The Experience Miracles Podcast

Q&A | The Hidden Brain Body Disconnect in “Raging Bull” ADHD Kids

May 29, 2026

The Hidden Brain-Body Disconnect Behind the Constant Motion

Experience Miracles Podcast | Host: Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP, Pediatric Chiropractor & Founder of PX Docs | Format: Ask Dr. Tony Q&A | Duration: ~43 min

Key Takeaways

  • Raging bull kids — constantly moving, hyperactive, “high energy” children often labeled with ADHD, sensory processing disorder, or anxiety — have a hidden brain-body disconnect that looks completely different from the more obvious disconnect seen in low-tone “drunken bull” kids.
  • The constant motion of a raging bull is not proof of good coordination. It is raw, excessive output that masks underlying whole-body apraxia — disorganized, uncoordinated motor planning happening beneath the surface.
  • In a raging bull, the sympathetic nervous system (the “gas pedal”) is stuck on while the “brake pedal” is offline. The motor system fires without filtering, sequencing, or a clean motor plan.
  • INSiGHT scans — specifically the EMG (surface electromyography) — reveal that many raging bull kids have a high total energy score alongside surprisingly low pattern and symmetry, exposing the disorganization that motion hides.
  • The root cause is subluxation and nervous system dysfunction at the brainstem and upper cervical level, not a neurotransmitter imbalance. Stimulant medication slows the engine but does not restore motor planning, sensory organization, or the brain-body connection.
  • Younger children often present first as raging bulls; over time, an untreated raging bull can wear out and shift into a “drunken bull” presentation.

Do Raging Bull Kids Have a Brain-Body Disconnect?

Yes. Children Dr. Tony Ebel calls “raging bulls” — the kids who never stop moving, crash into everything, climb on everything, and get labeled with ADHD, sensory processing disorder, or anxiety — absolutely have a brain-body disconnect, and it often takes the form of whole-body apraxia. The reason almost no one catches it is that it looks the exact opposite of the disconnect seen in low-energy children. Where the “drunken bull” shows disconnection through weak tone, poor coordination, low energy, and sluggish processing, the raging bull hides the same disconnect underneath frantic motion and sympathetic overdrive.

Underneath all that noise, the signal is just as scrambled — sometimes more. The motor system is firing, but it is firing without coordination, without filtering, and without a clean motor plan. Dr. Tony describes it as firing without a brake pedal. Clinically, the picture is not only apraxia but also dyspraxia, dyskinesia, dysafferentation, dysregulation, and dyssynesis — different technical names for the same foundational breakdown in how the brain organizes and executes movement.

The disconnect originates at the brainstem, vagus nerve, and lower brain networks, where subluxation leaves the system stuck on the gas pedal while feeding the brain inaccurate, static-filled information. Because the child compensates with excessive movement, parents, teachers, pediatricians, and even some therapists assume the motor system is fine. It isn’t — and that hidden disconnect is correctable through drug-free, Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care that addresses the root cause rather than the symptoms.

What Daily Life Looks Like With a Raging Bull Child [05:43 – 09:31]

Dr. Tony Ebel: Let’s talk about your day-to-day reality when you’re living life with a raging bull. I’m one of them. I grew up full sensory, full ADHD, full raging bull, and I’m still a raging bull — my nervous system is just regulated, coordinated, and balanced now. As a kid, that overdrive led to a lot of struggles. I did not fall asleep easily or stay asleep, because my raging bull brain did not like sleeping. Sleeping meant laying down and not moving. I was so subluxated and disconnected, I wasn’t adjusted for the first 20 years of my life, and I was a mess at school. I did not pay attention at all.

What saved me was movement. I was a farm kid, the youngest of four, doing chores before school, then sports, then chores again — physically active 24/7. Had I not had all that physical activity, school would have been even worse. And that’s exactly why your raging bull child is moving every single day. They can’t sit still, they never stop, they crash into everything, climb on everything, and want to ride every bike, dirt bike, and three-wheeler they can find.

Here’s the trap: in sports, you won’t see the problem. The raging bull thrives because they out-sprint, out-grind, and out-hustle everybody, and the nervous system overrides the dyskinesia and apraxia happening underneath — especially in quick, fast-moving sports. But ask that same kid to sit at a desk, work through handwriting, follow deeper reading comprehension, or remember more than a two- or three-step instruction, and the raging bull is gone by the third step.

“Oh boy, look at all that energy — they just need to burn it off. That’s what you’re told. And it might really help in youth sports. But man, it sucks to have the raging bull brain when you’re trying to sit in school, take a test, or just fall asleep.”

Raging Bull vs. Drunken Bull: What the INSiGHT Scans Reveal [09:31 – 14:14]

Dr. Tony Ebel: The raging bull is different from the drunken, disconnected bull. These are neurosensory archetypes we find within what we call the Perfect Storm — and we don’t identify them by symptoms alone. We use a technology in our offices called the INSiGHT scans, three neurophysiological tests that look for subluxation and nervous system dysfunction. For any child struggling with autism, ADHD, sensory issues, seizures, or anything neurological, these are the most important tests you could run.

One of the three scans is EMG (electromyography). It’s the same family of technology as an EKG, which measures the neurological firing and rhythm of the heart, and an EEG, which measures brain activity. A spinal static surface EMG checks the brainstem and the neurospinal system — it’s the window into this neurosensory motor incoordination.

A raging bull EMG looks blown out and full of tension: nerves, sensory receptors, and muscles all wound up tight, producing a high total energy score. Clinically, that correlates with hyperactivity, anxiety, sleeplessness, sensory overdrive, and sympathetic dominance — the gas pedal running the show. A drunken bull is the opposite: not much tension across the system, but exhaustion and confusion, with very low pattern and symmetry scores meaning low coordination, a weak core, and slow, delayed, disconnected motor planning.

“It’s like all the planes are in the air, all the engines are roaring, but nobody’s ready to land them properly in sequence. That’s not coordination. That’s chaos with momentum.”

The drunken, disconnected bull is the more obvious presentation of whole-body apraxia — work explored in depth with Dr. Dana Johnson and the Spellers Method. So which is more common in our offices, raging bull or drunken bull? Both. We often see both at once, but most kids have a predominant presentation, and younger kids tend to show up first as a raging bull. Over time, that raging bull wears out, which is exactly how a child who started as a raging bull becomes a drunken bull later in life.

Why the Motion Fools Everyone [14:14 – 19:24]

Dr. Tony Ebel: The motion fools everyone — parents, teachers, pediatricians, and often even PTs and OTs. They see a kid running, climbing, and jumping and assume the motor system is fine. “Look how fast he runs, everything’s good to go.” Except going fast and going bananas only requires raw output, and that excessive output covers up the disorganization and disconnection underneath. In a raging bull, the sympathetic fight-or-flight system is stuck on, one foot has the pedal to the metal, and the brain isn’t coordinating — it’s just hammering it.

Whole-body apraxia in a raging bull is far harder to spot than in a drunken bull. You’re probably more familiar with applying the word apraxia to speech, where the brain knows what to say but the signal doesn’t transmit cleanly. Whole-body apraxia is the same problem expressed across every motor domain — like a cell phone in a dead zone where the call connects but the message scrambles.

So a raging bull kid can run fast but struggles to pedal a bike or skip. They can climb anything but can’t manage fine motor tasks like tying shoes, buttoning a shirt, or using scissors. They can throw hard but struggle to catch. They talk constantly but can’t articulate clearly under pressure and may even stutter. They crash into things, knock over cups, lose track of where their body is in space, W-sit, toe-walk, slump when seated, and can’t follow multi-step instructions — after two or three steps, the brain burns out and forgets the rest.

“That’s not coordination — it just requires raw, excessive output, and it covers up the disconnection. After two to three steps, the brain burns out, forgets the third, forgets the fourth.”

How the Brain Is Built: Bottom-Up and Back-to-Front [19:24 – 24:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel: Why is this happening? Because in a raging bull, just like in a drunken bull, there’s a foundational nervous system dysfunction. Brains are built bottom-up and back-to-front. The brainstem, the vagus nerve, and the lower brain networks regulate neurosensory motor tone, organize reflexes, and integrate vestibular and proprioceptive input first — before anything reaches the higher brain.

The reason humans have such incredible brain capacity, socialization, speech, and cognition is because we move, and all that movement integration organizes and advances the brain. Anatomically, when your child is running, all that sensory motor input has to travel through the spinal cord and brainstem first, up to the base and back of the brain — the cerebellum. There it’s coordinated; the important information gets through and the rest doesn’t. The cerebellum creates a mirror image of that input, streamlines it, makes it more accurate and efficient, then relays it through the thalamus in the middle of the brain up to the prefrontal cortex, parietal cortex, and temporal lobes.

“The vagus nerve, the brainstem, the spinal level — the lower brain, the back of the brain, the bottom of the brain — that is where tone, reflexes, vestibular, visual, and proprioception are integrated first.”

For a raging bull, that foundational bottom-back-base of the brainstem is subluxated. Subluxation means two things are happening at once: the foundation is overstressed and stuck on the gas pedal, sending more stress signals into the brain, and it’s also receiving confusing, static-filled information. So the gas pedal is jammed and the information is inaccurate — and the child overcompensates with excessive movement.

Why Raging Bulls Get Misdiagnosed and Mistreated [24:00 – 29:14]

Dr. Tony Ebel: At the brainstem, the nervous system is supposed to handle three functions: regulation, sensory organization, and integration. Right at that brainstem-cerebellum level is where motor tone, coordination, planning, and development happen. For a raging bull, it can look like only one of those domains is offline, but actually all three are.

This gets misdiagnosed because the only thing conventional pediatrics really checks about motor development is a basic milestone list: Can they hold their head up? Roll over? Sit up? Crawl? Walk? Run? If a child clears those, they’re told their motor planning is fine — and therefore that the motor system has nothing to do with their behavior, focus, school, or emotional dysregulation challenges. But raging bull kids come with a whole lot of real-life challenges across many domains, and nobody teaches parents to dig deeper into the neurosensory motor system.

If you’ve been told your kid is amazing at motor planning, look at them in soccer or baseball — but then look at them trying to sleep, trying to do handwriting, trying to stay calm socially when things don’t go their way, or trying to process the feeling of an uncomfortable t-shirt that overstimulates an already overstimulated, dysregulated gas pedal.

“Everybody’s trying to fix A, but nobody knows there’s also a B causing C. We’re trying to build the raging bull kid’s house on sand instead of rock.”

The raging bull usually gets labeled early with ADHD, anxiety, behavior issues, or “sensory seeker,” and then gets medication, behavioral therapy, or sometimes nothing — just blame on the parents’ discipline. What gets missed is the apraxia and neurosensory disconnection underneath. A great OT can help with the disorganization and a great PT can help with the weakness, but if subluxation and dysautonomia are still running the show, hidden in plain sight in the brainstem foundation, every therapy is layered on a shaky base.

Stimulant medications may quiet the gas pedal temporarily, but they don’t restore motor planning or sensory organization and they don’t repair the brain-body connection. They just slow the engine — and because the disorganization is still happening beneath the surface, the body has to overdrive the artificial chemical suppression, which is why these kids often get worse over time and have such a hard time coming off medication. The supposed neurotransmitter imbalance in ADHD and anxiety is just a symptom, the middleman at best. The foundational root cause goes much deeper.

The First Step: Scanning to Find the Root Cause [29:14 – 35:29]

Dr. Tony Ebel: So what do you do? First you have to find out what you’re up against. We don’t look to treat, cure, or chase symptoms — that’s not the conversation of chiropractic or root-cause care. We get into the nervous system, find the gas pedal stuck on, find the brainstem foundational disconnect, and start there.

This isn’t really a retained reflex issue, either. Retained primitive reflexes are also a symptom — they come from the subluxation, dysregulation, and interference at the brainstem level. If that subluxation stays, the nervous system never develops past its basic, protective, primal function, so the reflexes persist. They’re a decent neuro-biomarker of the problem, but they’re not the problem itself. Forcing them out with endless at-home exercises won’t make them stay away, because they’re a symptom — subluxation and nervous system disconnection is the root cause.

We find that with the EMG, thermal, and HRV scans. Here’s the key: we run the EMG scans while your child is sitting still, trying to stabilize and organize their brain and body. A raging bull defaults to movement 24/7 precisely because the moment they go static — school, handwriting, staying calm, falling asleep — the nervous system falls apart. So a seated, stationary scan reveals everything about the disconnection, disorganization, and motor apraxia beneath the surface.

“What surprises parents is how poorly organized their kiddo actually is. A lot of raging bulls show up with drunken bull neurometrics — their pattern and symmetry are far lower than anyone expected.”

And that isn’t bad news. As care progresses, you’ll see total energy come down, pattern and symmetry come back up, better sleep, better soft signs, smoother behavior. Then they hit a growth spurt or get sick, total energy spikes, pattern and symmetry drop, and you think, “We had it under control and now we don’t.” Welcome to being a pediatric chiropractor and a parent — kids are not static in their growth, development, or stress load. We live life on a roller coaster with our kiddos.

Why It Gets Easier Over Time [35:29 – 39:03]

Dr. Tony Ebel: As care progresses, two things become true. First, each time your child goes through a growth spurt, an immune challenge, or a social-emotional challenge, they get stressed less because they’re more resilient, with more reserve capacity and more slack in the system. Do well-adjusted kids still hit seasons where the nervous system swings backward? Yes — just not to a large degree.

Second, when it does happen, it won’t take as long or as many adjustments to bring that total energy back down, reorganize the brake pedal, and bring pattern and symmetry back up. Every time kids ride up and down on this neurosensory motor healing roller coaster, they learn — via neuroplasticity, which is what we work with in chiropractic — how to get further away and stay further away from the storm of the raging, disorganized, disconnected bull they lived in for so long.

“Is it because they’re growing out of it? No. They’re continuing to get adjusted to handle it, to balance it, to regulate and organize it as time goes on.”

So down the road, the things that used to kick them backward — here comes the behavior, here comes the anxiety, here comes the dysregulation — show up less and less, over more and more care and more and more time.

The Fourth M: Motor Planning [39:03 – 42:11]

Dr. Tony Ebel: If your raging bull has been written off as “just ADHD,” “just sensory,” or “they just need to burn off energy,” go back and look closer. Look for coordination problems, sequencing disorganization, and brain-body disconnect — and you’ll find it. You’re not imagining it. That disconnect is real, and it’s entirely adjustable and addressable through drug-free, Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care.

“Everybody wants to talk about the microbiome, methylation, and mitochondria. The fourth M is the one nobody’s talking about — and it’s motor planning.”

This is what we specialize in: the kids who are raging, drunken, disconnected, exhausted, worn out, and wound up all at the same time. Most parents, by the way, are a third kind of bull — the exhausted bull. These kids need our scans, our adjustments, and our coordination of care. Parents need to know why the things they’ve tried aren’t working and why the people dismissing them aren’t telling the whole truth.

Beyond the scans and adjustments, we can help line up the other interventions — you’ll get more out of PT, OT, speech therapy, and even behavioral therapy or ABA. Chiropractic care all by itself is wildly helpful at improving the root-cause dysfunction, dysregulation, disorganization, and disconnection. When you reorganize, recharge, and rebalance the nervous system, scans get better, soft signs get better, sleep, motor planning, sensory, socialization, following directions, emotional regulation, and behavior all get better — not because we’re treating symptoms, but because we’re addressing the root cause.

“Start with chiropractic care, restore the foundation, and then layer on the interventions from there. This is a kiddo who is both wound up and disorganized and probably worn out — and you are too, all at the same time.”

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a hyperactive, always-moving child still have a motor planning problem?

Yes. According to Dr. Tony Ebel, a raging bull child’s constant motion is raw, excessive output that hides whole-body apraxia underneath. Going fast only requires raw output, which masks the disorganization. These kids can run fast but struggle with skipping, catching, tying shoes, or following multi-step instructions — clear signs of disorganized motor planning beneath the movement.

What is the difference between a raging bull and a drunken bull?

A raging bull is the hyperactive child whose nervous system is stuck on the gas pedal — high tension, high total energy, sympathetic overdrive. A drunken bull is the low-tone, low-energy child with poor coordination, a weak core, and slow, disconnected motor planning. Both share the same underlying brain-body disconnect; it simply presents in opposite ways. Many children show both, and a raging bull can wear out and become a drunken bull over time.

Does ADHD medication fix the root cause of hyperactivity?

No. Dr. Tony Ebel explains that stimulant medications may quiet the gas pedal temporarily, but they don’t restore motor planning, sensory organization, or the brain-body connection — they just slow the engine. Because the subluxation and disorganization continue underneath, many kids get worse over time and struggle to come off medication. The neurotransmitter imbalance is a symptom, not the root cause.

What test shows the hidden disconnect in a raging bull child?

The INSiGHT scans, specifically the EMG (surface electromyography), reveal it. The scans are run while the child sits still, which is when a raging bull’s nervous system falls apart. The EMG typically shows high total energy alongside surprisingly low pattern and symmetry — exposing the disorganization and motor apraxia that the child’s constant movement normally hides.

Are retained primitive reflexes the cause of my child’s behavior?

Not the root cause. Dr. Tony Ebel describes retained primitive reflexes as a symptom that comes from subluxation and interference at the brainstem level. They’re a useful neuro-biomarker, but forcing them out with repetitive at-home exercises won’t keep them away, because the underlying nervous system dysfunction is still present. Addressing the brainstem subluxation is what allows development to move forward.

How do I find a chiropractor who works with raging bull and ADHD kids?

Look for a Neurologically-Focused Chiropractor trained in pediatric care who uses INSiGHT scans to assess nervous system function. You can find a trained office near you through the PX Docs directory.

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