connection of tms with TCM (traditional chinese medicine)

[chriswatts369]

While trying to feel the emotions i have repressed, and allowing myself to feel those emotions, i think i may have found a rhyme and reason to my tms symptoms (or even anyone's tms symptoms).

(just fyi i am not a tcm practitioner or a student or trying to promote TCM, i just read a few articles so i apologize for any misunderstandings)

on my journey to fix my tms tcm was one of the first modalities i tried. even though its methods of acupuncture, massage, cupping didnt really help to heal my tms, its theories on repressed emotions is very spot on

in tcm there is an organ meridian that each emotion is connected to. and i theorize if you have too much of repressed emotions (especially the "negative" ones), that certain organ may be affected.

if you read the book "why zebras dont get ulcers" it's kind of similar but it applies to organs and not our vitals like blood pressure etc.


for example, your lungs and breathing can be affected by the sadness emotion.

for example, me:

-uncle died when i was in elementary school and i developed asthma few months after

-chest tightness ( that is my main tms symptom i'm working on) and it started after/ during a few occurences that caused me great sadness/grief

another example is fear affects your kidneys

and i feel myself have a lot of fear as i let my body feel the emotions

and the symptoms i have are:
-frequent urination
-always having an urge to pee

so on and so forth for the emotions.




https://www.allthingshealth.com/en-my/mind-and-mental/emotions/managing-emotions/ (Why Managing Emotions Is Important in TCM - All Things Health)

https://www.verywellmind.com/emotions-in-traditional-chinese-medicine-88196 (How Emotions and Organs Are Connected in Traditional Chinese Medicine)

https://acupuncturistseattle.com/the-12-meridians-of-acupuncture/ (The 12 Meridians of Acupuncture)


in these links you could learn about the connection between organs and emotions, their physiological/bodily (TMS symptoms), etc. and learn ahead of time what repressed emotions you may have.

 

[JanAtheCPA]

Hi @chriswatts369 - we haven't seen you in a while, and I hope you are continuing to experience success since you first joined us.

Although our forum is dedicated to Dr. Sarno, and although the "pure Sarno" folks seem to have a need to reject other modalities for recovery, I've always thought that there is plenty of room for alternative ways to do the work, as long as they engage the mind and the emotions and ultimately promote whole-body mindfulness, self-compassion, and an ability to visualize self-healing.

There are many ways to do this, from the infinite number of spiritual practices of humans, to the many practices that involve the laying on of hands along with emotional connection, to the different practices like TCM, which associate body parts and symptoms to particular states of mind.

The ultimate goal is to engage our ability to heal our bodies from within, by regulating our hyperactive and over-stressed nervous systems with awareness, openness, and acceptance, rather than with repression, or with invasive medical procedures and substances.

 

[TG957]

You are bringing up a subject that interested me for a long time.

Before I knew about TMS, I studied Chinese medicine on a very amateurish level, but enough to learn about meridian theory and five elements theory, two foundational concepts of Chinese medicine. Five elements theory is as close as one can get to the Western psychology in Chinese medicine. I also would like to clarify that TCM is not the same as classical Chinese medicine, which is described in the books written thousands of years ago. TCM was developed in the 1960es and 1970es in China and is based on classical Chinese medicine but also adopted some methods from the Western medicine, some to it's advantage, but some to it's detriment. Overall, Chinese medicine is much older than Western medicine and is a very different but exceptionally effective model of a mindbody that has allowed to successfully treat illnesses for millennia.

When I developed CRPS (one of the more extreme forms of TMS), I tried acupressure, acupuncture and herbs - a barrage of Chinese medicine treatments minus Qi Gong - but none of them worked. Interesting, however, that I later quite extensively used Qi Gong in my TMS recovery and found it very helpful. What is even more interesting, both my acupressurist and acupuncturist identified the cause of my condition very accurately, and their diagnosis ("Blood stasis" with Blood spelled with capital B, not to be confused with the "blood stasis" of Western medicine) was exactly correct and was more instructive than any of the several diagnoses that I received from my Western doctors. In terms of Western psychology, one of the outcomes of Blood stasis is nervous breakdown, which is often anxiety, depression etc., but other symptoms that I experienced were also consistent with Blood stasis.

It took me a lot of thinking hard to understand why Chinese medicine (with the exception of Qi Gong) did not work for me. I can explain, to the best of my limited understanding of Chinese medicine, why. TMS method is based on the active participation of the patient in the recovery process. The patient understands the cause of the condition and consciously conditions herself to handle anxiety, depression and fear and process those emotions accordingly. Qi Gong connects body and mind and was helpful, but lying on the acupuncturist's table did not lead me to be aware, let alone understand, both conscious and unconscious emotions generated by my brain. Additionally, I was too anxious anticipating fast results from acupuncture and herbs; once I understood the concepts of TMS, my anxiety went down enough for me to accept the slow pace of my recovery. Another reason is that the acupuncturist who treated me practiced in more of a Western style, focusing more on the symptoms than on the underlying conditions and my symptoms (swelling, muscle contraction and neuropathy) looked extremely structural and physiological.

After I was able to overcome CRPS, I wrote a book about my recovery and dedicated quite a few pages to the Chinese medicine and how it relates to TMS. In short, the biggest advantage it has over Western medicine is that it sees the patient as a whole, not separating physiology and psychology or partitioning body into unrelated organs.

For those who wants to learn about Chinese medicine in depth, there are two books that popularize it for the Western reader:

1. The Web That Has No Weaver by Ted Kaptchuk
2. Dragon Rises, Red Bird Flies by Leon Hammer, MD

I am not surprised at all that Ted Kaptchuk ended up studying a placebo effect at Harvard School of Medicine and conducting some revolutionary experiments on how healing process works.

 

[JanAtheCPA]

I am not surprised at all that Ted Kaptchuk ended up studying a placebo effect at Harvard School of Medicine and conducting some revolutionary experiments on how healing process works.

There's an old thread about Ted Kaptchuk's research on the placebo effect here:
Harvard researcher studying placebos | TMS Forum (The Mindbody Syndrome) (tmswiki.org)

 

[chriswatts369]

Hi @chriswatts369 - we haven't seen you in a while, and I hope you are continuing to experience success since you first joined us.

Although our forum is dedicated to Dr. Sarno, and although the "pure Sarno" folks seem to have a need to reject other modalities for recovery, I've always thought that there is plenty of room for alternative ways to do the work, as long as they engage the mind and the emotions and ultimately promote whole-body mindfulness, self-compassion, and an ability to visualize self-healing.

There are many ways to do this, from the infinite number of spiritual practices of humans, to the many practices that involve the laying on of hands along with emotional connection, to the different practices like TCM, which associate body parts and symptoms to particular states of mind.

The ultimate goal is to engage our ability to heal our bodies from within, by regulating our hyperactive and over-stressed nervous systems with awareness, openness, and acceptance, rather than with repression, or with invasive medical procedures and substances.

yes i have great success a lot of my dissociative symptoms, muscle tension/numbness have loosenee on its own