There are 31 pair of spinal nerves and 12 pair of cranial nerves. Through these goes all the information to and from the Central Nervous System (CNS).

Two parts of the spinal nerves leaves the spinal chord to the right and two parts of the spinal nerves leaves the spinal chord to the left. These parts are protected by a bone process on both sides of the vertebrae. The spinal nerves is divided into two parts, where one part goes to the front of the body and the other part goes to the back of the body. They continue to divide to provide motoric and sensoric nerv impulses to all tissue within every segment.  The parts goes to different places, some to the muscles, some to the periosteum, some to the skin and some to the inner organs. Most of the muscles gets their nerv signals from more than one spinal nerv, which makes it possible for the muscle to function even if one spinal nerve is damaged or doesn’t function in a segment in the spinal chord. The nerves to the skin is bound to specific limited areas on the skin that is called dermatomes. Here is also a backup system in the form of more nerves inside the same dermatom. If I have a client that has a problem with numbness, itching feeling or pain, it is often a dermatom involved.

The Cranial nerves are:

• Cranial nerve I – Sensoric nerve fibres responsible for the sense of smell.
• Cranial nerve II – Sensoric nerve fibres carry visual information in the eyes.
• Cranial nerves III, IV, VI – Somato motoric nerve fibres to the outer eye muscles that move the eye globe. III also consists of somato motoric fibres to the eye lid lifter and parasympathetic fibres to smooth musculature inside the eye.
• Cranial nerve V – Consists of three parts that all contains sensoric nerve fibres from the skin and structures in the face. One of them also contains somato motorics fibres to the chewing muscles.
• Cranial nerve VII – Sensoric nerve fibres from the taste buds on the tongue,  somato motoric nerve fibres to the face mimical muscles and parasympathetical nerve fibres to the lacrimal gland and two of the salivary glands.
• Cranial nerve VIII – Sensoric nerve fibres from the inner ear.
• Cranial nerve IX – Sensoric nerve fibres from the taste buds on the tongue, from the mucous membrane and from pressure sensitive sensory cells at the carotid artery’s dividing place (sinus caroticus). Somato motoric nerve fibres to some of the swallowing muscles and parasympathetic nerve fibres to the parotid gland.
• Cranial nerve X – Somato motoric nerve fibres to muscles in thelarynx, throat and upper part of the esophagus. Parasympathetic nerve fibres to the heart and to smooth musculature and glands within many of the inner organs in the chest and abdomen. Sensoric nerve fibres from the same area that is controlled motoric.
• Cranial nerve XI – Somato motoric nerve fibres to trapezius and to sternocleidiomasteodeus.
• Cranial nerve XII – Somato motoric nerve fibres to the tongue’s sceleton musculature.

So, if nerves is clamped or hurt, the body’s functions i the area that the nerves communicates with, is affected. What I try to do, among other things, is to balance the body so that the nerves can communicate in an optimal way.