Your nervous system controls everything you feel and how you move. When it receives faulty information, it creates pain, tightness and restriction. We find the faults and fix them.
A complete explanation of the neuroscience behind our approach and why it succeeds when other treatments fail.
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Everything you experience in your body is created by your brain. Pain is not simply detected by your tissues and transmitted to your brain. Pain is generated by your brain based on the information it receives and its interpretation of whether protection is needed.
The same is true for muscle tension. Your muscles do not become tight on their own. Your brain commands them to tighten based on the signals it receives. If your brain believes an area needs protection, it increases tension. If it believes a movement is threatening, it restricts range.
This is not a metaphor or a psychological interpretation. It is basic neuroscience. Your brain is the central processing unit that takes inputs from your body, interprets them and generates outputs. Pain, tension and restriction are outputs.
The inputs come from receptors throughout your body. You have receptors in your muscles that detect length and rate of change. You have receptors in your tendons that detect tension. You have receptors in your joints that detect position and pressure. You have receptors in your skin that detect touch, temperature and stretch. You have receptors in your eyes that detect light and movement. You have receptors in your inner ear that detect head position and acceleration.
When these receptors function correctly, they send accurate information to your brain. Your brain knows where your body is in space, how much load is on each joint, which muscles are lengthening or shortening, what is touching your skin. With accurate information, your brain allows smooth, efficient, pain-free movement.
When receptors malfunction, they send unclear or inaccurate information. Your brain does not know exactly what is happening in that area. When uncertain, your brain defaults to protection. It creates pain to make you careful. It tightens muscles to guard the area. It restricts movement to prevent potential injury.
This protective response is appropriate when there is actual threat. The problem is that receptors can continue to malfunction long after any original injury has healed. The tissue recovers, but the receptors keep sending faulty signals. Your brain keeps creating protection for a threat that no longer exists.
This is why rest does not always help. You are not resting an injury. You are waiting for a neurological pattern to change, which it often will not do without intervention.
This is why stretching and strengthening sometimes fail. If your brain does not trust the range, it will not allow the stretch. If your brain is inhibiting a muscle, strength training will not overcome the inhibition.
This is why symptoms recur after treatment. If the neurological driver is not addressed, the symptom returns once the treatment effect wears off.
Understanding the different receptor types helps explain why dysfunction can cause such varied symptoms.
Muscle spindles are embedded within your muscle fibres and detect the length of the muscle and how fast it is changing. They are fundamental to your brain’s sense of where your body is in space, a function called proprioception. When muscle spindles malfunction, your brain receives inaccurate information about muscle length. This can cause inappropriate tension, because your brain thinks the muscle is longer or shorter than it actually is. It can cause weakness, because your brain cannot accurately coordinate the muscle. It can cause pain, because the unclear information triggers protection.
Muscle spindle dysfunction is extremely common and often underlies persistent tightness that does not respond to stretching or massage. The muscle is not mechanically tight. Your brain is commanding tension because of faulty proprioceptive input.
Golgi tendon organs are located at the junction between your muscles and tendons. They detect tension, essentially measuring how hard the muscle is pulling. They help regulate force production and protect against excessive load.
When Golgi tendon organs malfunction, your brain receives inaccurate information about how much tension is in the tendon. This can cause your brain to inhibit the muscle, making it weak even though there is nothing structurally wrong. It can cause your brain to allow excessive tension, because the normal protective mechanism is not working. It can contribute to tendon problems because force is not being regulated properly.
Your joints contain multiple types of receptors that detect position, pressure, movement and the limits of range. These receptors tell your brain where your joints are in space and how much load is going through them.
When joint receptors malfunction, your brain loses accurate information about joint position. This affects stability, because your brain cannot coordinate muscles properly around an uncertain joint. It affects range, because your brain restricts movement when it is not confident about joint position. It affects pain, because uncertain joints often trigger protective pain responses.
Joint receptor dysfunction often underlies feelings of instability even when the joint is structurally sound. The joint is stable, but your brain does not trust it because the receptors are not providing clear information.
Your skin contains numerous receptor types detecting touch, pressure, stretch, temperature and vibration. These receptors contribute to your overall body awareness and provide important information about interaction with the environment.
Cutaneous receptor dysfunction is particularly significant around scars. Scarring disrupts the normal receptor distribution in the skin and often creates areas of abnormal signalling. This can drive dysfunction far from the scar itself because the faulty input affects your brain’s overall model of your body.
Your eyes provide critical information about where you are in space, what is around you and how to coordinate movement. Eye movements are controlled by some of the fastest reflexes in your body and are intimately connected to neck function, balance and coordination.
Visual dysfunction can drive symptoms that seem completely unrelated to vision. Neck pain and tension often have visual components because eye and neck movements are coupled. Headaches frequently involve visual processing problems. Balance issues typically include visual contributions. Performance limitations in sport often trace back to visual processing efficiency.
Your vestibular system, located in your inner ear, detects head position, acceleration and rotation. It is fundamental to balance, spatial orientation and coordinated movement. It also connects closely to visual processing and neck function.
Vestibular dysfunction can cause obvious symptoms like dizziness and vertigo. But it can also cause subtle problems like neck tension, headaches, poor balance without awareness, difficulty with complex movements and fatigue in busy environments. Many people have mild vestibular dysfunction without realising it because the symptoms are not the classic spinning sensation.
Receptor dysfunction can develop in several ways.
Any significant impact or injury can damage receptors directly or disrupt their function through inflammation and tissue changes. A sprained ankle does not just stretch ligaments. It disrupts the function of receptors throughout the ankle complex. Even after the ligament heals, the receptors may continue to malfunction.
Surgical procedures necessarily cut through tissue containing receptors. Post-surgical receptor dysfunction is extremely common and often underlies recovery that stalls or complications that develop. The surgeon successfully addressed the structural problem, but the neurological consequences of the intervention create new dysfunction.
Sustained or repeated activities can gradually impair receptor function. Desk work, sporting activities, occupational demands and habitual postures can all create patterns of receptor dysfunction that accumulate over time.
Your nervous system responds to stress and illness by shifting into protective modes. This can alter receptor function throughout your body and create patterns of dysfunction that persist after the stress or illness resolves.
Because your brain integrates information from throughout your body, dysfunction in one area can create compensatory dysfunction elsewhere. A problem in your foot can lead to dysfunction in your hip. A problem in your neck can affect your lower back. These chains of compensation can become complex over time.
The important point is that receptor dysfunction often persists indefinitely unless specifically addressed. Unlike tissue healing, which follows a biological timeline, neurological patterns do not automatically reset. Your brain keeps responding to the signals it receives, even if those signals no longer reflect reality.
P-DTR stands for Proprioceptive Deep Tendon Reflex. It is a precise neurological assessment and treatment approach developed by Dr José Palomar that allows us to test receptor function throughout your body and correct faults when we find them.
P-DTR assessment uses manual muscle testing as a window into nervous system function. Muscle strength and coordination depend on accurate receptor input. When receptors malfunction, muscle tests reveal the dysfunction even before you are aware of symptoms.
We test muscles throughout your body, looking for patterns of weakness, excessive tension and coordination problems. When we find dysfunction, we challenge different receptors to identify which ones are causing the problem. This might involve stimulating a muscle spindle, a Golgi tendon organ, a joint receptor, a skin receptor or combinations of receptors.
When we find the receptor that is driving the dysfunction, stimulating it changes the muscle test immediately. This tells us exactly where the fault is and confirms that we have found the true cause.
Once we have identified the faulty receptor, we reset it using specific inputs that the receptor responds to. These inputs might involve stretch, pressure, vibration, position or other stimuli. The correction is gentle, precise and takes seconds.
After the correction, we retest immediately. In the vast majority of cases, the muscle test normalises, indicating that the receptor is now sending accurate information to your brain.
Immediate retesting is fundamental to P-DTR. We do not ask you to believe the treatment worked. We prove it with objective testing. You feel the difference yourself. A muscle that was weak becomes strong. A range that was restricted improves. Pain that was present reduces.
This verification happens in the room, during your session. You do not have to wait days or weeks to know if the treatment is working. You experience the change immediately.
While P-DTR provides precise testing and correction of receptor function, our overall approach includes comprehensive neurological assessment that goes beyond muscle testing.
We test eye movement control, convergence, tracking, saccades and visual processing. We assess how your visual system integrates with neck movement and balance. We identify visual dysfunction that may be driving symptoms elsewhere in your body.
We test balance, positional responses, gaze stability and vestibular-visual integration. We identify vestibular dysfunction that may be contributing to symptoms that seem unrelated to balance.
We assess how different neurological systems work together. Complex movements require integration of visual, vestibular, proprioceptive and motor systems. Dysfunction in integration can create symptoms even when individual systems test normally.
We observe how you move and identify patterns of compensation, guarding and dysfunction. These patterns often reveal which areas your brain does not trust and guide our assessment toward the underlying causes.
Your history provides essential context for understanding your current dysfunction. Previous injuries, surgeries, illnesses and significant events leave neurological traces. Understanding this history helps us identify what to test and why.
Your first appointment is 60 minutes. We begin by taking a detailed history, understanding not just your current symptoms but the events that may have contributed to them. Previous injuries, surgeries, accidents, illnesses and significant life events all provide relevant information.
We then conduct systematic neurological assessment. We test muscle function throughout your body, looking for patterns of dysfunction. We assess your visual system, vestibular system, coordination and movement patterns. We identify which areas of your nervous system are not functioning optimally.
When we find dysfunction, we use P-DTR techniques to identify the specific receptors causing it. We reset those receptors and retest immediately to verify the change. We continue this process of test, identify, correct, verify throughout the session.
We explain our findings as we go so you understand what we are discovering and what it means. We do not use jargon or leave you confused about what is happening.
At the end of your session, we summarise what we found, what we changed and what it means for your symptoms. If follow-up sessions are needed, we outline a realistic plan based on your specific situation.
Most treatment approaches focus on the area that hurts. They work on the muscles, mobilise the joints, reduce inflammation, strengthen weak areas. These approaches can be effective when the problem is genuinely in the tissue being treated.
But when the problem is neurological, tissue-focused treatment addresses the effect rather than the cause. You may get temporary relief because the treatment provides input that temporarily overrides the dysfunction. But the underlying neurological pattern remains, so the symptoms return.
This explains why you can have treatment that helps for a few days before the problem returns to exactly how it was. The treatment did not fail. It simply did not address the actual cause.
Our approach works differently because we identify and correct the neurological driver. Once the receptors are sending accurate information, your brain stops creating the protective response. The symptom resolves because the cause is resolved, not because we have temporarily masked or overridden it.
This is also why people who have had symptoms for years can improve quickly with this approach. Long duration does not mean the problem is harder to fix. It often just means the neurological cause has never been addressed. Once it is, change can be rapid.
If you’ve tried massage or osteopathy without success, it’s often because they address symptoms, not the neurological signals. We do.
Many people feel significant change in the first session. We prove changes with immediate retesting so you know something has shifted before you leave.
Simple cases often resolve in one to three sessions. A straightforward receptor fault driving a single symptom can be identified and corrected quickly.
Complex cases take longer. If you have had problems for years, there are usually multiple layers of dysfunction. Primary problems create compensations. Compensations create further problems. We work through these layers systematically.
Some dysfunction resolves immediately and permanently. Other dysfunction requires multiple corrections because the pattern is deeply established. Some problems have multiple contributing factors that each need addressing.
We do not promise miracle cures. We test systematically, identify what we find, correct what we can and measure progress objectively. Most people improve significantly. Some people improve partially. A small number do not respond because their problem is not neurological in origin.
At your first appointment, we give you an honest assessment of what we find and what the realistic path forward looks like. We do not lock you into extended treatment programmes or make promises we cannot keep.
We take a detailed history, then take you through functional neurology assessments: manual muscle tests, joint position and mobility testing, tendon/cutaneous/ligament receptor checks, breathing, balance, oculomotor and vestibular screens. We then reset the dysfunctional receptors causing pain or dysfunction, re‑test the exact movement that hurt, or was faulty and discuss next steps.
Those professions do great work. Our approach focuses on the control centre, your nervous system. We change the inputs your brain uses to protect you, so the protective output eases. You’ll notice it because we re‑test the same movement straight away.
It varies. Many people feel change in 1–3 sessions; complex or long‑standing issues take longer with steady progress. We’ll be transparent about what we see and how we’ll measure it together.
Only when useful. Most clients need 1-5 movements that take seconds and help the brain build capacity to allow your body to function at it’s best. When function is restored, your improvements last. Beyond that, any exercises you do, would be to aid performance. From a therapy perspective, what we change in clinic is all you need, and anything we guide you to do beyond that is a bonus.
Yes, this is not a substitute for urgent medical care, and we refer out on red flags. We can work alongside your GP or consultant and help you prepare for or recover from procedures by improving control and confidence.
Yes. We include oculomotor and vestibular checks, essentially this means we check your eyes, ears, sense of balance and neck function and reset the relevant causes of dysfunction. . Many clients report clearer, steadier movement and fewer flare‑ups after their treatment.
Wear comfortable clothing you can move in. First assessments are 60 minutes; follow‑ups are ~45 minutes.
Breakthrough Pain and Performance Clinic is based in Shiremoor, serving Newcastle, North Tyneside and surrounding areas. Book a FREE Taster Session or a full treatment via the buttons on this page.
If you have symptoms that have not responded to conventional treatment, the answer is often in your nervous system. Book a free taster session and experience how neurological testing and correction works. In 15 to 20 minutes, we assess your situation, identify likely drivers behind your symptoms and show you whether this approach is right for you. Based in Shiremoor, Newcastle. Serving North Tyneside and surrounding areas. Sessions available this week. Free parking on site.
