body's ability to develop new strategies to maintain an appropriate flow of energy through its tissues.

The physiological maintenance of spinal integrity can be viewed as a far from equilibrium system. To maintain its structural and functional integrity, the body strives to balance the energy of stressful forces imposed on the spine by dissipating an equivalent amount of energy. The release of this stress may be accomplished through different physical and mental activities. Additionally, proprioceptive processes, bringing muscles into play to counteract external forces on the spine, serve to maintain a counterbalance to certain stressors (Korr, 1975, Haldeman, 1972).

In maintaining spinal integrity, the supportive functions of various subsystems integrate through feedback loops (Panjabi, 1992), or cycles, and may involve components of the nervous, endocrine, and metabolic systems. Many biochemical pathways are amphibolic; that is, they are both anabolic and catabolic. The net effect determines if the outcome will be one of synthesis or degradation. As initial conditions change, the net effect changes; and, consequently, the outcome can shift from synthetic to degradation, or vice versa (Leningher, 1970).

While it is evident that chemical and physical "messengers" are involved in subsystem communication, the mechanisms of their actions are just beginning to surface. Individuals have the capacity to respond to survival challenges through a sophisticated community of highly sensitive subsystems. These subsystems provide for the living system a life span of adaptive capability necessary for maintaining homeostasis, even if deformities arise in the process (Panjabi, 1992). In functional scoliosis, for example, evidence demonstrates that the body molds the hard tissues of the spine to balance the pressures exerted on it (Snell, 1986). Interestingly, conditions that imply an imbalance of energy flow or "Chi" lend credence to the negative effects that might arise. For example, evidence suggests that alexithymic practice members (those who have difficulty perceiving, processing, and/or verbalizing a body sense or emotion) have a high incidence of hemisphericity, addiction behavior, and, in males, a significantly higher rate of mortality.

However, when such adaptive mechanisms are impaired, the body must still accommodate excessive stressful energy. It is likely that when critical subsystems dealing with the release, or regional increase, of energy in the spinal system are impaired or interfered with, the body accommodates in a manner exceeding its ability to achieve stabilization without secondary pathological consequences. Studies have recorded examples of this type of accommodation in space occupying lesions, disc herniation, degeneration of osseous tissue with the formation of spurs or osteophytes, and formation of scar tissue through multiple microtraumas (Leach, 1986).

Since impaired physiological process(es) might be expected to result in an unpredictable functioning of the affected subsystem(s), overall spinal integrity might also be affected. Otherwise stated, if one or more of the subsystems maintaining spinal integrity shifted from a far from equilibrium, but predictable, state to one of increased

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