This is the concept that is taught at the CHEK Institute in the CHEK 3 and 4 courses. This is courtesy of a colleague of mine Josh Rubin.

The Survival Totem Pole

Every day I and other practitioners speak to a wide variety of people who suffer from unresolved ailments. Many of the clients are working people and elite athletes whose livelihood depends on their ability to develop and maintain superb balance skills.

In order for a client to acquire new balance skills, it is important to ensure optimal function of all the control centers in the body that affect balance. Some of the control centers affecting balance are not as obvious as others. The Survival Totem Pole is a representation of the order of developmental reflexes expressing their dominance over the motor system with regard to hierarchical influence, based on survival of the organism. In other words, the further up the Survival Totem Pole you go, the more important that particular reflex is to survival.

Respiration

Respiration and all its related reflexes reign supreme on the Survival Totem Pole. If you stop breathing, you have about three minutes before your brain begins to die. Therefore, it’s pretty safe to say anything disrupting respiration will quickly cause postural alternations to facilitate improved ventilation, since breathing takes precedence over posture, posture will be altered to facilitate breathing.

One of the most common responses when respiration is obstructed is a forward head posture. In fact, the nervous system is so sensitive to respiratory obstruction that most people will begin developing forward head posture within as little as five minutes of acquiring a nasal airway obstruction. Obstructed respiration can be caused by a number of factors including food allergy, growth and developmental disorders or structural deviations such as a deviated septum from a broken nose.

Mastication: TMJ (Temporo-Mandibular Joint---the Jaw)

Next in line on the Survival Totem Pole is the highly position-sensitive masticatory system. If for any reason the teeth don’t fit together perfectly in what is called centric occlusion, we default to a compensatory masticatory mechanism called the Hit-and-Slide of the teeth. In order to guide the teeth into occlusion, the Hit-and-Slide mechanism results in a guiding of the teeth along the facets, which at a rate of ~4,000 times per day, could quickly wear your teeth out. Simply put, if you didn’t have teeth 10,000 yrs ago, you would die!

There are numerous reasons for a Hit-and-Slide mechanism including: growth & development disorders, malnutrition, trauma, forward head posture, dental disorders such as a cracked or rotten tooth or structural dysfunction such as a subluxation of the upper cervical spine.

Because mastication is vital to survival, the body has developed an elaborate array of reflexes generated from the periodontal ligament and the TMJ mechano-receptors. These reflexes are used to influence subtle and gross motor responses of mastication to adequately help position the cranio-mandibular (head/jaw) complex, such as the Hit-and-Slide occlusal corrections are minimized in an attempt to save the teeth. A simple example to demonstrate just how powerful these reflexes can be is to think of the last time you had a small seed or a piece of beef stuck in your teeth---you probably wore your tongue out trying to free it from your teeth.

Vision

The eyes are the chief exteroceptive (A sense organ, such as the eyes & ears, which receive and respond to stimuli originating from outside the body). Your eyes function with two main systems to aid movement control, both of which are important to balance. Developmentally, if we lost our vision, there was a good chance we would have not survived very long. However, respiration and mastication are even more important to our survival; this is why the eyes are ranked third on the Survival Totem Pole.

When it comes to balance, consider the following w/regard to the function and impact of the eyes on balance.

The Focal System is specialized for object identification. It is mainly concerned with objects in the question “What is it?” This recognition occurs so you will know how to respond to the challenge. For example, the way your body reacts to balancing on a bicycle or a balance beam is different and requires different responses. The bicycle will create a much greater need for an integrated tilting reflex response, while moving across a balance beam will primarily require a righting reflex response. It is your focal vision that provides the visual image that triggers the cognitive response to the balance challenge.

The Ambient System is specialized for movement control and involves the entire visual field (central and peripheral). The ambient system functions to detect motion and position of elements in the environment, and provides information about your movements in relation to them. So, the ambient system provides answers to the questions “Where is it?” And “Where am I relative to it?” This is vital information w/regard to maintaining your balance.

Ear (Audition & Vestibular Function)

The fourth spot on the Survival Totem Pole is held by the ear and the vestibular system (this system contributes to our balance and our sense of spatial orientation, is the sensory system that provides the dominant input about movement and equilibrium). Ten thousand years ago, if you couldn’t hear out of one or both ears there was a chance of survival but not a great a chance as if the auditory and the vestibular system were fully functional.

The auditory portion of your ear consists of the outer auricle and the tympanic membrane (ear drum), which serves as the barrier between your outer and middle ear. The ear detects exteroceptive (A sense organ, such as the eyes & ears, which receive and respond to stimuli originating from outside the body) sound that is useful to function and performance. Clinically, the client w/deafness in one ear will have similar postural adaptation as the person with unilateral visual loss. They will rotate their body and or head to a position they are most functional for that sense organ. As described above, such deviations of posture will ultimately reduce an individual’s capacity to balance or learn balance skills.

The vestibular system senses motion and speed of movement of the head in all three planes of motion and is highly integrated with the cervical and ocular systems. The reflexes elicited by the vestibular organ principally serve two mechanisms.

·         Maintenance of the equilibrium of the body (including postural responses)

·         Keeping an eye on the surroundings independent of movements of the head & body (visual motor control)

Upper Cervical Function

The upper cervical spine maintains an intimate relationship with the cranium, jaw, eyes, vestibular system and the central nervous system. This is because every nerve leaves the foramen magnum (is a large opening in the occipital bone of the cranium. It is one of the several oval or circular apertures in the base of the skull) passes through the atlas. The upper cervical spine is also intimate with the vestibular system in producing the majority of the body’s righting, equilibrium and tonic neck reflexes.

Visceral (Organs) Relationships

The average person in the gym or the physical therapist clinic today present with musculoskeletal disorders, sub-optimal nutrition and frequently has functional deficiencies within their organ systems. Some of them are on physical therapy program for many injuries such as sprained ankles, hurt backs, and fractures of the arms, legs or hips---all of which are related to poor balance.

While it is certainly logical to think, ‘if you have poor balance, you need to do balance exercises,” this is superficial logic. The human body is highly integrated, holistic, cybernetic system---A System of Systems. If we were simply a collection of muscles and joints or some form of sophisticated robot, balance exercises for poor balance might just work. But we are not merely a system of muscles and joints, and balance skill development in the absence of unwanted and unnecessary biomechanical stress can only come in concert with balance in the body at the segmental level, both structurally and neurologically.

Emotions

Emotions can be incredibly healing or incredibly destructive to the body. People who harbor too much anger, grief, pain or any negative emotions are far more susceptible to illness and disease than those who are able to release these emotions.

Pelvic Influence on Equilibrium

The pelvis is essential to postural stability of those structures above and below. To appreciate the effect of the pelvic disposition on cranio-cervical (head/neck) structures, imagine the body as a skyscraper with a pelvis for a foundation. Similar to a skyscraper with many segmental levels and a roof at its apex (top), the body has many segmental levels with the cranium as its apex.

The removal of a 1/8 of an inch from the anterior (front) aspect of a skyscrapers foundation may not be as threatening to those on the first floor, as it is for the window washer on the 24^th floor. In the human body an anterior pelvic tilt plus or minus 1/8” away from normal, may produce a substantial postural response 24 segments up at C-0/C-1, that region has great influence on our stability to balance and to be balanced.

The Slave Joints

We are now at the bottom of the Survival Totem Pole, in the region of the slave joints. The slave joints consist of the hip, knee, ankle, foot, shoulder/arm complex and all the spinal joints between C-3/C-4 and L-5/S-1. The pubic symphasis and the sacroiliac joints can be considered to be intimate with the sacro-coccygeal system because the pelvic girdle is a functionally closed chain. The reason these joints are called slave joints is because among those skilled in assessment of all the regions superior (above) on the Survival Totem Pole, the slave joints merely serve as buffers willing to be sacrificed by the body in the name of supporting all structures and systems higher up on the totem pole.