09/09/2026
Why would a kid, with very little pain, need to see you?
What can you help when I'm not in pain?
These are common and fair questions.
Here's one answer that involves the image/video below and a 10 year old patient with only minor pain.
When the neck struggles, sometimes there is pain and sometimes there isn't.
Sometimes the non-painful neck has other problems that can be measured with our advanced testing.
One test is called the Joint Position Error test or JPE.
The JPE test tells us whether your neck is really communicating to your brain the position of your head.
Proprioception is the ability of your nervous system to know where your joints are and for your joints to communicate that position to your central nervous system.
It's how you move about the in the world without the danger of falling down.
Proprioception is necessary for
* Balance and postural control
* Coordination and smooth movement
* Joint stability and protection
* Muscle activation and timing
* Walking and gait
* Fine motor control and movement accuracy
* Head, neck, and eye coordination
* Reflexive correction of unexpected movement
* Adapting movement to uneven or changing surfaces
* Maintaining spatial awareness of the body
* Reducing excessive or potentially injurious joint motion
* Learning and refining movement patterns
When it isn't doing it well, it's a problem. Because that communication breakdown creates "static" or "noise" in the system affecting all of the functions above.
Our first clue that her proprioception was failing was the visible distortion in her posture that mom and dad noticed.
Below you will see the JPE results over 4 weeks.
The images across the top are in July 2026, and those below are in June.
The patient is asked to close their eyes, then attempts to relocate to their starting, neutral head position after active movement. Joint position error can be tested from flexion, extension, and left/right rotation.
See if you can watch the video and get a sense of the improvement this 10 year old is making in knowing the position of her head.
This improvement translates to better posture and potentially all of the above functions.
This improvement came through gently restoring/aligning proper joint motion and position in her neck, shoulder, and upper back.
Our care helps integrate the head/neck and spinal communication with the brain by updating the brain on what's happening in the joint system of the body.
Kind of like a software update.
This objective testing allows us to measure and demonstrate that her system is actually improving in function to correspond with the improvement in her posture and improvement in joint alignment.
