Pat McMahon demonstrates wave dynamic palpation, a technique to find spinal subluxations by relaxing surface muscles, then sending oscillatory waves through the spine to feel which segments stay tense. The subluxated area won't relax, revealing the distortion. Start at the upper cervical spine and work down.
Chapters
How are you finding subluxation? We do primarily through wave dynamic palpation. What is that? What I want to do is I want to turn off all of the musculature as much as possible and create as much ease as humanly possible in the system. And then we want to put an oscillation and a wave through the system, and we're specifically reading these intrinsic muscles of the spine. Okay, in the upper cervicals, it'll be your suboccipital muscles, but as you get lower into the spine, it's more of kind of the intertransversarii, the interspinous, uh, long— well, longus colli in the neck. You're going to read the intertransversarii tibii, these muscles, and you're trying to get a read on what is their tone. What you're going to find is if you get everything completely relaxed, the only thing that can't relax is the thing that's unable to, and that's the area. So we want to find the greatest level of distortion in that system where the system will allow us in. I always like to prioritize probably upper cervical the most, but definitely cervicals, kind of a top-down approach. And then I want to find the most subluxated segment that will allow me in without creating threat in the system.
