Techniques

How Eric adjusts

Technique is a decision made after the exam, not a brand Eric is loyal to. Two patients with the same complaint can leave with two different adjustments because their joints, ages, injury histories, and tolerances are different.

Here is every method Eric is trained in, what each one actually feels like on the table, and the situations that call for it.

The methods

4 techniques, chosen case by case

If any of these sound uncomfortable, say so at your exam. There is almost always another way to get the same joint moving.

Diversified

The most widely taught hands-on adjustment in chiropractic, and the method most people picture when they think of seeing a chiropractor.

What it feels like: A quick, shallow thrust delivered by hand to a specific joint. You often hear a pop — that is gas releasing from the joint capsule, not bones cracking — and the whole contact lasts a fraction of a second.
When Eric uses it: Restoring motion to a spinal or extremity joint that has stopped moving through its normal range. It is the default starting point for most low back, mid back, and neck complaints.

Gonstead

A precision system that spends far more time on analysis than on the adjustment itself.

What it feels like: Before anything is adjusted, the doctor reads your posture, palpates the spine, checks skin temperature along the spinal nerves, and reviews films. The adjustment that follows is a single specific contact, usually with you seated or lying on your side.
When Eric uses it: Patients who want to know exactly which segment is being treated and why, and cases where a general adjustment has not held.

Sacro-Occipital Technique (SOT)

A low-force system that treats the pelvis and the base of the skull as two ends of one mechanical chain.

What it feels like: Padded wedges are placed under the pelvis and your own body weight does the work over several minutes. There is little or no thrusting.
When Eric uses it: Pelvic torsion, sacroiliac pain, headaches that trace back to pelvic mechanics, and patients who do not tolerate a forceful adjustment.

Myofascial Release

Sustained hands-on pressure into the fascia — the sheet of connective tissue wrapping every muscle.

What it feels like: Slow, deep, and held. Unlike a massage stroke, the contact stays in one place until the tissue softens, which can take 90 seconds or more. It is often described as a good kind of uncomfortable.
When Eric uses it: Chronic tightness that returns between adjustments, scar tissue from old injuries, and cases where the joint moves fine but the surrounding tissue keeps pulling it back.

How the technique gets chosen

Your first visit runs 60 to 90 minutes and most of it is not adjusting. Eric takes a history, watches how you stand and move, measures range of motion, and tests the joints and soft tissue around the area that hurts. Only then does a technique get picked, because the exam is what rules options in and out.

A young athlete with a locked thoracic joint and a 78-year-old with osteoporosis and the same complaint will not get the same adjustment. Neither will someone six months into a disc herniation and someone who slept wrong on Tuesday.

If a manual adjustment is not right for you — because of age, bone density, an acute injury, pregnancy, or simply because the idea makes you tense up — Eric has lower-force options: Sacro-Occipital Technique (SOT). Tension works against an adjustment, so a technique you are relaxed about usually works better than the “stronger” one you dread.

Nothing is done without explaining it first. You will know what is about to happen, where, and why, and you can stop at any point.

What Eric focuses on

Technique is the how. These are the cases these methods get used on most.

Spinal health
Family wellness
Practice leadership

Eric practices at Pure Wellness Newark, 550 Stanton Christiana Rd Ste 302 in Newark. Read more about the conditions these techniques are applied to, or book an exam and find out which one fits your case.

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