Dr. Scoppa has been fortunate to learn from some of the best and brightest minds in chiropractic, dentistry, cranial anthropology, and physical medicine. He has always tried to keep an open mind and is constantly striving to get better.
While he integrates systems and maneuvers that take into account meridians, fascia, and lymphatics, his main techniques are as follows: Sacro-Occipital Technique (SOT), Applied Kinesiology (AK), and Vector Point Cranial System. Let's look at these in more detail!
SOT
Sacro-Occipital Technique (NOT craniosacral) was developed by Dr. DeJarnette, who was a Cranial Osteopathic Physician, Chiropractor, and Engineer. He took elements of each of these to develop an indiactor based system where the doctor is able to determine not only what is going on with a patient in terms of the larger context, but also what needs to be addressed on a given day. For example, sometimes if a patient is very acute and in alot of pain you can't get to the root cause because the immediate need is to address the pain. The SOT indicator system will point the practitioner this what will be the most affective treatment for the day, whether the correction has been made, and if the patient is ready to move on to a deeper layer of treatment.
In SOT we are assessing the musculoskeletal system, the cartilangeous system (discs, soft tissue), and the nervous system (via the dural and meningeal systems). We are looking at the spine, cranium, extremities, and even the organ systems. It is a fantastic system from which we can integrate numerous other techniques and modalities.
AK
AK was developed by Dr. George Goodheart, a chiropractor with a curious and brilliant mind. Although he didn't come up with many novel or new techniques himself, he was able to integrate many other techniques into one system, which is quite an accomplishment. AK employs manual muscle testing, but also numerous other assessment tools to determine what is happening in a patients body on a given day. An AK trained doctor will be savvy with the meridian system, neuro-vascular points (Bennett Reflexes), neuro-lymphatic points (Chapman's Reflexes), and the proprioceptive system. AK fits very well into SOT, with the SOT framework providing some larger context and diagnostics in terms of the root cause and big picture, while AK provides additional tools and techniques to employ for specific situations. For example, a patient may have numerous muscles in the lower extremity that aren't firing well. The doctor might correct the the SOT indicators, which usually solve 90% of the issues, but there may be one or two muscle left that are still no responding. The doctor can then employ one of the AK techniques to get the other muscles back to normal.
Vector Point Cranial Therapy
Vector Point was developed by Dr. David Denton, who was an SOT chiripractor and teacher for many years. He worked with Dr. Goodheart to develop Vector Point, which is an off-shoot and mixture of both AK and SOT. There are only a dozen or so doctors in the world (and only 1 other doctor in the pacific northwest) who have been fully trained in Vector Point. Vector Point moves well beyond traditional chiropractic to focus on the root cause of spinal misalignments, and puts a great deal of focus on the neurology of the body. Most of vector point is very gentle, and involves alot of specific cranial work to address not only the sutural system, but also the dural/meningeal system and the cranial bones themselves. Unlike craniosacral, which focuses on CSF fluctions, Vector Point is more focused on the structure and function of the cranial-dural-meningeal system as a whole. The idea being that if those system are functioning and moving optimally, the CSF will naturally respond in kind.
Want to learn more about the differences and similarities between Craniosacral vs SOT vs Vector Point Cranial? Check out this blog.
Comments