If we look only at the spine for a moment, we can compare it to a football team.
It is made up of several players and, to achieve its best performance, all its members must act together.
Each member plays an important part of the match, although their roles differ.
You need fast strikers who go from one side to the other looking for any opportunity to score a goal, the cervical ones.
The defense (low back) must be solid enough to repel the opposing team, while the midfielders (backs) must have enough flexibility to connect both (defense and forwards), but at the same time it gives solidity to the defense.
We could say that the nervous system is the coach.
Problems arise when a team member is shown the red card or injured.
This fact forces the other players to make an extra effort and can generate the undesirable situation in which a member of the team has to perform a function for which they are not really qualified.
This will cause a weakness in team performance and may also highlight previously unnoticed weaknesses in other team positions.
A player who is under some strain due to a persistent problem now has to give 110% to make up for his ejected teammate, and in doing so, his weakness becomes apparent.
A segment of the spine may be under stress, due to, say, a knee problem, but the spine as a whole compensates and continues to function, albeit not at its best.
The goal of osteopathy is to look for dysfunctions (loss of micromovements) in the body so that each "soccer team player" can perform as freely as possible and none of its members have to compensate for the lack of movement of their partner.
"Once I cried because I didn't have shoes to play soccer, but one day, I met a man who had no feet." Zinedine Zidane