from common everyday activities, they get more stooped forward and can’t stand up straight…Even if they try.
Advanced BioStructural Correction™ (ABC™) addresses this sole issue. ABC™ corrects bones out of place that your body cannot self correct because there is no muscle or group of muscles that actually exist in the human body that can correct these malpositions. This is one of the huge factors that have been missing in health care. ABC™ has figured out every single bone in the body that has this “defect”, if you want to call it that, where the bone cannot self correct in every direction. The other factor that is critical in correcting bodies is meningeal releases.
Together by releasing the meninges and correcting ONLY the bones out of place that the body cannot self correct that day can the body unwind and almost go backwards through time reversing old injuries and restoring health like nothing else can.
How and Why Does ABC™ Work?
This will be the question on the lips of all the sceptics, me included, before of course I started getting treated and became a practitioner. We have already talked about the fundamental discovery of bones out of place that cannot self correct, but now we will see what this really means.
video courtesy of ABC™ Founder Dr Jesse Jutkowitz
For further information or for more testimonials please visit meningealrelease.com or alternatively abcmiracles.com
What is Unwinding?
As Dr Jutkowitz explained in the video when a bone goes out of place forwards (from where it cannot be self-corrected because it does not have the muscles to do so) the body has to try and compensate in the best way it can to keep you up and moving. The process of compensating however involves a twisting motion.
What this does is misalign your body frame in a rotational plane. By doing so the body has protected one area at the expense of another that can now better handle the imbalanced load. This is usually the legs and feet.
These compensations are patterns and not just isolated bones out of place. They went out of place in a certain sequence. Over time these patterns increase in number a layer together.
This process is known as WINDING. The opposite, UNWINDING, is exactly that. We unwind your body and its layers of compensation by properly aligning the bones the body could not. When the bones that needed aligning are then aligned there is no longer a need for THAT particular compensation pattern. Over time as you get treated your compensations and the need for them become fewer and fewer.
For more detailed information on the subject of unwinding, the stages you will go through as well as forecasts on progression rates, please read the excerpts below courtesy of Dr Jutkowitz from his website;
An explanation of symptom changes during treatment
At the starting point as a patient, you have all your symptoms and physical restrictions from being injured. After treatment starts, your body begins to improve by unlocking in a direction away from the major mechanical problem.
As your body mechanics improve and your body can better handle holding itself up, you progress until you reach point A. (Look at graph.) At point A, your body function (ability to move and do things) is improved and your symptoms are greatly decreased.
BUT, at point A, your body has reached a point where it has improved so much it cannot improve further without unlocking another of the major underlying injuries and mechanical stuck points that has your body stuck in the position that you are stuck in. (Many people are thrilled at this point but it is nowhere near good or even okay.)
To do that your body has to move into the position in which that injury was received and then get adjusted from that position to unlock the mechanical portion of the injury. Then, after the mechanical portion of the injury at that point is unlocked the body can heal the soft tissues in that area and go on to the next place you have injured, unlock the mechanical portion of that injury, and so on. Here is the way it works:
Until reaching point A, your body has been unwinding and unlocking mechanical problems in the direction opposite the major mechanical problem. When your body moves opposite the major biomechanical problem pressure is taken off the injury sites and off the spinal cord-brainstem.
As a result, your body function (ability to move and perform its normal internal tasks) improves and your pain and stiffness is reduced because of the reduction in pressure. That unlocks and heals – to unlock the next point in the sequence your body must now change directions and go in the direction of the major mechanical problem if it is going to improve further.
When that change of direction occurs there is an increase in the mechanical pressure on the body and the spinal cord-brainstem. You feel this increased pressure and it bothers you. You have begun to feel lousy again and are a bit distressed because you do not know why.
It is not that you will hurt much when unwinding (unlocking) an injury that leans toward the direction of a major biomechanical problem, you won’t. It is the feeling from the increased pressure on your body and on the spinal cord-brainstem that can make you feel anxious, possibly depressed a bit, because you know the pressure is there and you think you might be getting worse again.
You are not getting worse in the sense that, “Oh my God, I’m never going to get better.” You are getting a tiny bit worse in the sense that your body is under pressure as you unlock the next big problem which has been holding you down for a long time. However, after the problem is unlocked your body is then free to improve to even greater levels. Literally what you are doing is going backwards through each injury process to unlock and heal each of the points at which you were injured.
That means that after you finally get to point B and unlock the major injury at that point, you improve immediately and move toward point C. During this climb and until you reach point C your body again stops bothering you and you feel great living life with little or no pain as your body begins to function even better than it did when it was at point A.
Before I go on I want you to notice something. Many patients moving on that small downslope from point A to point B tell their doctors that they feel worse than when they first came in to the office.
It isn’t true but it certainly feels like it. Why?
Well, people feel things in relation to what experience occurred just prior to the current experience. If you put your right hand in a bucket of very hot water and your left hand in a bucket of ice water for five minutes, then take them out and put both of them in the same bucket of room temperature water, the right hand (that was in the hot water) would feel the water in the new bucket was cold and the left hand (was in the ice water) would feel that water was hot.
This would be so even though they are both your hands and both in the same bucket of room temperature water. It is because the feelings are relative to where each hand had just been.
It is the same with your body as you get well. When you are at point B you are still better than you were at the starting point. You can still walk and move better. Many of you have gone back to work and can still perform without having to take time off. However, you most certainly do not feel as good as you felt back at point A.
Why not stay at point A? Well, at point A you had reached a point where you couldn’t get any better until you unlocked the thing at point B. Not having your doctor lead your body through this process is the reason most people never fully recover from their injuries and always have some nagging little thing.
Just like you must take all the antibiotics in the bottle to make sure the bacteria are all killed and you do not get sick again, you must keep getting treated until your body unwinds and unlocks the major injuries and gets back to a truly healthy condition.
This same process happens at each point the body has a major mechanical injury to unlock. That is why the graph has points C, D, E, F, G, and H. Each time your body goes to unlock one of these biggies you will seem to be going a bit backwards.
Notice that if we test your body’s ability to function; how far you can move; how much weight you can lift; etc. at the worst point of any down slope while unwinding into a major mechanical problem, you will notice you are always able to function better than you could at the best point your body reached when you were feeling your best before the last time you started to unlock a major biomechanical problem.
You might be feeling lousy and it might not feel like you are still functioning better, but if you measure your body’s abilities you will find it so, especially at the beginning after you are feeling better from the initial treatments.
When your body changes directions it might feel really lousy and scare you, that is why I wrote this note. Later it won’t scare you as much because you have been through the process once and you know you will come out of it. That does not mean you will like it but you will at least understand it.
Eventually, when your body changes directions to unlock a major injury it may just feel like a bit of a pull or a cold. It is not. Your body is still in the process of unwinding the next big problem. The reason you feel it less is by that time your body is so much better and can handle the increase in the increased mechanical pressure without hurting much.
I hope this has explained unwinding in a way understandable for you all. Advanced BioStructural Correction™ does work in every case, but you must unwind.
How ABC™ Can Help Athletes
Optimize to Improve Performance
Athletes can also benefit from ABC™ care. Even if you have no adverse symptoms or pain, by getting ABC™ you can ensure your body is perfectly aligned so you can continue hitting PRs in the gym or on the playing field.
Just because you may not be experiencing any symptoms per se, it doesn’t necessarily mean your body is in its optimum alignment and everything is working as it should. It could simply be compensating better than most other individuals; therefore you feel no adverse pain or dysfunction.
If you are a physically active person however, engaging in regular and/or an intense form of exercise you are exposing yourself to a greater risk of physical injury than those who do not take part in such activities.
Think about it like this, if you hypothetically imagine your body as a car and you regularly took it out for track day racing etc, you’re more likely to wear its parts out and faster than your average Joe who just goes to work and back or shopping for groceries. With that said you would want to ensure that your engine, the fluids, suspension, brakes and so on are all in tip top condition before racing right? This is to avoid a breakdown or worse, an accident, right? Why would you not therefore apply the same frame of mind when it comes to your physical exercise?
Take a look at the picture below. This person is performing an exercise known as the ‘deadlift’. Don’t worry it doesn’t mean you become dead if you don’t manage it, although you can hurt yourself badly if performed incorrectly, as we will learn.
Look at the form closely. Where do you think the lift begins?
If you said the hands, then you’re mistaken. The lift actually begins with the feet, believe it or not.
As we have said in the other sections of this page, your body is a single synchronous unit. It doesn’t work in isolation. It works as a complete kinetic chain. Going back to the person lifting, his first link in the chain are his feet, NOT the hands. Why? Because he is lifting FROM the ground and not TO the ground. To be more accurate in fact pretty much anything you do physically begins from the ground and your feet.
Now imagine this guy had a broken toe or sprained ankle. Will that hinder his lift, even though he is using his hands to hold the bar? Of course it would. To think otherwise would be ridiculous.
Let’s complete his chain; it starts from the toes and feet, then the ankles, the shins, the knees, the thighs, pelvis, back and shoulders, neck and head and ending with the arms and hands.
If any link in the chain is compromised it has a knock-on effect to the rest. This results in a loss of transfer of force. Simply put, you won’t be able to lift as much as you otherwise could.
Going back to our deadlift, lets imagine the toe and ankle have ‘healed’. They have not truly healed in reality as the body has now found a way of compensating to shift the weight so less pressure is applied to the injured area therefore you feel less pain and believe it has healed.
The change of bio-mechanics was not limited to just the toes, feet or ankles, as we have already said. It goes all the way up through the entire kinetic chain of your body. The way you perform this deadlift has now completely changed. It may only be slight but you will now have to recruit more thought and muscles in trying to perform the lift in the same textbook fashion as you did before the injuries. This obviously will tire you quicker and result in poorer performance.
ABC™ can help restore the mechanics by correcting those bones that went out of place in directions you could not self-correct therefore removing the need for the resulting compensations. When this is achieved the original injury can then be healed. With a little further treatment, you are brought back to the most optimum bio-mechanical configuration you can be and your physical performance can then improve.
This is not limited to those who just lift weights. Pretty much any athlete will benefit from ABC™ care. We have already discussed how your breathing and circulation can be improved immediately in other sections. Imagine how much of a better runner you could become, a better footballer, cyclist, gymnast, rugby player…etc. Anyone and everyone will benefit from improved cardiovascular and circulatory performance, not least the improved bio-mechanics and pain free function.
For even more detailed information about the importance of structure and how your health is affected by it, be sure to check out our Blog.
If you too would like to experience the life changing ability of ABC™ just as I and many others have, contact me using the link below to book your FREE consultation. It’s the best decision you will ever make!