The Learning Breakthrough Program™ addresses brain processing issues that are critical to physical rehabilitation by improving sensory integration coordination that directly impacts motor control skills so that one’s internal control system is balanced and repaired along with the outside (or physical) repair.

The Learning Breakthrough Program™ was originally designed to improve the functioning of the balance system as a means of improving intellectual processes.  When it was first developed, a high-level understanding of the neurological functioning of the brain was not yet available, so the first evidence to support its value was purely observational:  children with learning disabilities began to function (and succeed) academically.

Since then much more investigation has been made and we now understand that the impact of balance stimulation (and proprioception) exercises is due to the central role balance plays in the working of the brain.  The vestibular system (balance system) can be thought of as the root on which higher brain functions grow and plays a basic and vital role in our lives.

Joint stabilization is the ability of muscles that have been appropriately activated to stabilize a joint. The process of joint stabilization/joint positioning is critical to athletic performance and injury prevention. Often times an athlete who has suffered multiple ankle injuries will assume that he or she has “weak” ankles. This may not be the case considering the fact that the athlete is probably in excellent physical shape. The more likely scenario is that the joint positioning systems (proprioceptive processes) that the brain uses are not positioning the joint properly in the midst of athletic movements. Over time, this poor joint positioning will lead to injury. By improving the brain’s ability to integrate all the information being received from the various senses and formulate appropriate movement responses the chances of poor joint positioning and injury are reduced.

Because it is so important, the body naturally makes compensations to maintain a sense of balance. Over time these compensating actions and behaviors are learned and become “normal” for the body. In addition, when the body is injured, damage can be done to the balance system that is far more difficult to perceive and measure than the external injury itself. However, in order truly to return a patient to 100%, the balance system must be reorganized and recalibrated in tandem with the correction to the body.

Therefore, there are two ways to think of balance as it pertains to Osteopathic or Chiropractic applications.  First, a subtle inefficiency in the balance system causes an individual to compensate. Over time these compensations grow into habits, and as the habits become permanent, the body changes.  Chiropractic or Osteopathic work can correct the symptoms of that change but unless the practitioner works with the underlying cause (i.e. balance and vestibular resolution) the solution will not be optimal and may be impermanent.  Second, an injury can cause the body to change.  Over time these changes can have an impact on the efficiency of the balance system which in turn reverberates through a client’s entire set of brain processing abilities. Extending Osteopathic or Chiropractic work to the balance system enables the practitioner not only to improve the physical effects of an injury, it also to corrects the impact that injury may have had on the balance system.