neurontogenic principles of healing

The word neurontogenic derives from the roots neuro and ontogenic. Ontogenic refers to the fundamental nature of the thing in question, in this case the fundamental nature of neurological function.

The basic neurontogenic principal is that the fundamental functional (behavioral) capacity of the body - mental, emotional, muscular/postural and spiritual (not exactly a function of the nervous system) often remains intact despite symptomatic evidence to the contrary.

Neurontogenic treatment is treatment targeted at the neurobehavioral adaptations that come to overlay the fundamental function, which, if eliminated, will reveal the proper behavioral function that was obscured by the adaptation.

To say this in a much simpler way, imagine hobbling around after an ankle sprain; you put more weight on the opposite leg shifting the hips, spine, shoulders and neck. Walking around like this for a week, whole new patterns of muscular activation and posture are learned, and these may not be forgotten easily. These new patterns can obscure the proper gait patterns, creating a possibility for future symptoms in the injured ankle or any other area affected by these changes.

If it were possible to erase these adaptive changes, any related symptoms might well be erased along with them. Thus, neurontogenic treatment focuses on the entire pattern of dysfunction not necessarily the area of the body where the dysfunction is noted.