Stress, Tension, Trauma,
& Your Nervous System.
Your nervous system is amazing.
It controls and coordinates everything in your body — how you move, think, feel, heal and cope, and it comes built with intelligent, automatic responses to keep you safe under stress.
In modern life, the stressors can feel never-ending. For you — and your nervous system — chronic stress settles in as lasting tension: in your muscles, in your mind, and in your automatic responses.
The Chief Controller:
Your Nervous System
Through vibrational and electrical signalling, your brain, spinal cord and nerves control and coordinate every single system and function of your body.
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Your spine has 24 vertebral bones, and over 200 seperate joints. These bones encase and protect the spinal cord and nerves, which connect your brain to every single organ, tissue and cell of the body.
Nerve Communication
When the spinal cord sits relaxed inside the spinal column, messages and information can travel uninterrupted to every cell in your body — and back to your brain.
The body is in its most adaptable state when information can travel freely and undistorted through the spinal cord and nerves.
A Healthy System
Is a Flexible One
Stress can be a healthy part of life. Healthy living requires the ability to process and adapt to short-term stressors — such as conflicts and disagreements, exercise, drinking caffeine, riding a rollercoaster, watching a thriller movie, or public speaking.
In NetworkSpinal, we call this flexibility: the ability to shift from fight-or-flight to rest-and-repair appropriately and with ease.
With a coherent and flexible spine and nervous system, you experience things more authentically as they are, and are able to express yourself and respond in a way that is appropriate in the moment and more authentically you.
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When your body feels safe and is able to disengage fight-or-flight, this mode redirects energy internally for healing, rest, repair and growth. Your brain does this by communicating with your respiratory (breath), hormonal (reproductive) and immune (detox and cellular repair) systems. Your resistance to stress depends on how easily you can engage this mode.
Responding To
Short Term Stress
When you encounter stress or short-term threats, your nervous system intelligently activates Fight-or-Flight as part of an adaptive response.
This response re-directs energy and attention towards external vigilance (mental tension), defensive muscle activation (physical tension), and a release of stress hormones, so you can quickly respond and adapt.
A component of this change is a shift in vibrational tone throughout the spinal cord — this change in tone influences your physiological function, your behaviours and your perceptions.
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Prioritising survival — In this state, your body redirects energy and resources away from things that are non-essential in that moment, such as respiratory (breath), hormonal (reproductive) and immune (detox and cellular repair) function, towards what is essential right now.
Changes in behaviour — This includes increased muscle tension in your fight-or-flight muscles (preparing you to fight or flee), forward head posture, increased heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, and stress hormone production.
Changes in perception — Heightened external vigilance (helping you survey your environment) increases your sensitivity to light, visual and sound stimulation. At the same time, body-sense awareness, physical sensations and memory recall are reduced.
Long-Term Stress and
Nervous System Tension
Your nervous system is smart. In the face of overwhelm, trauma or chronic stress, it deliberately and intelligently finds a way to disconnect and dampen what it cannot process in the moment.
It does this by creating a distortion pattern along the spine and spinal cord, reducing the barrage of information hitting the brain — like ear muffs to dampen sound. This is a protective mechanism. Spinal cord tension, and its subsequent distortions, are actually part of a self-preservation strategy.
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In NetworkSpinal, we identify five major types of distortion patterns, and refer to them as phases. Each phase has a different presentation, influencing the behaviours, structures and perceptions of your body. Phase analysis is used regularly in NetworkSpinal care — a precise way of measuring how stress is impacting your body in real time.
See more about the development of NetworkSpinal and its Phasing System here.
Long Term Stress Distorts
Your Experience
If fight-or-flight is engaged too often, for too long, chronic stress creates a constant state of hyper-vigilance. This state fundamentally alters your body's behaviour, changes the structure of your spine, and distorts your perception of your body and of your life. Under chronic stress, your ability to heal, recover and grow is impaired.
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Chronic mental/perceptual changes include; reduction in memory & problem solving skills, reduced mental clarity or ability to focus on multiple things, limited emotional bandwidth, feeling triggered easily, reactivity, anxiety, sleep disturbances, inability to feel calm or at peace, conflict in relationships, and feeling stuck in a repeating pattern of negative behaviour in your body, and in your life…
NetworkSpinal
Can Help
By recognising the link between tension in your body and tension in your life, NetworkSpinal can be a powerful way to help change the state of your nervous system.
We evaluate your chemical, physical and emotional stressors, both past and present, showing us the unique history of Fight-or-Flight and Rest-and-Repair in your body.
This reveals more than just the physical state of your health, and tells us how you are participating with life on a mental, emotional, social and energetic level.
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Without using needles, cracking, massage, manipulation or equipment, this chiropractic technique uses light touch contacts along the spine to help the brain recognise patterns of tension, defence and distortion.
This self-regulating approach allows the body to unwind, relax, and adjust itself — affecting not just your physical body, but also your emotional wellbeing.
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Yes.
In the largest study of its kind—conducted with over 2,800 participants and published by the University of California, Irvine (Departments of Neurobiology, Surgery, and Sociology)—researchers found that:
Clients under NetworkSpinal care experienced physical and psychological changes, including increased flexibility of the spine, increased range of motion, improved mood & sense of relaxation, and greater capacity to cope with stressful situations.
The study highlights "statistically and clinically significant changes" — “demonstrating profound positive outcomes” across all measured wellness domains including;
Perception of Wellness
76% improvementPerception of Physical State
64% improvementMental / Emotional State
64% improvementStress Evaluation
66% improvementLife Enjoyment
69% improvementOverall Quality of Life
59% improvement
Press to learn more about how NetworkSpinal can regulate your nervous system.
↓ Continue below for information on how childhood trauma impacts the nervous system.
Childhood Trauma
When long term fight-or-flight engages from an early age, it sets the foundations for increased physical, mental and social challenges later in life.
Positive & Adverse Childhood Experiences or “PACE scores” are a way of measuring the impact of traumatic childhood experiences.
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Research has shown that higher Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE scores) are associated with a significantly greater risk of negative physical, mental and social health outcomes in adulthood.
Whereas Positive Childhood Experiences (PCE scores) promote safe, stable and nurturing relationships and are associated with greater positive outcomes later in life.
PCE scores have the potential to negate the detrimental effects from high ACE scores. We cannot change what’s happened in our past or think out way out of it. We can however, through a somatic mind and body approach, change our relationship with, and the meaning we give to it.
As part of our trauma informed framework, we will work with you to evaluate your PACE scores to see how your experiences have shaped the state of your nervous system and impacted the structures, behaviours and perceptions of your body and your life.
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NetworkSpinal is a framework that allows us to assess stress patterns in a person’s nervous system and precisely examine their level of adaptability or overwhelm at any given moment.
Trauma fundamentally affects someone's nervous system and the way they experience, react to and engage with their world, often leaving long standing marks.
NetworkSpinal care can help the brain and body become more connected and coherent. This allows the nervous system to exhibits greater levels of resilience, adaptability and energy efficiency. The armouring, protection and hyper-vigilance that trauma brings can begin to diffuse and become integrated into the system as a learning experience, changing a person's relationship to it.
What a person had previously experienced as a wound then has the potential to be experienced as a gift, often inspiring others around them along the way.
PACE Score Presentation
Preventative & Adverse Childhood Experiences and your health.
If you feel unsafe, or require phone support, please contact LifeLine on 13 11 14
↓Scroll Down For QnA
& Self Evaluation Questionnaire.
Common Questions
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During childhood, the nervous system is incredibly adaptable and responsive to input as neurological patterns are being established through neuroplasticity. The brain lays down many neural pathways as a child interacts with their environment, and then consistently prunes off any pathways that are no longer used.
Excessive physical, chemical (including nutrient deficiencies) or emotional stress a child sustains will reinforce Fight-or-Flight pathways as learned neuro-behavioural patterns.
See above for PACE score presentation.This is precisely why stress in these formative years has a lifelong impact on health expression, behaviour and illness rates.
NetworkSpinal can help regulate a child's nervous system through these crucial years of development.
NetworkSpinal is gentle, non-invasive and perfectly safe for newborns, children, adults and seniors.
Chiropractors are trained to assess developmental milestones in children and are often sought after by parents.
The results of the largest and most robust inquiry in Australia to date (found here) involving 21,874 submissions revealed:
98% of parents reported chiropractic helping their child.
99.7% of parents having positive experiences.
Zero cases of harm reported.
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As we are establishing greater awareness within your body, in the process of your nervous system finding areas of tension and unwinding those patterns, it can reconnect to certain experiences and sensations it had previously compartmentalised and disconnected from.
In these moments we can often re-experience an emotion or feeling we hadn't let ourselves fully experience at the time an event occurred. This is a natural phenomenon throughout the healing process called retracing. Retracing is expected, temporary and a good sign that energy is moving and connection is being made.
Emotion means “energy-in-motion”, and its purpose is to compel us to take action.
Research within this field was conducted by the renowned neuroscientist Candace B. Pert, a Nobel Prize nominee who’s book Molecules of Emotion explores the link between emotions and the mind-body connection.
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NetworkSpinal has demonstrated positive outcomes for improving HRV (Heart-Rate Variability), which is a gold standard measure of nervous system stress. Because of the strong correlation between HRV, vagus nerve tone and the parasympathetic (Rest-and-Repair) nervous system, NetworkSpinal can play a big part in regulating healthy vagal tone.
In fact, within SRI (SomatoRespiratory Integration exercise) as part of your NetworkSpinal care, we focus on specific branches of the vagus nerve, using hand positions, movement and focus to enhance connection and regulation.
A healthy vagus nerve (or healthy vagal tone) regulates cardiac, digestive and immune function. In order to have healthy vagal tone, the body needs to be able to engage its natural Rest-and-Repair state.
Stress, trauma and other nervous system overwhelm can engage the sympathetic Fight-or-Flight state for long periods of time, inhibiting the Rest-and-Repair functions.
NetworkSpinal can assist the body to naturally move from Fight-or-Flight into Rest-and-Repair, meaning healthier vagal tone, HRV, cardiac function, immune regulation and digestive function.
NetworkSpinal and HRV research can be found here.
Further chiropractic and HRV research can be found in article one and article two.
SELF EVALUATION
at your own “PACE”
Complete the below self evaluation to review your own PACE score.
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Every answer of “yes” is one point towards your ACE score.🟡 1. Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often... Swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you?... or act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt?
🟡 2. Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often... Push, grab, slap, or throw something at you?... or ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured?
🟡 3. Did an adult or person at least 5 years older than you ever... touch or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way?... or attempt or actually have intercourse with you?
🟡 4. Did you often or very often feel that ... no one in your family loved you, thought you were important / special, or made regular time for you?... or, your family didn’t look out for each other, feel close, or support each other?
🟡 5. Did a parent or caregiver often or very often... make themselves the focus of many situations? Required everything to be done their way?... or demand respect from you, or use guilt or manipulation in your relationship?
🟡 6. Did you often or very often feel that ... you didn’t have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, and had no one to protect you?... or Your parents were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if you needed it?
🟡 7. Did you daily, or multiple times a week... eat; processed, highly processed, sugary, or takeaway food of any kind?
🟡 8. Were your parents ever separated or divorced?
🟡 9. Were your parents or stepparents often or very often pushed, grabbed, slapped, had something thrown at, kicked, hit, repeatedly hit or threatened with a gun or knife?
🟡 10. Did you live with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic, or who used street drugs?
🟡 11. Was a household member depressed, anxious or mentally ill (maybe requiring medication), or did a household member attempt suicide?
🟡 12. Did a household member go to prison?Please tally your total ACE score.
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Every answer of “yes” is one point towards your PCE score.
⚪️ 1. Did you feel able to talk to your family about your feelings?
⚪️ 2. Did you feel that your family stood by you during difficult times?
⚪️ 3. We're you able to access regular, good quality and nutritious food?
⚪️ 4. Were you able to enjoy participating in community traditions?
⚪️ 5. Did you feel a sense of belonging in school?
⚪️ 6. Did you have access to regular quality time with a parent or caregiver?
⚪️ 7. Did you often or very often... have access to groups or sports outside of school that you enjoyed?... or were you able to regularly see friends outside of school?
⚪️ 8. Did you feel supported by friends?
⚪️ 9. Did you have at least two non-parent adults who took genuine interest in you?
⚪️ 10. Did you feel that you could access help if you needed it?
⚪️ 11. Did you grow up in a home where extended family happily lived with you or visited often? Including grandparents, aunties, uncles or cousins?... or did you often or very often spend positive time with extended family?
⚪️ 12. Did you feel safe and protected by an adult in your home?
Please tally your total PCE score. -
If you feel unsafe, or require phone support, please contact LifeLine Australia on 13 11 14.
In totality, the measurement of PACE scores is an evaluation of the effects of toxic stress on a persons nervous system, and the resulting effects that nervous system stress will have—throughout your body and your life.
Your nervous system is important, it controls and coordinate every single system and function of your body. From the way you think, to the way you move. This is why we incorporate PACE score evaluation as part of our thorough evaluation at Seeking More, and why thousands of people worldwide seek out a NetworkSpinal approach for their nervous system health.
How to read your results:
As explained eloquently by Dr. Nadine in the presentation above, there is a dose dependant relationship between the number ACEs you have and the presence/severity of mental & physical health conditions later in life.This means with every increase in ACEs, there is an increased risk of these health conditions, despite healthy life choices such as eating well or avoiding alcohol.
The higher your PCE score, the more protected you are against ACEs.
Meaning that if you have a high ACE score, you can be protected from the effects with a high PCE score.
To evaluate your score, please press here to read about PACE scores and outcomes.
Our PACE score questionnaire at Seeking More differs by 1-2 questions from the original source material to account for other stressors — results found in the above link are still wholly relevant.
Further Resources
