Synergy ALF: The Trauma Release Design

A well-made design used for the wrong purpose is the most common source of disappointing results, and of fair criticism. 

This design has been taught, and used, as something it isn’t, most often as an expansion appliance. When that happens, the result reflects the teaching, not the design.

So here it is in public, in plain language. Any clinician, patient or parent can check how this design is being used against this page, without taking a course first.

This design is used almost exclusively with teens and adults, 12 and older. It is rarely used with children ages 6 to 11, and when it is, it’s adapted for a softer, still-growing body.

It was made for people whose bodies are still bracing. After a physical injury, a hard experience with care, or a hard season of life, the nervous system can stay on guard long after the danger has passed. One sign we often see is low tongue posture: the tongue resting low in the mouth instead of up against the roof of the mouth. For some people, low is where the body has decided the tongue is safest.

The name tells you who the design was made for. 

It doesn’t promise what it will do for any one person.

It is not an expansion appliance. Dr. Darick Nordstrom has always held that this design should never be used for arch development, and NeuralFORM teaches it the same way.

It is not designed to move teeth. Its wires are there to signal, not to push.

It does not treat trauma, emotional or physical.

It is not a sleep or breathing device.

It is not one size fits most. Each appliance is customized to the person wearing it.

Like every Synergy ALF, it uses light, thin wires that rest against the teeth and gums. A few features set this design apart:

Small wire arms rest against the inside of the upper canines, low on the tooth, near the gumline. The upper canines have the longest roots in the mouth, which makes them a steady place to deliver a light signal. The tooth isn’t supposed to move.

Wire extensions on the cheek side near the second molars influence the upper jaw indirectly, through those molars.

The main wire touches the inside of every tooth except the second molars.

Children’s bodies are softer and need less, so we don’t use the canine arms with children.

NeuralFORM never modifies the design itself. What NeuralFORM defines is its role: when it’s chosen, why, and how its use is followed over time.

Choosing a design isn’t something a chart can do. It takes an understanding of the principles and the physiology behind them, and that’s what provider training at The Synergy Academy teaches. 

When that choice gets oversimplified, one appliance ends up being used for everything.

Laboratory fabrication of the design isn’t restricted. 

What The Synergy Academy can speak to is the training of the providers it teaches.

We use Dr. Gabor Maté’s definition, from his book The Myth of Normal: “Trauma is not what happens to you. Trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you.” 

Resilience, the reserve each of us brings, shapes how much of what happened we carry forward.

What happens can arrive by three roads: a physical injury, a hard experience with care itself, or an emotional one. 

Whatever the road, the nervous system tends to respond the same way, by guarding against the stressor and the fascia tends to tighten up, especially in the floor of the mouth.

That’s why we use “trauma” to describe a person’s history, never as something a device releases, heals or treats. 

What NeuralFORM sets out to support is resilience and a sense of safety in the body. 

That’s what trauma-informed care means to us: we explain, we ask, we go at the patient’s pace, and no one has to tell their story to receive good care.

You don’t need to know why this design works the way it does. But your provider should.