Traditional chiropractic works to improve skeletal alignment and joint mobility to reduce pain and improve function. (Chiropractors who are "mixers" recognize the effects of emotional state and nutrition on overall health.)
Like chiropractic, Clinical Somatic Education (CSE) improves skeletal alignment and joint mobility to reduce pain and improve bodily functioning. Unlike chiropractic, Clinical Somatic Education doesn't involve manipulations or adjustments; instead, it teaches your brain to make those adjustments from within. The result is long-lasting improvements and self-sufficiency without need for indefinite (or frequent) office visits.
CSE rapidly improves muscular control and coordination -- which are brain-functions -- to get these results. Your brain controls your muscles; your muscles move your bones. So, through your muscles, your brain controls your skeletal alignment. Habitually tight muscles distort movement and cause stiffness and pain. CSE corrects muscular malfunctions that underlie pain, stiffness and skeletal misalignment. Muscles relax. Pain disappears. Movement improves.
In chiropractic, the adjustment is "done to" (or for) you. In a matter of hours or days, your brain reinstates the condition to which it has been accustomed. It counteracts the adjustment. That's the reason chiropractic adjustments don't last.
In sessions of Clinical Somatic Education, your brain learns to replace its old, restrictive ways of operating with a new, more free and balanced ways of operating. You gain more natural control of your muscles. Tight muscles relax. Spontaneous spinal self-adjustments (complete with popping) sometimes occur immediately after a procedure. As with all learning-based changes in life, the improvements you gain soon seem second-nature.
If you see a chiropractor regularly, CSE makes chiropractic adjustments easier and longer-lasting. Many problems resolve much more quickly, including those (such as migraine headaches) that have resisted various methods of treatment.
In summary, chiropractic deals primarily with the "hardware" (skeletal system); CSE deals with the "software" (brain conditioning) that controls the "hardware".
