DeJarnette MB, Sacro Occipital Technique, Today's Chiro, May/Jun 1986; 15(3):97-98.

The subluxation of external effects is not the subluxation of internal effects. The subluxation that produces a brachial neuritis will not be the subluxation associated with a coronary occlusion, although both can involve the same vertebra. When we accept the effects of nerve stimulus upon motor centers in the musculoskeletal system, we can then accept the vertebral subluxation as being the effects of muscular contractions as often as it is the cause of the stimulus producing the muscular contractions. Sacro Occipital Technic (SOT) allows us to penetrate the great fog in chiropractic that is to define the type of subluxation we are dealing with at the moment. SOT gives us clinical procedures, and through those procedures we use a process of elimination until we reach the primary offender. Not all vertebral deviations are subluxations and not all normal alignments are free from the subluxation effect upon the intricate mechanics of the nervous and cerebro-spinal systems with their membranes known as the meninges. A deviated vertebra is not necessarily a subluxated vertebra. A vertebra may be 36 mm out of alignment but not affect the patient's function whereas a vertebra may be only 3 mm out of alignment and sufficient to interrupt neuron flow with in the diameter of the spinal cord to paralyze a patient. A subluxated vertebra is active and dangerous when its patterns are active and consistent. A shifting pattern is not a subluxation pattern, rather it is a compensatory pattern. You therefore adjust the vertebra that makes the compensations necessary. This article presents some specific SOT protocol to help the doctor determine the causative factor of the subluxation and how to treat that vertebra's specific condition.