My NSA Story

I discovered Network Spinal Analysis (NSA) by chance when my wife and I were on holiday in Sedona, Arizona in 2010. We arrived after a long and tiring journey from New Mexico, having spent the previous month driving thousands of miles around the US south west. I was very stiff after the journey, and during the previous week I had felt a familiar sensation of pain and discomfort building up in my neck and upper spine.

I had suffered from excessive tension and tightness in my spine, shoulders and neck for a long time. Over the years I tried many techniques to ease this, some of which helped get rid of the worst of the tension but I couldn’t seem to really got rid of some of the deepest tension. Every so often, particularly after doing things like our long drive around the USA, I would feel my neck locking up and compressing and when this happened I would visit an osteopath who, with a variety of often quite forceful wrenches, would bend my upper back and neck producing a variety of slightly alarming pops and cracks. These sessions did help but they did not get rid of the deepest tensions and even using techniques like the Feldenkrais Method didn’t seem to be able to get to the root of some of the knots in my back. I was sadly reconciled to the thought that this was the way it would always be.

So when we arrived in Sedona and I felt the familiar locking sensation in my neck I looked for a practitioner who I assumed would use similar sorts of techniques as my osteopath back in England and relieve the symptoms. Finding a chiropractor in Sedona wasn’t hard; it is the healing, complementary health and new age capital of the US southwest. The town is full of masseurs, healers, energy channellers, crystal energy centres, shamans, chiropractors and bodywork centres. I’m deeply sceptical of all this new age type stuff but I was happy to see an osteopath or chiropractor because I can understand their mechanical techniques which seemed to me to be rooted in a rational and materialist concept of the world.

There was a chiropractic practice right across the street from our motel and I decided to pop over and see if I could get an immediate appointment, which it turned out I could. I assumed it would be like seeing the osteopath back home; a consultation, examination and treatment, all conducted in a private treatment room with me in my underwear. I was a little disconcerted to be led into a room with half a dozen tables where a couple of people seemed to be in the middle of getting a treatment. I was relieved to see that everyone was keeping their clothes on.

The chiropractor examined me and told me I had a lot of tension in my spine which was not news to me. He asked me to lie down and talked me through some simple breathing exercises. Eventually he asked me to turn over on to my belly and he jiggled my heels about a bit. Then over the course of several minutes he touched me very lightly with his fingers on various parts of my back and neck. These touches used less pressure than one would use to stick a stamp on an envelope. I assumed that this was part of the diagnostic process and I was expecting him to start cracking away at my bones and joints. Instead he announced he was finished! I paid and left but I was really pissed off. I felt I had stumbled into another Sedona wacky new age con and expected nothing from the ‘treatment’ I had just had. I felt ripped off.

And then something odd happened. As I crossed the road back to my motel I realised that my neck felt a whole lot better, in fact it felt loose and supple and I no longer felt as though my head was jutting forward. When I arrived back at our room my wife immediately commented on the fact that my neck and back looked much straighter and I looked less hunched.

I was completely mystified as to how these simple and very light touches had achieved such a transformation in my neck. I decided to go back for another treatment before we left town. On my second visit the procedure was the same, and as I lay there I kept thinking ‘this can’t work, I must be conning myself’ but afterwards I again felt a strong palpable sense of relief, of tension dissipating. On this second visit I read the literature in the waiting room and for the first time discovered that what I was experiencing was something called Network Spinal Analysis (NSA for short). I also got a list of worldwide NSA practitioners from the chiropractor which included several who practised in London where I live.

Back home I mulled over the experience for several weeks. On the one hand I really did feel much better, on the other hand I kept thinking NSA just couldn’t work, how could so much be achieved by so little? In the end I decided to try it again and wound up going to see an NSA practitioner at Wellness First Chiropractic in Wimbledon. After my initial consultation which included having my back scanned and my posture photographed I began I series of treatments (which are called entrainments) on a weekly schedule. Even as I began these my scepticism remained strong. But over a period of weeks I felt an amazing transformation taking place in my body as the tensions and knots I had carried the whole of life began to melt away. As this happened sometimes powerful emotions were released. It was both a bewildering and exhilarating experience.

As the treatment sessions progressed I felt as if layers of crud were being removed from my body. I feel lighter and more at ease than I have felt for a very long time. After watching my progress for a while, my wife was impressed enough to have a series of treatments herself, and she has also felt a profound transformation taking place. Our daughter, who is a journalist spending hours everyday in front of a computer and who suffered from stress and posture related aches and pains, has also had a course of NSA treatments and she too has felt transformed and liberated by her experience.

I was so pleased and impressed with NSA, and so frustrated at how difficult it is to find a good source of information about it, that I decided to set this web site up so other people could find out about it. Try NSA – you won’t regret it.