Using Counterstrain Therapy to Restore Brain Health

Kyle Kusunose

Yeah, thanks for having me. 

Jason Prall

So you know, we’ve chatted a number of times. Of course I come and see you as often as I can. Your schedule is quite busy. In fact, right before this call, I had to book another appointment for a few months out because that’s when you’re next available. So I love to see that counter strain is catching on and yet it’s still a therapy, a technique that I find almost everybody I talked to has never heard of. And so it’s really fascinating in the sense that it’s still very new in the public perception. And yet it’s been around for quite a while from you guys perspective, I mean decades at least. And yet it’s still evolving and it’s growing very rapidly. So maybe just give people an introduction to the history of counter strain. Where did it come from? And kind of, what is it about?

Kyle Kusunose

Sure, yeah, strains an osteopathic manual medicine technique, there’s really two stories that need to be told in regards to its origin. So the original developer of the technique was an osteopath. His name was Dr. Lawrence Jones. So he passed away in the late 90s. But in 1955 he had a patient that came in for sinusitis back pain that was hunched over that couldn’t stand up straight. And that patient had been manipulated by multiple chiropractors, even Dr. Jones at the time was a manipulator, tried to do a P. L. A. S. Or high velocity manipulations to the patients back and failed to give the patient the relief that he was looking for. So one day the patient came in and said, you know if you could just help me find a comfortable position to sleep in, I think I can then start to like at least feel a little bit better, have some more energy start to heal. 

So Dr. Jones went with that idea and he laid the patient down and flex his legs up side, bend him 60 degrees this way rotated him 60 degrees that way and the patient kinda stopped him at one point and said that’s uncomfortable right now I don’t feel the pain. So doctor jones left him there said I’ll be back in 20 I’m gonna go see another patient. I went and saw the other patient came back to see the sinusitis patient and um he was asleep so Dr. Jones kind of gently woke him up and helped him stand up and the patient stood up straight for the first time. Pain free in months. Right? So that was like the light bulb that went off in Dr. Jones mind that there is spontaneous release from passive position. From there it took him about 40 plus years to put together over 200 or so techniques and to start to find these diagnostic tender points that he could use to not only diagnose the dysfunctions that he needed to treat but also to assess whether or not his release was effective. So that’s the first story. 

This is the second story comes probably in the late nineties as well. One of Dr. Jones’s original instructor’s Bryan Tuckey who’s a physical therapist out in Maryland and the developer of fashion Counter stream was working on a patient and couldn’t relieve that patient’s rib pain. And so he had taken a number of visceral release courses and he was using those techniques but he was using them in a direct way which is assessing a barrier and then trying to push through that barrier.

Jason Prall

And this is pretty common, right? Like let’s find where the body is resisting, where something is catching, right? And then let’s figure out how to move that body through that pain point, That sticking point, right? That’s a fairly common sort of approach mentally. Right?

Kyle Kusunose

Yeah, direct tissue manipulation is probably what most people have heard of them and are aware of, right? So if there’s a restriction of joint mobile, mobilized through it or manipulate through it, or if that muscle is tight at that point trying to stretch a little bit further. So those are all examples of direct releases. So Brian was using those on visceral tissue or being an umbrella term for internal organs. But he was a counter strainer in the musculoskeletal world. So kind of a light bulb went off in his head there. Why don’t I try and do an indirect tissue manipulation or counter strain manipulation to this liver. And he did and immediately felt this massive kind of liver release. And then when he went back and reassessed the restriction that he felt it was gone, patients stood up, that rib pain was gone that the patient was experiencing. 

And so that was the initial discovery for Brian to where he’s like, I know I can counter strain less of the skeletal brooks. We’ve been doing that with strange encounters. Strange now. I just figured out I can manipulate the visceral fashion, what can’t we counter strain? And that sent him off on this long journey that he is still currently on um where he basically made a spreadsheet of all the anatomical structures in the body and started just knocking them out as far as this is how we release it. This is where the correlating tender point is. And like I said, he’s still going and what makes what he’s doing now. So cool with this topic is now he’s in the brain um and he’s pushing the envelope as far as mechanical release to neural and vascular structures of the central nervous system well,

Jason Prall

And this is if I haven’t said it already, this is one of the most profound and effective therapies and techniques that I’ve come across. And you know, being in sort of this integrative health world, you know, I kind of pride myself on investigating as much as I can, whether it’s, you know, indigenous medicine techniques and you know, ancient healing arts and of course the modern science. And this is one that when I came across that I was pretty perplexed by to be honest. And  again, studying a lot of anatomy, sending a lot of physiology. I have a decent grasp on what’s going on in the body. And you know, when I talk to you, Kyle, like you just kind of blew me out of the water with your knowledge and not only the knowledge, not only the sort of book smarts about the biology, that’s the internal biology, but but the experiential aspect to what you do. And so that caught me, that caught my attention right, when I’m sitting in your office and you’re just speaking over my head, when it comes to how the body is working internally and all the various micro structures that go on on all this, on all these levels. You know, I ended up being uh student in that regard to a profound degree and not only from asking you a million questions, but also experiencing it directly. And that’s where again, I was kind of opened up to a totally new healing art and just to kind of describe it for for those listening, you know, from my, from my rookie perspective, somebody who didn’t really know what this was, I’m laying on a table and Kyle starts kind of feeling my skull, right? And he’s looking for these tender points that he was talking about and he’s got this very keen sense of awareness with, with regard to touch and how these tender points are showing up in the skull. And then once he finds one and of course he’s able to find it just by his own field, but I mean, he actually locates it for me. So, you know, I’m walking in. I don’t feel like anything’s tender on my head. And he finds this tiny little point here and he put it on it just a little bit and I’m like, whoa. You know, like, what’s that? Why is that tender? And so he’d find these tender points and then that’s correlated somehow, again, to my untrained patient perspective. Somehow it’s correlated to, you know, my liver and some channel that’s running up, right, and all these different things, right? 

And to the point where I’m just like, I don’t understand what’s happening here, but he finds that something is blocked, something is not functioning correctly. And then if I’m just going Sort of make something up here, but something’s blocked in sort of the some liver channel and he’s manipulating my left knee right, like, and putting it over my right hip and holding it there for 30 seconds and it’s very comfortable and soft and easy. And he puts it back and checks the tender point on my head again and it’s not tender anymore. And the channels now opened. And this is what was happening right? And of course I’m oversimplifying getting it way wrong. But that’s really kind of yeah, he laughs. But that’s kind of what was happening, right and and to me that it didn’t make any logical sense right? To the untrained person into how most of us think linearly about the body, it didn’t make any sense, right? And again, I’m a little familiar with Chinese medicine and Ayurveda. So I’m familiar with things not connecting directly to our sort of intuitive perspective, but this is what was happening. So, Kyle kind of fills in the gaps and and um let me know, let the audience know kind of what’s really going on on that level, how you’re able to do something like that.

Kyle Kusunose

Well, I mean, it’s funny hearing you talk about it because most people from like an intuitive level are actually pretty in tune when it comes to the musculoskeletal system.

Jason Prall

Right?

Kyle Kusunose

What they lack, the basic concept of, is that the body’s nervous system and arterial system and venous lymphatic system also have jobs to do. And they’re also responsive to stress and to trauma. And when they do, they can become, you know, if a dysfunction develops in those tissues, they can become inefficient doing their jobs right? And from a basic physiology standpoint, the arteries job is to supply blood and oxygen to a tissue.

Jason Prall

Into the whole body, right? Like the whole everything.

Kyle Kusunose

Every tissue. And we know it’s not uncommon knowledge that arteries and when they do the velocity of blood traveling through that artery changes, that, you know, scientists can measure that and they measure it in the brain in the circle wills. So if an artery becomes inefficient and supplying blood and oxygen to a tissue that tissue is going to fail. Maybe not immediately. Maybe it’ll start to degenerate but it’s gonna be weak. I always tell my patients blood flow to a tissue is like putting gas in the car tissue just does not go without oxygen.

Jason Prall

And the other part of that is that tissue is now not functioning optimally, right? For some period of time and less. We forget that that tissue is either directly or indirectly connected to the entire body itself, right? So it’s not like it stops there, Right? So this is how we this is the downward spiral of ill health that we can get caught in. Right?

Kyle Kusunose

Right? So the artery is not functioning well. The tissue that it’s supposed to supply blood to is not functioning well. It’s not capable of optimal healing, is not capable of. If we’re talking about a muscle, let’s say it’s not capable of an optimal contraction. So it may present this week. And then it also in this state it’s more likely to break down whether it’s to be torn to develop a tendonitis to develop an arthritis in regards to joints or for organs to break down if they’re not supplying, getting that healthy supply of oxygen and nutrition from the arterial supply. That’s just one side of vocabulary that we haven’t talked about being static yet, which is probably one of the more powerful ones because it removes chemical waste.

Jason Prall

And tell people why you sort of lump that together. Why it’s a venous lymphatic, why it’s why it’s always together in that way.

Kyle Kusunose

Lymphatic spanned the entire body. There are certain areas of the body where there’s a higher accumulation but they travel with veins. So a lot of times when we treat the veins Uh we’re getting lymphatic as well. But in regards to like re absorption of deoxygenated blood veins re absorb about 85%. The venous lymphatic system is responsible for about 15. But the other thing that the venous lymphatic system does is re absorbs interstitial fluid. And that interstitial fluid is ever or interesting space that contains. The fluid is everywhere in the body, It’s in all of our tissues. And it is an area that’s microscopic, right? It takes like high level imaging to be able to see. And it’s where a lot of stuff gets stuck. A lot of congestion occurs. And therefore chemical ways that sits in that tissue that pisses off our appropriate sectors and peripheral neurons in the area and then resultant knows offensive muscle protective muscle garden occurs because of that protective muscle garden.

Jason Prall

It’s an interesting concept and I’m very familiar with it experientially but maybe explain that one a little bit. Yeah.

Kyle Kusunose

So that’s really a lot of what we as countersued, refused to diagnose dysfunctions and deeper systems. So, you know, there could be a protective muscle guarding spasm of something as large as your populate this muscle, which is a muscle and bending the knee or as small as an intercostal muscle that locks up a joint in a very specific location. But every neural vascular visceral, muscular skeletal structure that we have in the body, when the peripheral neurons and culture sectors that are within it are pissed off from a chemical stress or mechanical trauma. They have this reflex arc that excites and defensive reflex or muscle guarding protective spasm. So basically any dysfunction anywhere in the body, you’re, you’re gonna feel it right and it might not reach threshold to where you’re aware of it. But as counter stringers, we can find that muscle guarding spasm and elicit it without patient.

Jason Prall

And this is what most of us that had dealt with pain or dealing with pain. We notice it when it gets to that high threshold, right? In other words, I move my shoulder here and it starts to hurt and therefore I can’t really move it any farther. Even if I try sometimes, right? And it’s sort of, it’s, it’s the protective aspect of the body saying, hey, there’s a lot of inflammation and pain going on in there. It’s not a good idea, like the body sort of talking to us saying, hey, it’s, it’s right. Yeah. And so there’s something going on there and and, and that’s how we sort of deal with pain, but, but on a micro level that’s, that may be happening in our hips and our, so as our back all over the place to the point where we’re losing mobility, we’re losing function and we, you don’t even realize it yet. And I can, you know, if, if any, I see this a lot when I go to yoga class, right? 

And some of these older guys like myself, we show up and we literally don’t have the mobility and flexibility in some of these things that I see these, these younger kids have, particularly the women. And it’s, it’s really interesting to note that at one point we did and I know that because I can watch my two year old son and he can move everywhere. Now. There’s, there’s joint space and there’s all kinds of other things going on there. However, there’s also these dysfunctions that start to show up as we get older and as we sort of acquire more dysfunction throughout our lives. And one of the things that’s fascinating when I’ve experienced counter strain is that as you manipulate mobility, increased pain goes away, right? I’ve experienced anything from detox reactions. So in other words, things start to move again, right? And, toxins and chemicals and, you know, metabolic waste that was stuck in the system is now moving through at a pretty rapid rate. 

And then I’ve experienced the opposite after a session, which is, you know, inflammatory symptoms, whatever they might be, seemed to decrease. Right? And so they were stuck in the system and causing inflammation. Now they’re actually being flushed out, right? So there’s very fascinating results that can come from this. I want to send this around the brain and brain health because this is one of those things that although actually before we get there though, I do, I would love for you to address this idea that you can sort of feel the skull and and and detect these pain points and then correlate that with with the body and and systems that are maybe dysfunctional because there’s probably some, some doubters and disbelievers um that are watching this or or even those who are just curious on how that’s possible. What is the mechanism that you can correlate and tie that together?

Kyle Kusunose

Yeah. So, what you’re referring to is one of the main diagnostic tools that we have in fashion counter strain that Bryan Tuckey has developed. I refer to it as the most powerful gift that he’s given manual practitioners, um because it is the fact that he’s mapped it out of the way that he has is amazing. It’s remarkable from there if, you know, your anatomy and you have salvation skills and you do indirect manipulation. There’s nothing that you can’t release. There’s no anatomical structure that you can’t treat. But the cranial scan is essentially a cranial mobility test of the cranial bones that tells us what to treat and where to treat it. In addition to that, it also prioritizes for us based on severity of restriction and its severity of pain the patient might feel.

Jason Prall

Sorry, there’s a hierarchy of symptoms too. Right? So that’s what’s interesting and starts to derail you. But it came to mind that you seem to be able to determine. Okay, this system is maybe the most important thing to deal with right now. And there may be systems under that that after we release this and get this moving that we can pick up on. So maybe just tie that into your conversation because that’s a really fascinating aspect that many many diagnostic tools cannot pick up.

Kyle Kusunose

Yeah. So, you know, the scan or the cranial mobility test allows me to assess um what system is dysfunctional, most dysfunctional body and then also where uh and there are times when I’m doing a scan where multiple systems or indoor regions of the body will appear positive, but the scan is also dynamic. All right. So let’s say we’re working with you. I find rigidity in the occipital bone and that tells me that you’re pre ganglion sympathetic nervous system is from T. Five to T. One are dysfunctional and need to be treated. All done go into the body and find tender points that correlate to the rigidity that I found in the head treat those dysfunctions come back up to the head and that rigidities improved right? 

And then I’ll kind of Reese can’t recheck all of my different regions of the cranium um and find that alright now this one is the next most positive um Whereas before it might not have been positive at all. So the body does this and we have some other tools, some different like inhibition and things like that that we use to help um you know, sequence but but the body kind of always prioritizes the next worst thing and part of what makes counter strain a technique with such great carryover meaning we can do a handful of releases into giving treatment and the next time you come in those those treatments I should not have to redo um is because we can sequence so well with the cranial scam.

Jason Prall

Yeah it’s almost like you’re it’s like you address the high needs in this in this session and if I were to come back to you next week, it’s almost like we’re I wouldn’t say we’re hoping for new things to show up but it’s almost like we’re kind of expecting something else to show up now because the body is now rebalanced and and in in essence we kind of want the next things to start to show up so we can address those right. So that’s what’s interesting. It’s not like chiropractic where, you know, I’ve got a problem area and we need kind of to focus on this adjustment, whether it be continual kind of adjustments or this progression, you know? And I know there’s a lot of different kinds of chiropractic adjustment models. 

So, I don’t want to pigeonhole that and there’s a way forward, but it tends to be kind of the same addressing the same aspects of the body. Whereas this we’re starting to move through the symptoms, move through the hierarchy of imbalances um to the point where we find a new equilibrium and and and of course as we live life, we get out of balance on a continual basis, things get blocked and things get, you know, uh experience and dysfunction, but that’s what I find so fascinating is that we can move through the hierarchal symptoms and the body is dynamically re finding a new center.

Kyle Kusunose

Yeah. And then, you know, the other dynamic part of that is the patient themselves. Right? So totally, I’ll create a series of releases that changes that patient’s homeostasis. And then over the next week, let’s say before I see them again, their body, their normal physiology is gonna occur, right? So they’re gonna come back a different patient for the beginning of the visit than they were at the end of this one.

Jason Prall

Right. Yeah. So getting into sort of brain health and some of the things that you notice when patients walk through the door. I mean first of all a lot of what you’re addressing is of course all the systems but but the nervous system being a key system that you’re addressing and so that being very tied into to brain health. What do you notice when it comes to you know because we’ve got a conventional view of things like dementia and Alzheimer’s and cognitive decline and chronic fatigue and all these sort of like nervous system brain gut you know kind of detox systems. And then we have got an integrative perspective on these things which is maybe a little bit more elaborate a little bit more. Of course integrative um and inclusive of a lot of different systems. And then I think you probably carry a unique perspective and I haven’t talked to you about this. I’m really curious what it is that you’re picking up just through your own experience based on the patients that walk through the door when it comes to nervous system dysfunctions. Brain dysfunction. You know foggy thinking. You know, sleep issues that the standard stuff that we might see. 

Kyle Kusunose

I would say over the past even six months or so my patient caseload has pretty dramatically shifted towards patients with central nervous system symptoms. Whether it’s sleep issues. Brain fog, post concussion, post stroke, post T. V. I. So I had always been kind of working my way that way and that’s been you know the track of fashion counter strain that Bryan’s been taking us all on. But I would say the approach to treating the central nervous system for me right now isn’t really all that different from my approach to treating someone with moderate D. O. A. And that. And you kind of said it in my bio. The paradigm is that we want is applied anatomy. So we want to take a look at the very specific areas of the brain that may be affected um whether it’s you know brainstem um die insect alone with the thalamus and hypothalamus areas of the cerebral cortex but we want to take a look at those specific areas of the brain. We want to take a look at the veins that are responsible for draining those areas of the brain and then the arteries that are responsible for supplying blood to it um which are capable of as a spasm just like arteries and veins and the rest of the body. And we want to restore normal profusion to that area of the brain.

Jason Prall

So this seems to be a big part of it right? Like when we let’s just take you know concussions or traumatic brain injuries of any kind. My firm belief is that the body is capable, it hasn’t let me put it this way the body has the wisdom and the intelligence to recover to heal. Right. And yet the sort of opposition to that argument is, well, it just sometimes it just doesn’t. Right? So there’s something blocking this wisdom from expressing this intelligence from expressing health, right? So from your perspective, what are some of those things? I mean, of course we’ve been naming sort of the venous lymphatic system and what have you, But how are these things preventing us from fully recovering when we deal with something like traumatic brain injury or concussion or or anything like that?

Kyle Kusunose

Profusion is going to be the big one. Profusion. And then on the venous lymphatic side of the capitol right there, it’s gonna be congestion and inflammation tissue. That’s congested and inflamed is just not going to hell because there’s no room for oxygen, oxygen and nutrition to get in the arterial system. That’s gonna be the main way, but that’s impacted by so many different things. We can have intrinsic faceless spasm of living vessels or of the arterial vessels. But those vessels are also innovated by the autonomic nervous system. So like one kind of protocol for lack of a better word for treating um anyone with cranial symptoms um is treating the preganglionic sympathetic and post embryonic sympathetic nerves that originate from the spinal cord T one T. Two primarily. And then come up the cervical spine of the interior neck through this uh cervical sympathetic chain synapse at various ganglia there and then we have post game dynamics that come up into the brain via the vertebral artery, internal credit artery and innovate all the vessels. And if we’re in an elevated state of sympathetic arousal we get beso spasm of those vessels. Dysfunctions.

Jason Prall

Yes. I just want to recap that for maybe those who aren’t quite understanding that the technical speaks the nervous system is coming into the brain and that nervous system that may be caught in this fight or flight response on a continual basis which is good for inflammation and for a lot of things. But it’s chronically stuck on and we can’t those those nerves can’t tip over into the parasympathetic state that allow for detoxification and removal of things and healing. Then that’s kind of what’s getting us in trouble. Is that essentially what you’re saying?

Kyle Kusunose

Yeah. I mean the way that I talk about the sympathetic nervous system is that it is in recognizable terms it’s the fight or flight aspect of the nervous system. So when we’re either running for our lives are fighting for our lives we are in this elevated sympathetic state. It is a protective reflexive state that we go into when we need it. In that state our body, our central nervous system only cares about surviving that moment. And then as soon as that moment passes, it only cares about surviving that next moment and then that next moment in that state. You can’t possibly your body can’t possibly be in a good state for longevity, right? So you know one of our main goals and I do this with almost every patient that I have that has central nervous system symptoms or chronic pain because I have to get them get their sympathetic state depressed or not depressed balance right? We have to find that homeostasis between the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system by removing the dysfunction within the pre and post game sympathetic nerves.

Jason Prall

And so with your sort of counter strain manipulation right? And this is not moving through something right? It’s some other part of the body. So give me an example of what you might adjust or manipulate necessary not to just when it comes to those those cells

Kyle Kusunose

From the T. One T. Two level of the spinal cord or sympathetic nervous system originates from T. One all the way down to L. Two. Predominantly, the fibers that come up into the neck and then eventually up into the cranial cavity come from T. One T. Two. And they travel up this little neural structure that comes right up the anterior aspect of the neck. So we have counter strain tender points along the clavicle and the manubrium that would let us know that those tissues are dysfunctional. So we would assess or diagnose the need to treat those there. And then we would monitor those regions of the body for a successful release. 

The way we release that one is with a simple position or slackening or indirect manipulation. So the nerves travel from here and they come up very generally speaking. So we position the head and the neck in this kind of flexed side, bend toward and rotated position In order to take the mechanical strain out of that tissue, drain the interstitial fluid off of it. That’s kind of keeping it congested and therefore in this elevated state of appropriate receptive awareness. And then hold right, we hold that position for anywhere from 45 to a minute to 90 seconds, usually at most. And that hold is really where the magic happens because that’s what allows the lymphatic system to drain the interstitial fluid off of that tissue. And this is what’s fascinating, right?

Jason Prall

It’s such a simple manipulation and it’s generally pretty comfortable. I mean, you can almost fall asleep in a session sometimes. You can. But it’s that holding that somehow is sending mechanical signals. The body is picking up some signals that’s allowing it to shift at ST. I mean, this is what’s fascinating to me and perhaps you guys know how it works. I don’t pretend to know, but it’s fascinating to me that just a little bit of manual manipulation like that can create new signals for the body that allow drainage to happen, right? Which let’s get rid of all those inflammatory cytokines and inflammations that are in the tissue that are causing both pain and and also exacerbating the sort of sympathetic drive. Right? And so we’re draining those out and preventing new fresh oxygenated life force energy rich chi blood oxygen into that tissue, Right? I mean, however you describe it, that’s where the life force energy and healing energy is gonna come from. So we’re removing the block, getting fresh good stuff in there and that’s what allows for the I guess progression toward healing, right? I mean that’s totally mind blowing to me. That and I don’t honestly don’t know anything like it.

Kyle Kusunose

It’s so simple and it’s releases and it’s purely based on anatomy. All we’re doing is an indirect tissue manipulation uh to anatomy. That’s it. But it’s so specific. And so yeah, I mean, you know, I may put you in a cervical flexed side mentor rotated toward position. And I could do that general positioning for let’s say 50 releases. But the single structure that I’m targeting at that point for that technique for that 45 2nd hold is the cervical sympathetic change pretty sympathetic fibers specifically that run through it. But a very similar release. Just again targeted towards that specific structure and towards that specific tender point. You know, would be for like the common carotid artery or the recurrent branch of the nerve or you know, the inter longitudinal into the next. So the positions are very general. But the technique is this very specific, as far as what anatomical structure that we’re targeting for that specifically.

Jason Prall

And what I love too is that, you know, let’s say somebody comes in with mild hearing loss or tinnitus right where they got the ringing in their ears right now. Now, conventional medicine looks at that one way. Integrative and functional medicine would look at those things in a different way or chronic headaches, right? Cluster headaches. These are things that are, I think we can reasonably assess that those are symptoms right? Like those aren’t the problem. They are the symptoms. And so trying to suppress them or get them just to go away in any way possible is not really an objective that we would ideally want to follow. And what I find about counter strain is that it’s not necessarily even trying to get rid of the tinnitus for example, it’s just looking for where the dysfunctions are, where the blockages are, what needs to be addressed. And in so doing um these symptoms can just start to go away on their own right? And again, it’s because you’re addressing the fundamental blocks imbalances and dysfunctions. Um and the body can reassert itself, you can reset. Um And so that’s what I love. And I’m curious if you would have somebody that comes in with tinnitus or cluster headaches. Is that something, do you guys have a framework that you even look at these sort of symptoms or or disease state, so to speak? Uh Do you even address those in any specific way or or does that give you just an insight as to? Okay I’ve seen tinnitus before and I generally know kind of what I typically see and I know what to look for, so to speak and in terms of imbalances. Yeah.

Kyle Kusunose

Diagnose, diagnoses and pathology certainly give us a framework and they give us like a target. Right? So if I just treated and got rid of dysfunctions but we saw no clinical impact of that then that would be kind of boring. But the fact that you know a patient can come in I can assess them. Be the cranial scan and be a tender point and um diagnose or find dysfunction. Depending on how dysfunctional that patient is. To me I can predict whether or not. I feel like I’ll be able to help that patient. So if they’re coming in for migraines and I find sympathetic dysfunction I find cervical and cranial vascular dysfunction in the arterial system and the lymphatic system I find dural dysfunction in the cranium and the spinal cord. Then I can reasonably predict if we can successfully get rid of these dysfunctions, then your symptoms theoretically should improve. And anecdotally they do. So that’s what kind of keeps it interesting is ultimately why we’re in this position because I love to help people um and I want to help them with whatever ailment they’re suffering from at that time, whether it’s headaches, brain fog or some of the more complex central nervous system pathologies that are out there. 

Jason Prall

Well and you know I’ve actually recently dealt with a bout of mold toxicity and infection and mycotoxins in my system. And I have some awareness on how to deal with that. And yet I’ve gone into Kyle and he’s noticed that my sort of venous lymphatic system was blocked. It wasn’t flowing, it wasn’t moving. And so this is one of those examples where I can do some of these um lymphatic drainage techniques, right? I can do some massage type of techniques and some dry brushing and and and some oil massage and and other things to saunas. These exercises will get the lymphatic system going and still I can be a little bit blocked. Right? And so when I come in and I’m doing sort of a detox and I’m trying to clear this mold and mycotoxins out of my system coming into Kyle and having him open up those channels that are blocked and moving that that that out um ended up being extremely helpful. 

Now, specifically, what I noticed the last time I saw him was that my elbow had a little bit of information, a little bit of pain um when I would exercise or workout and after seeing him the next day, that information was dramatically reduced, right? And so what I chalked that up to was not something wrong with my elbow, so to speak. Now, why it was showing up there, I don’t know, but, but ultimately the inflammatory load that was being put on the elbow due to uh the various toxins and things in my system. We’re getting blocked and caught in and particularly in the elbow, right? And that’s where that’s where they, and again, it could have been something back in towards my spine, right? And sending peripheral pain to my elbow. It could have been directly in the elbow, right? So I’m trying to point to this idea that there’s so much going on in the body, that when we feel pain somewhere, it maybe as a result of something going on in a different part of the body, right? And so freeing this up and providing relief in the proper way, um can can result in all kinds of symptom relief throughout the body, not necessarily based on where the location of that is,

Kyle Kusunose

And I think, you know, ultimately, with every counter string release that we do, what we’re physiologically doing is restoring normal function to the lymphatic pump of the lymphatic pumps that are in that area, because that’s what allows the lymphatic system to its its own internal, interesting pumping mechanism. To then absorb the interstitial fluid that’s housing the chemical waste that’s pissing off the tissue ultimately as uh, you know, as humans, we kind of bend where we break, I’m sorry, we break where we bend. So if you’re inflamed and you’re doing a whole lot of bicep curls, tricep extensions, you’re moving a ton of your elbow, that’s where you’re going to feel it, but your whole body is inflamed or your whole upper extremity can be, can be inflamed and the dysfunction, the primary accumulation of that could be near your thoracic outlet, let’s say as an example,

Jason Prall

I think it was actually, and now that you said that’s what was going on. Yeah, and you know, I think what’s fascinating too, and just to kind of give people the sort of the waste removal system, if they’re not familiar with it, right, we have this interstitial fluid or cavity. However you want to think about it. In fact, it’s actually been classified as an organ recently, right by the medical system, he said all this stuff that we thought was kind of blank fluid space. Well, it turns out, it’s, it’s kind of its own tissue and it serves its own function and we can classify it as an organ system. And so that’s basically throughout the body and micro structures and large structures. And the fluid is exchanged into the lymphatic system, right? And the venous lymphatic system and then that is goes eventually into the gut, right? 

And we get that into the gut or we sweat sweat that out. This is how we get rid of a lot of waste, right? We breathe it out too. But a lot of the idea and this is what Ayurveda, there’s a couple of techniques in the punch, a karma system to get all those, all that metabolic waste, all that crap into the lymphatic system, into the blood, into the gut eventually. So we can excrete this stuff. Right? So it’s a really, really integral part of waste removal. Is that interstitial fluid and lymphatic system? And so when that gets blocked and backed up, you know, that sets us up for a lot of long term issues And you know, not not not just in sort of the body, but the brain, right? In fact, the brain has its own sort of lymphatic system that we’ve termed the glymphatic system. So maybe talk to me a little bit about that anatomy because that’s a big one when it comes to dementia. Alzheimer’s, you know, all the brain related dysfunctions, the neuro degeneration that we see can easily be tied to the function or dysfunction of the lymphatic system.

Kyle Kusunose

Yeah, I mean the lymphatic system is one of the major waste removal systems for this, not just the brain but for the central nervous system. And one of the most interesting things about that system is that it is most active during sleep. So it’s most active when we are in a parasympathetic mode. But how many of us are walking around regularly in a parasympathetic mode where most of us are stressed, we’re anxious, we’re nervous, we’re depressed. Especially when we’re talking about a central nervous system, patient population where you add in Alzheimer’s dementia PTSD. So their brains are literally not being cleansed every night when they go to sleep like the rest of us and even people like you and me, our brains are not cleansing probably as optimally as they could with intervention. Right? So yeah, we have techniques that specifically target um all the are all of the venous sinuses, the deep things of the brain and the lymphatic system of the central nervous system to improve drainage while we sleep and and more holistically part of that, what we have to do is get people out of that high cortisol, high stress, high anxiety and sympathetic state that they’re in on a daily basis to.

Jason Prall

Yeah. And I actually just traveled to Europe recently on vacation with my family and of course we experienced tons of jet lag right? And on the way there and jet lag on the way back, Right? So even these sort of disruptions in sleep that come along with sort of modern life, right? And a lot of people travel for work um of course we have, even the most simple one is daylight savings time where we change our clocks right? Which is kind of silly. And all the data shows that how unhealthy that is. When we lose an hour of sleep, right? So all these micro disruptions and significant disruptions that we experience through our life are causing um problems with our ability to remove waste from the, from that brain, right from that nervous system, central nervous system. And and and it’s I’m hesitant to say that that is the cause of any brain dysfunction. But whenever we see neurodegenerative in and any brain dysfunctions show up, inevitably we are going to see um dysfunction with regard to the clear the waste clearance system of the brain. It’s a highly metabolic. The most metabolic organ that we have is the brain, right? There’s so much mitochondria, there’s so much going on. All the time. We need to be able to clear that system out. And of course that’s why it’s such an important organ to, to focus on.

Kyle Kusunose

Well, and another thing they found within the lymphatic system is um is infection, right? So for many years when it came to degenerative neurologic diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia. The concept that that degenerate process could be induced by infection getting into the brain. That didn’t make any sense because how can infection get up there? There’s no lymphatic system. So it wasn’t until the discovery of the global system, which really wasn’t all that long ago. Did that become possible? So yeah, poorly functioning lymphatic system in the central nervous system will allow for infection to stay in the brain. And there are some other kind of vascular effects that happen um follow that that then lead to degeneration of neural tissue. 

And that’s one thing that we see the imaging and the autopsy and people with these conditions is decreased blood volume, decreased mineral volume or break volume. Right? And that’s always been interesting to me and it was until recently that I understood why or got like a great example of really why they talk about the brain in this sense of volume. It’s because our brain is mostly water, it’s mostly fluid to the point where when cadavers and anatomy a human cadaver dissection. When brains are cremated, there’s no ashes, it just evaporates completely. So while the rest of the body won’t create these ashes that we can then gather and then return back to the families, the brain’s evaporated independently, the body just completely evaporated, no ash gets created at all. So yeah, in these very specific areas of the brain that are responsible for uh specific functions and there’s a lot of overlap there. But what they see is decreased volume of that area of the brain. And I attribute a lot of that to decrease perfusion in that area. 

So we have congestion on the globe, attic venous lymphatic side that’s not allowing for infection. But also biochemical markers of concussion in TVI, right? So when someone has a head injury, there are actually biochemical markers that are consistent enough to where they can see that. And that those biochemical markers are getting trained out either they’re sticking in the brain within the drainage pathways. So yeah, that drainage pathway plus the blood flow into that area. If those two systems are not working together then blood volume. I’m sorry. We keep saying that. Then the brain volume of that area will start to break down and start to decrease or atrophy. Just like any other part of the body.

Jason Prall

Yeah. And this is where, you know, on sort of the early side of brain dysfunctions. We start to see some of these common symptoms show up whether it’s the gate is a start to show up in a little bit of a wonky way handwriting starts to get a little funky, right there’s memory starts to go a little bit right, all these things start to show up and and a lot of it has to do with that reduced brain volume, with all the metabolic dysfunction, the inflammation that’s starting to show up at that brain level. So again, this is where I think this is why I love counter strength so much is because it is irrespective of the disease label. It is irrespective of the dysfunction. It’s really all about creating flow in the body and returning function to the body. And so as we close Kyle, maybe you can just give me an example of some of the things that you’ve seen patients that you’ve seen walk in the door with some kind of brain dysfunctions. And how counter strain is has been a part or or perhaps even the sole thing that has relieved their symptoms and got them back to a more normal function.

Kyle Kusunose

Yeah. Sure. Well, one thing I want to add to what you just said too is a lot of this, like decrease in brain value. If we can correlate the symptoms of that patients having or the pathology that patient is diagnosed with with the veins that are responsible for draining that area the brain and the arteries that are responsible for supplying blood to it. Then we can restore normal profusion around that area and we can do some pretty amazing things. And it just depends on what area it is, Right? So we started talking about like motor programming planning. So for that generally speaking we would target the like for someone who’s in in chronic pain PTSD ,stress, anxiety, depression you know we can target the limbic system and hypothalamus in these areas of the brain that correlate to being sympathetically up regulated and being in a high elevated states of cortisol and the body. So we can target the H. P. A. Access and things like that. So we can. It’s really cool as we dive more and more into their anatomy and how we can very specifically target areas of the brain. Yeah

Jason Prall

I was saying and kind of one of the things I’m hearing from you as you as you as you kind of get into some of the things you’ve seen is it sounds like the body is very responsive. The brain is very responsive. In other words once you restore some of this function it can come back. Right? I think this is what’s fascinating to me about injuries is that you know, seemingly some injuries or some diseases can seem like it’s very difficult to recover from them. But it’s in large part because we lack the sort of healing capacity that requires that and once that’s restored it’s amazing how fast the body bounces back.

Kyle Kusunose

Certainly like preventing or halting or stopping the degenerate process when it comes to some of these diseases. And I think that if we can restore the mechanisms that you’re referring to that, that we can do that, I think we can stop progressive degenerative conditions um to a degree and it depends on why but but and then, you know, over time as we restore these healing mechanisms, can we see things start to improve? And that’s something that we’re exploring now and anecdotally. We do have some cases of that for sure with things like Alzheimer’s and dementia were slowly over months and months and months, things are starting to improve and family members that are closest to these patients are starting to notice their date improvement and things like that. but then the other thing is wellness, why even get there. Right, So, you know, again, for guys like you and me in our thirties and forties, like why even get there, like let’s just do the work now, let’s get this treatment now on a quarterly basis or monthly basis, whatever it is. So that we don’t have to worry about that stuff in our sixties, seventies eighties and our central nervous system is just still working optimally because we’ve taken care of it over the last 40 years.

Jason Prall

Yeah, totally. And that and that’s and that’s exactly how I would approach anybody that’s looking to potentially use counter strain in their life is, is prophylactically right preventatively use it as a preventative measure and also um whatever showing up in your life in terms of dysfunction, whether it’s a little bit of you know, disrupted sleep, a little bit of pain here and there, a little bit of digestive issues or things you don’t even you’re not even aware of yet, right? That can be addressed and also longer term prevention. And I will say this that, you know, oftentimes what I see when it comes to um some kind of therapy that somebody is pursuing, sometimes that’s the only therapy they’re using. And still sometimes you see results, right? 

Like this is what’s fascinating about counter strain is that, you know, we could look at a we could design a study for example and say this patient population with these issues goes in and does counter strain. Let’s see the results after six months. Now, let’s take a look at those same identical sort of group and let’s do counter strain plus exercise plus change their diet plus improve you know, sleep architecture, right? And we start to create a more holistic approach. This is where we start to see counter straight I think. And the other therapies really thrive is in the context of an improved lifestyle all around, right? And maybe some supplementation, right? There’s so many things that we can do. And again this is where um no matter whether it’s acupuncture or um counter strained or or chiropractic or whatever the technique and therapeutic tool is. If we can use that in the context of improving the entire picture, right? And this is where I think has done such a great job is a comprehensive approach to things like dementia and Alzheimer’s. 

Now we throw something like, like counter straight on top of that. I mean this is where I think the results are even more profound and we get there quicker and and we start to see these slow changes start to move really quick and we can get I think a little bit farther than we than we otherwise thought. Right? This is again, because the ability of counter strain I think uniquely to open up the systems to get things flowing and to allow the body to sort of return to a more optimal state of harmony.

Kyle Kusunose

Right? So I’ll tell you about probably one of my favorite patients. 

Jason Prall

Me?

Kyle Kusunose

Well, in the central nervous system world, I’ll tell you about him. But then I also want to tell you about an ongoing research project that basically has done exactly what you just kind of talked about and they’re doing some amazing work too. So I definitely want to talk about them, especially with the patient population that they’re specifically targeting. But my patient was a collegiate wrestler, High school wrestler, wrestler at Iowa State. So you know, big time school, big time wrestling and just had a history of concussions going back to probably middle school, right? He was a one time training at like the Olympic facility. So he was a high level guy, Lots of concussions. And then eventually had to medically retire because he got to a point where if he got bumped he’d get a concussion. Like his tolerance to mechanical trauma at that point, which is so well um he started getting into coaching and um and I worked with both him and his girlfriend um and in working with him initially he had all the basic signs of of post concussion post kind of T. B. I. Right? 

So like light sensitivity, noise sensitivity, cognitive function sensitivity, right? Like if you were if you questioned him too much when he was in a slightly stressful state uh quickly elevated to this kind of agitated angry state and that created some behavioral things that you know, from an outside perspective you’d be like, this guy is crazy or you know, if you’re a family member of his girlfriend, you’d be like you got to get away from this guy, but it’s really just the state of his brain and then they believe his brain to function in this post concussion, post multiple concussions state. But one of the most telling things that he told me was he was running an errand and he knew he had to go get deodorant from the drugstore, right? But he was sitting in his car outside the drugstore in the parking lot and there was like the drugstore on his left, at men’s warehouse on the right and he just was sitting in his car for hours. He said I sat out there for hours. I could not figure out what story needs to go into. So the functioning process of his brain like that, you know, decision making, reward, cognitive function, like not they just were frozen and he just sat in his car for hours being unable to make a decision. So that’s probably one of the more like low level, I have seen some other like satellites as patients who have described very similar symptoms. But I worked with him over a couple of years now. I know I see him intermittently, but he’s responded dramatically. And he’s um he’s actually back to doing some wrestling. Have to almost kind of slow down a lot of times and be like, you know, in his training, he’ll train with his athletes. 

And he’ll get his head knocked every now and then he immediately comes and he’s like, yeah, I did it again, but we can kind of clean him up real quick. But he doesn’t go into full blown concussion mode anymore with trauma, light sensitivity, gone a noise sensitivity gone. He’s a happier person. His girlfriend describes like large personality changes. And then the cognitive, higher level cognitive function stuff that he was describing before is gone. So into working with him what we targeted again was sympathetic nervous system decreasing that elevated sympathetic state and then restoring perfusion to the brain. And then I see him again here in a little bit. One thing I’m kinda currently exploring is being able to treat the axon bundles that actually travel through the central nervous system as well. So that’s a cool thing that I’m playing around with a little bit as well. But the other thing I wanted to mention is there is a group in based out of Washington. One of my colleagues, her name is Holly Christy, she’s a naturopathic doctor. She and two of her colleagues are conducting a research study called the bridge back project where they’re working with first responders and military veterans who are experiencing PTSD. 

And they’ve developed a fashion counter straight protocol for how to intervene with these patients. They interview with them for a series of visits to complete that protocol. And their early findings are remarkable with how quickly they’re getting these patients to one past psychological examination and to move from this diagnosis of PTSD to no longer having PTSD but also to return to work and to return to normal function in society. So um this whole concept of us being able to mechanically intervene on the central nervous system. And at least to this point anecdotally see symptomatic change. They’re doing an amazing job researching that and giving us some evidence that what we’re doing, anecdotally, we can verify with research too.

Jason Prall

So, well, I mean, it’s amazing and it’s been around for a few decades, but it’s still fairly young in its um I guess expression right there, You guys are still learning a lot, You’re still experimenting a lot. The cool part is that you can experiment and play around with this technique in a way that is non destructive. It doesn’t cause a lot of harm. I mean, that’s what’s really profound about it. I mean, it’s either you’re probably just gonna stumble and not find anything or or it’s not gonna work or it’s gonna work and you’re gonna figure out, okay, what was that? How did that work? What’s happening here? How can I duplicate this? What can I learn? Right? And because it’s an experiential technique, you’re actually learning every time you do this, right? So I have no doubt that in 10, 20 years this is gonna be a technique that um so many people have heard of, it’s going to be uh in in in a different place than it is now in terms of its availability and and just your guys understanding, I mean, it’s it’s truly amazing. And again, I think it’s worth stating once again that this is a technique and a therapy that can stand alone on its own and provide tremendous relief, not just of symptoms, but of actual function and dysfunction that’s going on the body and when we throw it on top of a of a program a comprehensive approach at dealing with any kind of disease symptomatology. It’s really remarkable. 

It enhances anything that you’re doing already, right? And so for anybody that’s dealing with symptoms, anybody that wants to prevent any kind of dysfunction and disease. This is a technique that I have to recommend and that’s why I love bringing you on, I love talking to you and I love coming to see you. And it’s because every time I go in I actually get something out of it right? I mean not only am I preventing things long term but it’s like I can actually tell that you’ve created a positive change just after that one visit. Right? So it’s truly remarkable. Kyle, where can people find more about counter strain if they’re in different parts of the U. S. Or the world? How can they find a practitioner perhaps?

Kyle Kusunose

Yeah if you’re a prospective patient and you’re looking for a practitioner there’s two online databases right now. There’s jicounterstrain.com which is the jones institute website. And on that website we have a student directory where patients can go in and plug in their zip code or their home address. And then it’ll auto populate a search with kind of the closest practitioners in your area. And then there’s also a counterstrain.com. And there’s a practitioner look up there where again you plug in your home address or zip code and it’ll auto populate certainly with this kind of higher level central nervous system work. You know, I’d recommend just looking for students of counter strains that have taken a lot of courses, kind of specifically up into like the central nervous system or the nerve one nerve two courses that we offer. So those would be the two places to find somebody um to find a practitioner and then if you’re a practitioner out there looking for training, we offer our entry level course into this national counter strain curriculum. It’s called the National Council and National foundations course and that courses taught 3 to 4 times a year. We have one coming up in November later this year in 2022 and registration for that course, you can find on the Jones Institute at dot com.

Jason Prall

Beautiful Kyle. And if you’re in San Diego too, you can go to counter strain S. D. Right counterstrainsd.com to find.

Kyle Kusunose

counterstrainsd.com. That’s my website.

Jason Prall

Beautiful. Well Kyle, thanks so much for coming on and again I’ll see you in a couple of weeks and you can work your magic. It’s been a pleasure.

Kyle Kusunose

That’s good.