The Secrets of Sacro Occipital Technique: What Most Chiropractors Don't Know

When people think about chiropractic, they usually picture someone lying on a table getting their back cracked. Maybe a neck adjustment. That's the mental image — and honestly, for a lot of chiropractic offices, it's accurate.

Sacro Occipital Technique breaks that picture entirely.

I have been practicing SOT for over two decades, and I still encounter patients — and occasionally colleagues — who are surprised by what it actually does. So let me lay it out plainly: here are the things most people, including most chiropractors, don't know about SOT.

Secret #1: SOT Treats Your Organs — Not Just Your Spine

This is the one that stops people in their tracks.

Your spine is not just a structural column. It is the neurological highway between your brain and every organ in your body. The nerves that exit between your vertebrae don't only go to muscles — they supply your stomach, your intestines, your lungs, your reproductive organs, your kidneys.

SOT includes a complete branch called CMRT — Chiropractic Manipulative Reflex Technique — developed by Dr. M.B. DeJarnette specifically to address the relationship between spinal subluxations and organ dysfunction. The insight that drove this work is deceptively simple: a stressed organ sends signals back to the spine that create and perpetuate subluxations at predictable vertebral levels. This is called a viscero-somatic reflex.

Here is the practical implication. If the T5 vertebra keeps going out of place no matter how many times you adjust it, there may be a stomach or esophageal issue firing that reflex. If the sacral segments keep shifting, there may be a reproductive or large intestinal component. Adjusting the spine alone — without addressing the organ driving the pattern — is like bailing out a boat without plugging the hole.

CMRT uses specific reflex points, Chapman's neurolymphatic reflex points, and direct visceral techniques to quiet the organ stress, so that spinal corrections actually hold. Conditions I commonly see respond to CMRT include GERD, chronic acid reflux, PMS, hormonal irregularity, adrenal fatigue, allergies, IBS, constipation, and fertility challenges.

This is not alternative medicine. It is anatomy.

Secret #2: Your Low Back Pain and Your Jaw Problem Are Connected

This one surprises people every time — including patients who have been treated by orthopedists for their back and by dentists for their jaw, sometimes for years, without either provider knowing about the other problem.

In SOT anatomy, the innominate bone (your hip bone / ilium) has a direct structural and dural relationship with the temporal bone of the skull — the bone that forms the side of your head and houses your ear canal and jaw joint (TMJ). These two bones are connected through the dural tube, which runs from the sacrum at the bottom of your spine all the way up to the skull.

When the pelvis is imbalanced and the sacroiliac joint is under strain (what SOT calls a Category II pattern), tension travels up through the dural tube and distorts the position of the occiput at the skull base. The occiput affects the temporal bone next to it. And the temporal bone is the foundation of the jaw joint.

The result: a pelvic problem creates an uneven foundation for the jaw. The jaw compensates. Clicking, grinding, one-sided headaches, ear fullness, and TMJ pain follow — not from a jaw problem, but from a pelvis problem that nobody traced upward.

Treating the jaw alone — with splints, bite adjustments, or dental work — can provide some relief without ever resolving the underlying driver. SOT addresses both ends of this relationship in the same session.

Secret #3: SOT Has Been Shown to Change Brain Activity

When the pelvic blocks are placed and the patient lies quietly, something measurable happens to the nervous system.

Research conducted by Dr. Tedd Koren and others, including controlled studies using EEG monitoring, has documented that SOT pelvic block procedures produce significant changes in brainwave activity — specifically, increases in alpha wave patterns associated with deep relaxation and nervous system regulation. The effect is not placebo. The blocks are changing the neurological environment of the entire spine and brain, not just repositioning bones.

Patients describe it as a profound heaviness or warmth spreading through their low back within the first minute of the blocks being placed. Some nearly fall asleep. Many describe it as the most relaxed their body has felt in years.

This is the nervous system shifting from sympathetic (fight-or-flight) dominance into parasympathetic (rest-and-heal) tone. When that shift happens consistently, the body starts to heal things it couldn't heal while it was locked in a stress response.

Secret #4: The Skull Moves — and That's the Point

Most of us were taught that the skull is one solid, fused bone. That is not accurate.

The skull consists of 22 bones, connected by flexible sutures that allow a subtle, rhythmic motion driven by the production and reabsorption of cerebrospinal fluid. This motion — called the cranial rhythmic impulse, or CRI — was first documented by osteopath Dr. William Garner Sutherland in the early 20th century. DeJarnette incorporated Sutherland's work into SOT and developed specific chiropractic techniques for restoring normal cranial motion.

When cranial sutures become restricted — from trauma, birth stress, dental procedures, head injuries, or years of dural tension from a pelvic imbalance — CSF flow is impaired. The brain's ability to self-regulate is compromised. The effects show up as headaches that don't fully respond to spinal adjusting, vertigo and balance problems, ringing in the ears, brain fog, chronic sinus congestion, TMJ pain, and post-concussion symptoms that linger far longer than they should.

SOT Craniopathy uses fingertip-level pressure on the cranial bones to restore their normal motion. The technique is so gentle that some patients wonder if anything is happening. It is.

Secret #5: Most Failed Adjustments Have a Cranial Cause

Here is something I have observed consistently over 23 years: when a patient keeps coming back because their adjustment "wore off" after a day or two, there is usually a cranial component that has not been addressed.

The dural tube attaches firmly at two points — the sacrum at the bottom and the occiput at the top. It is a continuous structure. If you correct the sacrum without correcting the occiput, the dural tension from above will gradually pull the sacrum back toward its dysfunctional position. The adjustment didn't fail — it was working against a counterforce that was never identified.

This is one of the reasons I evaluate the cranium in virtually every patient. A spinal correction that holds is a spinal correction made in the context of the whole dural system — not just the part that hurts.

Chronic cases that have cycled through multiple providers often turn around when cranial work is added to the plan. The adjustment that "never holds" suddenly starts holding, because the upstream tension has been addressed.

Secret #6: SOT Blocks Work With Gravity — Not Against Your Body

Most people assume that chiropractic corrections require force. SOT demonstrated a century ago that this assumption is wrong.

The pelvic blocks used in SOT are wedge-shaped cushions placed beneath specific points on the pelvis. When the patient lies down, their own body weight creates the corrective force — assisted by gravity, guided by the precise placement of the blocks according to the patient's Category pattern. There is no thrusting, no cracking, no forceful manipulation.

This matters enormously for certain patient populations. Pregnant women, for whom forceful lumbar manipulation is contraindicated, can be safely and effectively treated with SOT blocks. Infants and newborns — whose skulls and spines are far too delicate for adult manipulation — receive SOT in a completely modified, ultra-gentle form that addresses birth-related stress patterns. Elderly patients with osteoporosis, post-surgical patients, patients with acute disc herniations — all can receive SOT correction without the risks associated with high-velocity techniques.

The blocks essentially create the right mechanical conditions and let the body do what it already knows how to do. The body is the healer. SOT just gets out of the way.

Secret #7: Only a Tiny Fraction of Chiropractors Are Trained for This

SOT is well-known within the chiropractic profession. Most chiropractors have heard of it. A meaningful number have attended an introductory seminar or two. But mastery of the full system — including the Category analysis, Craniopathy, and CMRT — requires years of postgraduate study and clinical application, culminating in Advanced certification through SORSI: the Sacro Occipital Research Society International.

Advanced certification means demonstrated competency in the complete scope of SOT: the pelvic block work, the full Category system, cranial techniques, and CMRT organ work. It is the highest level of SOT training available.

I am the only Advanced SOT-certified chiropractor in San Antonio.

That is not a marketing claim — it is a verifiable fact. I pursued this level of training because the system warranted it. After discovering SOT at Western States Chiropractic College, after watching what CMRT and cranial work could do for patients who had exhausted their other options, I was not interested in knowing half of it. Twenty-three years later, I am still learning — because a system this comprehensive, developed over 60 years by one of the most rigorous researcher-clinicians chiropractic has ever produced, reveals new layers the longer you work with it.

Key Takeaways

• SOT includes a complete organ therapy system (CMRT) that addresses viscero-somatic reflexes — the hidden reason why some vertebrae keep going out in the same spot.
• The low back and the jaw are anatomically connected through the dural tube and the innominate-temporal bone relationship — two problems that often share one cause.
• Controlled research has documented that SOT pelvic block procedures produce measurable changes in brainwave activity, reflecting a shift into parasympathetic regulation.
• The skull is made of 22 moveable bones, and SOT Craniopathy restores their normal rhythmic motion — critical for headaches, vertigo, TMJ, and post-concussion recovery.
• Most failed adjustments have a cranial component — the dural tube connects sacrum to occiput, and corrections at one end without addressing the other will not hold.
• SOT uses gravity and the patient's own body weight for correction, making it safe for pregnant women, infants, the elderly, and patients with osteoporosis or disc herniation.
• Advanced SOT certification through SORSI is rare. Dr. Dan Foss is the only Advanced SOT-certified chiropractor in San Antonio.

If any of this surprises you — or if it sounds like it might apply to something you have been dealing with — I would love to talk. Give us a call at (210) 685-1994 or stop by Pura Vida Chiropractic at 2318 NW Military Hwy #103, San Antonio, TX 78231. Sometimes the most important conversation is the one that explains why nothing else has worked.