What has Cerebro Spinal Fluid to do with our general health and body’s healing process. Everything it seems! At least Dr. Don Glassey seems to think so. Dr. Glassey is a teacher and practitioner of Chiropractic.
An Auto Biography of an Indian Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda is perhaps the most famous book by an Indian Yogi to date. It must have sold a million copies all over the world. I used to hear of it all through my childhood to my teens to my early adulthood from almost every one I came into contact with in the land. It was so famous that I am surprised that I bought a copy of the book only a few years back. The book has a charm of its own and even the most unbelievable things described in the book rings true to our minds because of the warmth and enthusiasm with which it is related.
It seems that the book gave Dr. Don Glassey a new perspective to life and he joined the Self Realization Fellowship of Yogananda to study Kriya Yoga. Kriya involves learning a technique of Yoga by which the movement of prana is discernible through your spinal column. It is known by a sensation of warmth while it is descending and a touch of coolness on the spine when it is going up. Being a chiropractor he was able to easily relate to this new sensation and Glassey started asking his Yoga teachers as to the real nature of this feeling. They explained it was the movement of the subtle life force through the spinal column. Naturally it took Glassey directly back to the fundamentals of his profession.
Chiropractic is an old system of alternate medicine based on the belief that the human spine and health is related in a fundamental way and this relationship is mediated through our nervous system. It was not difficult for Glassey to make the association between these new sensations with the philosophy of his profession. He soon realized that the medium through the force of prana moves could be the CSF that is cerebro spinal fluid. Dr. Randolph Stone the founder of Polarity therapy had deduced that the human “soul swims in the CSF” based on his studies in the east under an Indian Yogi. This came to his mind as he considered the possibility of devising a technique by which the new knowledge could be transferred into his professional practice. Dr. Stone had made the observation somewhere in the later part of nineteenth century. Then the proteins named neuropeptides were not discovered.
Peptides or nerve proteins are biochemical’s that regulate almost all life processes on a cellular level, and thereby link all body systems. Now these proteins permeates our entire body and are produced by all our tissues the brain being the primary generator of them. They are the “messengers” of the body. They carry information to all parts of the system and can be considered as the vehicle of thought inside our bodies. Neuropeptides circulate throughout the body in the blood, extracellular fluid and spaces, and cerebrospinal fluid. All systems of the body exchange neuropeptide information, and it is the internal feeling state (emotions) that elicits the neuropeptide response. This is the mind-body connection in which every change in the mental-emotional state causes a change in the body physiology. Likewise, every change in the body physiology causes a change in the mental-emotional state.
They are generally thought to be emotion specific. Serotonin a neuropeptide which causes the sensation of well being is an example of this feature of the bio chemical activity. Glassey’s theory is that the CSF is the major carrier of neuropeptides and quite contrary to the belief that they can’t find a pathway to other parts of the body as they are confined within the cerebro spinal system, they do propagate through neurological cells which are found all over the body. The method of connection between these cells and the CSF is through the hollow “tubules of the connective tissue fibrils of neuroglial cells”(Glassey). In case you do not know what this is and how this is done I am not the one to answer it. But it seems that these cells are highly active before birth of the human child and is seen everywhere inside our body. Also considering that 500ml of cerebro spinal fluid is produced by the brain every day and only one third of it is circulated in the spinal system there could be peripheral circulation as well of the fluid. Glassey is certain that this is managed in the above manner. This is the foundation of his theory.
Because the neuropeptides are mostly produced in the brain and are transmitted through the Cerebro Spinal Fluid along the spinal column their inhibition would lead to illnesses. Glassey believes that by various psycho-somatic causes the free flow of cerebro Spinal Fluid is impeded and the effects are serious to health. By correcting this with massages and building the confidence of the patient it is possible to revitalize the body to cure its own diseases.
Well he may be right you know.
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