ANSSR Case Studies
This 33 year-old man broke a thoracic vertebra in a football accident 19 years prior to treatment. The bone healed with a quarter inch deviation of the spinous process. He complained of chronic back pain originating from the fracture area, severe at times, radiating around his rib cage to the front. He had already tried various pain management therapies with minimal relief.
The subject relaxed as he lay face up on the treatment table, with his eyes open. As he focused attention on the injury site, he felt warmth and tingling initially, followed by a sudden sharpening of pain, which then subsided completely. The sharper pain indicated full tissue contraction and pain discharge. I then stretched the area. He had no pain when he left the office, and no pain by followup, six weeks later. His treatment lasted 30 minutes.
This 59 year-old woman had post-polio with over 20 years of chronic low back pain. She suffered neurological damage from polio during childhood, and consequently developed a radical limp because her legs were different lengths. She was prone to falling without warning, and walked with the aid of poles. She had settled into a pattern of seeing a chiropractor every six weeks, enduring chronic pain between visits.
In her first treatment, the muscles of her legs and midsection rested deeply, having been tense and exhausted for years. While she experienced pain relief, she did not access the discharge mechanism. This is often the case after many years of chronic low back pain; the subject’s body needs to simply rest in the first treatment. A week later, when she was energized and stronger due to better sleep, she experienced a decisive pain discharge and radical pain relief. I also taught her the ANSSR low back stabilization exercise, which is ideal for restoring low back strength via midsection motor integration.
Three months later, she reported that her back problem was gone. She had exercised daily, in comfort, and also used the stabilization exercise regularly. She felt much more stable on her feet and, for the first time in over 20 years, was able to run for short distances.
Despite lifelong deformity, this subject followed the average, two-treatment pattern to lasting relief from low back pain. With the back muscles relaxed and the midsection stabilized, there is no reason for the low back to experience further pain unless structural damage provokes a new stress response. Minor aches can be remedied at home with the stabilization exercise, until the exercise is no longer needed. When pain sufferers have ongoing tissue damage, such as a herniated disc, the same conditions of relaxation plus stability are required for healing.
This 66 year-old man had chronic low back and hip pain following several motorcycle and car accidents over 20 years prior to treatment. His chronic pain persisted after four low back surgeries. When asked which methods he had tried, he replied, "Everything."
In his first treatment, deep exhaustion became apparent, requiring that he mainly rest. The first treatment energized him greatly and permitted minor pain discharge. His second treatment was more active, involving several strong discharges. I moved him from the table to a foam mattress and instructed him to kick aggressively, which further relaxed his midsection. I then taught him the low back stabilization exercise. Several months later, he reported that his condition was still vastly improved. He may have benefitted from a third treatment, but the distance to my office was prohibitive and he was satisfied with his results.
This subject said that, over the years, he had seen as many as 20 physical therapists, but only one of them taught him an exercise similar to mine. However, that PT’s exercise was mechanical, with no attention to subjective experience. The ANSSR low back stabilization exercise requires the subject’s attention to sensation, which clearly improves the effect.
Strength and safety of low back movement are preserved by the coordination of stabilizing muscles—a factor separate from the coordination of movement. In many people, midsection coordination and stability are easily lost, allowing for low back strain, spasm, and pain. Lack of coordination is a universal contributing factor for low back pain. My low back stability exercise restores coordination with minimal effort or movement, making it safe for pregnant women and severe injuries. It is neither strengthening nor stretching. While lying flat, the user gently engages midsection muscles, thereby inducing muscle coordination that remains when the user stands to walk. After a minute of the exercise, the user feels solidly connected to the legs and stronger through the midsection. The effect is instantaneous, but also cumulative.
I first developed this stabilization exercise when I noticed a glaring division between midsection and legs in a woman who recently had her third baby. She had received frequent chiropractic adjustments for three months, with no benefit whatsoever. When asked to notice her midsection, she replied that it felt “dead,” and that she was disconnected from her legs. Her subjective sense indicated an acute loss of motor integration. After a few minutes of my new procedure, she noted that the deadness and pain were gone. She immediately discontinued her chiropractic visits.
This 30 year-old woman came for counseling and pain relief, presenting with chronic and often acute neck and back pain throughout, two years after her second car accident. She was a classical pianist, previously accustomed to sitting painlessly at a piano for several hours at a time. She had unsuccessfully attempted several other treatments, including chiropractic, medical massage, acupuncture, and physical therapy, persisting with the latter two methods despite little relief. Importantly, she had a history of acute fear episodes, having suffered several traumatic childhood incidents.
In her first treatment, as I observed her eyes, it became apparent that she had a severe contraction in her central nervous system, mainly in her head. I gently exercised her eyes, thus mobilizing the block that involved brain, eyes, and head muscles. She then lay flat to relax while I lightly massaged her back. She reported having almost no pain after her first treatment, for a few days, until she sat at a piano for an hour.
In subsequent treatments, her fear surfaced in progressively stronger waves. She was encouraged to tolerate the fear, which permitted fear discharge via sympathetic nervous system contraction. Her eyes became more alive, while she became more expressive and self-possessed overall. After a dozen treatments of mounting fear and deeper relief each time, she reported that her pain had ceased altogether. Only two treatments involved touch, in the form of light massage.
Her fear was held, in a chronic stress response, largely in the head and eyes, and therefore the brain, too. Severe CNS blockage freezes vegetative functions of the whole body, notably the trunk. Her second car accident apparently compounded the preexisting block enough to freeze her trunk muscles, rendering them unresponsive to common musculoskeletal treatments. Contact with and discharge of fear freed her CNS, and therefore the trunk muscles as well. Had it not been for the childhood trauma and the consequent CNS block, her car accidents likely would have produced a simple injury memory situation.
This case represents the other end of the sympathetic discharge spectrum, which ranges from simple pain discharge to deep emotional release. The same mechanism is expressed in both scenarios, differing only in magnitude and subjective experience. Neither event is normally triggered in common relaxation methods, which do not pursue the discharge mechanism. Emotional release sometimes occurs with massage therapy, but accidentally.
This subject required multiple treatments in a counseling format, in which she was allowed to sit upright and observe her surroundings. A relaxation format would have been entirely inadequate and potentially dangerous.
This 29 year-old doctor of oriental medicine presented with inexplicable, intermittent low back pain. He also suffered from mild, chronic ankle pain following a recent, serious injury in which his ankle “blew up like a balloon.” Acupuncture gave him temporary relief for both complaints. He was a slim, wiry athlete who gave the impression of fragility when walking, due to uncoordinated movement in his midsection and hips.
In the first of two treatments, he needed simple rest to counter systemic, chronic exhaustion. Interestingly, perhaps because he was young and athletic, he did not notice any significant change in his body after the first treatment. He agreed to receive a second treatment solely at my recommendation. In the second treatment, after another hour of rest, he felt a dull ache in his left hip and recalled a forgotten childhood injury in that area. When told to focus his attention on the pain, it increased, suddenly peaked for several seconds with a piercing pain discharge, then abruptly stopped. Then, moments after the hip pain discharge, his ankle also discharged pain and suddenly relaxed. He later exclaimed that his sacrum felt like it had been curled, but then unfurled after the discharge—his subjective experience of spontaneous skeletal realignment. His also noticed pleasant sensations of increased circulation in his ankle. Two weeks later, he appeared solid and strong, and reported that both pain issues were completely resolved. He did not need the low back stabilization exercise.
This case demonstrates the body’s ability to conceal injury memory in the original injury site. He had not felt pain in his hip for many years. His low back pain was secondary to the chronic tension produced by the hip injury. If an injured body cannot relax completely after a traumatic injury, it will sequester the trauma memory as much as possible. In many such cases, the subject no longer feels pain in the injury site and simply forgets the injury. But then, if profound comfort is later achieved, the body will seize the opportunity to heal the old injury memory via pain discharge, even decades after the injury. Pain management methods relax the injury site for temporary relief; they do not provide the extra measure of comfort necessary to access the pain discharge mechanism.
This case is also striking in that the subject’s ankle required so much rest—two treatments of more than one hour each—before it could access the pain discharge mechanism. This fact may have been due to the recentness of his injury, which suggests that his ankle was still healing tissue damage at the time of his treatment. Most ankle pain cases that receive ANSSR therapy require a single treatment of less than 30 minutes.
Pain discharge is most painful in the hip and low back region. It is uniformly milder in other areas. Regardless of the area, discharge pain lasts only a few seconds, and is immediately followed by radical pain relief. With the injury memory thus removed, there is no reason for the stress response or pain to return unless structural damage triggers another local, chronic stress response. I estimate that the majority of long-term, injury-related chronic pain sufferers—in whom the injury tissue damage already healed—need only ANSSR therapy for permanent pain elimination.
This 54 year-old man sustained a severe hip injury ten years prior to treatment, probably a soft tissue tear, while performing strenuous labor. At that time, he suffered debilitating low back, hip, and sciatic pain for several months. Chiropractic afforded him no relief. He eventually healed the injury, but retained a dull aching-pulling sensation in an undefined area of his hip and groin, which never responded to massage. For ten years, he feared a relapse of the original injury.
His one treatment was a simple procedure of relaxation and building of sensation in the injury site, followed by a sudden pain discharge. After the treatment, he no longer felt the pulling sensation. Several months later, he reported that he strained himself since his session, in roughly the same spot, but the complaint healed normally in a few days, without residual sensation. The pulling sensation from the old injury had not returned.
This man may always be vulnerable in that spot of repaired soft tissue and internal scarring, which can restrict movement and trigger a local stress response that causes pain. As every massage therapist knows, chronic tension can stimulate ongoing scarring, as if the tension were a wound. Theoretically, removal of injury memory, i.e. chronic tension, should slow or stop scar tissue accumulation.
This 45 year-old woman presented with chronic neck pain and cervical osteoarthritis, three years after a whiplash injury. Her neck muscles were weak and atrophied. She had a severe case of what I have identified as chronic neck exhaustion, wherein trauma is followed by prolonged tension without adequate relaxation or rest. Unable to relax without assistance, the neck muscles become weak and lose mass, creating the vicious circle of exhaustion—conditions that can lead to osteoarthritis. She had been receiving weekly chiropractic adjustments for years, with no end in sight.
The first treatment relaxed her neck to the point where it could finally rest thoroughly. While relaxing, her spine demonstrated an auto-adjustment of at least one cervical vertebra; she felt a “clunk” in her spine as the vertebrae settled back into place. After resting deeply for 15 minutes, conditions in her neck permitted pain discharge and relaxation. Her neck muscles were immediately stronger, tangibly fuller due to better circulation, and almost pain-free. After a second treatment of facilitated rest, she felt normal and discontinued her chiropractic adjustments. I recommended diligent neck rest at home—10 minutes at a time, several times per day—while her neck regained strength.
The procedure involved a barely perceptible tilt of her head while she lay flat on the treatment table. To hold the head slightly off its resting spot gives the neck a feeling of weightlessness, which is very relaxing. For severe neck pain cases like this, massage is contraindicated because the neck muscles need to tighten as they swell with fresh circulation. This new tension is temporary and healthy, similar to “muscle splinting.”
Problems that involve chronic exhaustion are self-perpetuating, as in neck, back, or knee pathologies. Instead of healing over time, they often become worse, developing joint dysfunction. The subject is typically unaware of the exhaustion factor, and is initially incapable of resting the injury site without assistance. Fortunately, chronic exhaustion is easily remedied with facilitated relaxation followed by a few weeks of diligent self-care.
In the 1990s, American chiropractors were learning that strengthening exercises can help to relieve chronic neck pain. This is logical, since stronger neck muscles are less prone to exhaustion. However, the process of strengthening a chronically exhausted neck is unnecessarily long and painful, and may not actually stop the pain. If exhaustion is relieved first, the neck is immediately stronger and ready for exercise. For many people, the weight of the head offers sufficient exercise after exhaustion is relieved. They often do not require the more vigorous strengthening exercises recommended by chiropractors.
This 72 year-old woman presented with chronic neck pain and arm/hand numbness and pain. The apparent cause of her condition was prolonged emotional stress combined with overuse of her dominant hand. Although she had no neck injury history, her condition involved chronic neck exhaustion, which can also result from emotional stress. I suspected the typical relationship between her neck tension and the arm dysfunction. She had attempted chiropractic and massage, with little relief. She wore a brace for her hand and wrist.
While she relaxed and rested her neck on the treatment table, she became agitated due to a small wave of fear that surfaced for discharge. I instructed her to simply open her eyes wide, which allowed her sympathetic nervous system to discharge the fear. She then relaxed and experienced a strong sense of well-being. The treatment also relieved her neck pain in large part. I instructed her to rest her neck diligently for a few weeks—whenever she felt even slight discomfort—and gave her a putty ball for hand exercise.
After three weeks of resting and exercising, she reported that the whole problem was resolved, and that she had experienced lasting anxiety relief. Discharge of fear relieves anxiety as well as chronic muscle tension. In cases like this, for the most complete relief, the practitioner must be prepared to facilitate minor emotional release.
At a later date, this subject remembered that she had had intermittent, injury-related knee pain for almost 50 years. She had grown accustomed to avoiding certain knee actions, such as driving with a clutch, and basically forgot the problem. Even after decades without change, her knee discharged the pain and relaxed with one brief treatment, affording her lasting relief. Evidently, the discharge mechanism never loses its potency.
This 56 year-old man sustained a severe concussion in the Navy over 30 years prior to ANSSR therapy. Although his head apparently healed normally, long ago, he still experienced frequent headaches, intermittent neck pain, and limited range of motion. He had all but forgotten the head injury.
As he relaxed in his one treatment, a dull ache appeared at the spot where his head was struck. He focused on the pain, which intensified before it ceased abruptly. Immediately, the tension in his neck decreased and mobility returned. After several years of complete relief, we concluded that his condition was permanently resolved.
This case illustrates just how well the body can store a nervous system memory of injury; the subject had not felt pain at the injury site for decades. Neck tension was secondary to the old head injury, therefore pain discharge afforded sudden, complete neck relaxation and a return of normal mobility. Anyone with chronic musculoskeletal pain should be screened for old injuries, even when there is no obvious relationship between the old injury and current symptoms.
This 70 year-old woman presented with chronic knee pain of over 10 years duration, severe secondary pain in her hip, and a diagnosis of advanced osteoarthritis of the knee. Her X-rays revealed bone spurs and extensive cartilage erosion. She was about 80 pounds overweight and walked with a pronounced limp. She had been receiving physical therapy in a swim class for over a year, with little or no improvement. Knee replacement surgery had been suggested.
She sat upright for the treatment, with her legs elevated. Her focus on the sensations in her knee quickly relaxed and energized the whole leg. The knee pain peaked and abruptly stopped. Her treatment was 20 minutes long. After the treatment and during the next week, she experienced slight knee pain while walking. She promptly returned to her swim class and aggressively exercised her legs, which stopped all knee and leg pain within two weeks. She stopped limping as the hip tension relaxed. Almost one year later, she had not yet experienced pain in her knee or hip. Unfortunately, she eventually developed osteoarthritis in both knees, the pain of which was relieved by a 40 day water fast. Several years after her treatment with me, she reported that the hip pain had never recurred.
Theoretically, if the pain of osteoarthritis is stopped via ANSSR therapy, then the inflammatory process is also halted, at least temporarily. This might be the ideal time for stem cell therapy, as tissue regeneration should not be impeded by inflammation.
This 46 year-old woman arrived for the first of several relaxation treatments with a migraine in progress. She had suffered weekly migraines for many years, which would last three or four days and leave her debilitated for the balance of the week. Migraine medication eased some of her symptoms, and perhaps shortened the episodes, but did nothing to prevent their recurrence.
Despite her history, and owing to her heavy musculature, her migraines proved relatively easy to relieve; they would resolve completely within 30 minutes. After her first treatment, she enjoyed two weeks without another episode. Over the next few months, she managed to schedule an ANSSR treatment every time she had a migraine. Finally, her migraines ceased altogether. The only sure explanation for her permanent remission, albeit an unsatisfying one, is that her autonomic nervous system succeeded in reprogramming itself. Also, there may have been some discharge of emotional trauma from her head during her treatments.
Especially notable is the manner in which this subject's muscles and muscular pain responded during her ANSSR treatments. During a migraine episode, the tension in her back muscles would be choppy and painful to the touch. As the migraine dissipated, her back muscles became smooth, tight, and painless. She would rise from the table feeling subjectively larger overall, and very well, but her muscles would be tighter than usual. This tension response might pose an interesting riddle to a massage therapist taught that pain relief results only from a reduction in muscle tension. Average massage procedures would attempt to soften the choppy tension, inadvertently defeating the body’s own corrective functions—expressed in a beneficial, temporary, involuntary muscle contraction throughout the trunk. Since ANSSR therapy entails no massage or manipulation, invasive procedures are a nonissue.
Migraine sufferers respond very differently. For some, facilitated relaxation is adequate for autonomic nervous system self-regulation. Others require my counseling method, which allows for ANSSR therapy integration.
For the previous eight months, this 61 year-old gynecologist had had a nightmarish rash covering his whole body, from the neckline down, following an acutely stressful divorce. His three dermatologists were unable to identify his condition, but recommended an immunosuppressant for his “overactive immune system.” He elected to try a low impact method first.
The subject lay flat and dozed during his treatments. Facilitated relaxation afforded relief from his severe, systemic stress response. At his second weekly treatment, the rash was already clearing and the itching had almost stopped. At his third treatment, the rash was almost completely gone. His energy level was clearly elevated. Unfortunately, due to disbelief and confusion, he then began a course of the medication. His energy level plummeted, while he appeared sickly overall. The rash returned partially and did not respond to ANSSR therapy, even with three additional treatments. Over the next two years, he returned for several more treatments, desperately but unsuccessfully attempting to discontinue the medication. He died of a stroke two years after his first visit.
I suspect that this subject would have tolerated the outcome better, without sabotaging his progress, if he had chosen a counseling format that included ANSSR therapy. Had that been the arrangement, he would have remained awake and fully aware of his state.
This 53 year-old woman presented with a diagnosis of third stage reflex sympathetic dystrophy (later renamed complex regional pain syndrome), a chronic progressive disease that typically affects an arm or leg, one of the most painful chronic pain conditions known to medicine. There is no known cure for the atrophy that characterizes the third stage. At the time of her ANSSR therapy, 14 years after a car accident injury to her right foot, her foot and lower leg were severely atrophied, extremely painful, and her ankle joint had little motion. Her foot was 75% of its original size. Her podiatrist predicted that she would eventually become wheelchair-bound.
After four months of ANSSR treatments every two weeks, she had regenerated the original mass of the foot and basically that of the leg muscle, which required strengthening in order to rebuild muscle mass. The pain had ceased almost entirely, as well as the hot and cold sensations. Her ankle’s range of motion returned to normal. She exclaimed, “My foot fills my shoe again!”
Despite her advanced condition, the procedure was an average ANSSR treatment. After she relaxed overall, she would focus her attention on the sensations in her foot and ankle. After a few minutes of attention, she felt her foot and ankle contract involuntarily with a mild pain discharge or pressure sensation. The contractions gave her pain relief with each treatment, our ostensible goal, and thus reason to continue. We were both surprised when we realized that her foot was getting larger. It stopped discharging after its mass returned. Shortly thereafter, an X-ray revealed that her foot and ankle bones still looked like “Swiss cheese.” I subsequently lost contact with the subject, therefore I do not know whether or not the bone atrophy also healed.
This case demonstrates the fact that pain discharge occurs repeatedly for certain diseases, for relief from tissue stagnation, as opposed to a single discharge that neutralizes traumatic injury memory. Discharge does not occur when it is not needed. If needed, pain discharge will repeat until the stagnation is completely cleansed.
Concerned about an eye infection, an intuitive mother brought her 6 week-old daughter for ANSSR therapy. As it happened, the infection was the least of the infant’s problems. Her body and face were rigid and her eyes expressionless, indicating a severe contraction in the central nervous system. The family chiropractor found several subluxations that would quickly return after adjustment. As far as the mother could judge, there had been no traumatic incident that could account for such an intense CNS contraction. The birth was uneventful. Unfortunately, the infant could not discharge the unknown trauma without professional assistance.
In the infant trauma protocol, I focus attention on the contraction in the eyes and inside the head. The blockage is thereby mobilized and converted to emotion that the infant can express. In this case, after a few minutes of agitation, the girl cried intensely for over 30 minutes, then fell asleep in her mother’s lap. She was quite relaxed where she had been rigid before. A week later, we did another treatment with the same procedure. The infection was already gone and she was clearly more alive, but there was still some rigidity in her eyes and facial expression. She cried and wriggled for a while, then glared at her mother with obvious anger. The next time I saw her, three weeks later, she was bubbly and animated. Her emotional discharges reset her nervous system to a clean slate—free of chronic sympathetic alert.
Due to her age and the shallowness of her trauma, this case resembled a pain discharge scenario. Emotional discharge and pain discharge mechanics are basically identical, differing only in magnitude and type of feeling. As a traumatized child grows, additional layers of emotional trauma accumulate, rendering the original, early life trauma far less accessible for discharge and resolution. Lifelong suffering could be avoided with ANSSR therapy in the first several months of infancy. Parents would do well to watch for depressed moods, faraway looks, or physical illness.
This 53 year-old woman began counseling with hepatitis C and advanced liver damage. Given her blood type, hers was a worst case scenario for the disease. After five months of weekly counseling sessions, she began chemotherapy treatments with Interferon. At her second counseling session after starting chemotherapy, she noticed heat and pressure in her liver area. I instructed her to focus attention on the sensations while sitting upright and comfortable. She experienced a pain discharge from her liver area as local contraction, aching, and a feeling of outward release. In subsequent sessions, we repeated the discharge procedure whenever she felt heat and pressure. At her eleventh weekly session after we first focused on her liver area, she reported that her blood tests showed zero hepatitis virus. Her doctors were so surprised that they tested her several times to make sure that no mistakes were made.
In some cases, Interferon is known to reduce the hepatitis C virus count to zero in short periods. Yet, this subject’s doctors found her case unusual and striking. Also, given the relief that followed each discharge, she felt that her pain discharges were essential to her accelerated recovery. Regardless, this case illustrates how pain can be discharged and stagnation purged from internal organs, as opposed to muscles and joints. Every cubic inch of body tissue is equipped to contract, discharge, and expand fully—all functions of the autonomic nervous system.
Certain diseases, including cancer, involve either localized or systemic tissue stagnation. Purging of stagnation is one of the two basic functions of the pain discharge mechanism, alongside neutralization of traumatic injury memory. This hepatitis C case suggests that pain discharge therapy might be indicated for a wide range of diseases, in conjunction with conventional treatments, for accelerated healing and reduction of side effects.