03 // The Somatic Protocol // N-of-1 Laboratory
Written for athletes, physical therapists and anyone building their own healing path, using yoga as a tool for the nervous system rather than a wellness aesthetic.
Thesis
A concussion can often be retrained through graded challenge: the wiring is intact and the software relearns. This case is different. Six damaged discs carry nerve ingrowth that sends corrupted position signals from the neck. The antenna itself is damaged.
For 25 years, a right-side compensation pattern held that noisy signal in check. The SCM, upper trapezius and levator scapulae braced the neck and supplied a stable, if distorted, proprioceptive reference. When manual therapy began unpacking that right-side scaffolding, the masking went with it, and in April the neurological symptoms surfaced in full force. The release was necessary; it also exposed what the compensation had been covering.
When an oculomotor or laser drill forces the brain to reconcile that corrupted neck input against a fixed visual target, the mismatch runs down the vestibulo-sympathetic reflex arc and can produce a 24–72+ hour neuro hangover. So the protocol doesn't drill the broken channel. It shifts the work to the channels that can still be trusted: vision, the inner ear, breath and the feet.
Biomechanical & neural map
Hover or tap a numbered hub to see how the condition shapes it.
01 // PT
Prescribed by the physical therapist
The source protocol. Graded cardio with heart rate and symptom presentation tracked together, aimed at expanding autonomic headroom and shortening recovery time on the way back to endurance work.
02 // HR
Cardio adaptation of the PT protocol
The same heart-rate targets carried onto the mat: flowing sequences dosed by HR zone instead of speed or distance, so the autonomic work continues on days the body can't load a machine.
03 // EG
Eye-gaze adaptation of the PT protocol
Central gaze held fixed while the head and body move at self-chosen speeds. It hands balance work to vision and the inner ear, because the neck's position sense can't be trusted.
Three protocols · one goal
No published session logs yet for this measure.
Lines appear as sanitized sessions land in somatic-practices/sessions. Symptoms are read at +2 hr, the lagging window.
Yoga EG · Gaze-stability sequence
Layer 1
Eyes on a point at eye level. Slow cat-cow, rotations and tilts: the head relocates, the gaze never leaves the target. VOR training at natural frequency.
Layer 2
One slow transition, one gaze point picked before it begins, self-selected speed. Progression adds transitions, never speed. Watch orthostatic changes.
Layer 3
Balance postures with central drishti: tree variations first, single-leg progressions only once eyes-open balance is stable. Straight-ahead gaze only.
Layer 4
Two to four transitions linked under continuous gaze anchoring, eventually folded in as a warm-up before heart-rate block work.
What this sequence deliberately excludes
The PT operating agreement
01
Neuro/autonomic status, not muscular burn, is the real-time stop signal. A rise of +2–3 ends the session immediately.
Pain lags. Waiting for pain means the cascade has already started.
02
No gaze training, balance loading or progression within 72 hours of manual therapy, dry needling or deep release work.
Release unloads a 25-year compensation; loading an uncalibrated system produces a neuro hangover.
03
Progression is clock-based, not felt-sense. Any symptom within 24–48 hours drops the sequence back one layer; two clean weeks earns the next.
External limits carry the stop function, not 'listen to your body'.
ROM
B1 · B2
HR
B1 · B2 · B3 · B4
NS
B1 · B2
Method, not guru
Nothing enters a sequence that isn't traceable to a logged symptom, a restriction or a measured recovery metric.
Recommendations trace back to peer-reviewed biomechanical and neurological literature.
Every iteration is reviewed with the treating physical therapist.
No equipment marketing, no namaste filter. The body, breath and the floor.
An open laboratory of modular blocks governed by autonomic stop criteria rather than lagging pain.
Practice · Protocol
Credential