The Brain and TMS

Can you share your favorite resources that really explain the brain and TMS. How the brain distracts us from feeling, emoting and also our patterns of stress response?

I have read Sarno's Healing back pain, Mind Body Prescription and Steve O's book.

Thanks everyone!

 

Remember, TMS is specifically Dr. Sarno's theory about oxygen deprivation - and it's still a theory, proven only through personal experiences, but not through rigorous testing. So you've already gone to the original source, as well as Steve O, who has given us what I think of as the "Encyclopedia of TMS".

Now, if you're willing to take a look at other aspects of the mind-body condition, I can recommend an audio program called Meditations To Change Your Brain, with Dr. Richard Mendius, MD (neuro-something) and Rick Hanson, PhD.

This program really helped me turn a corner, because I was able to finally hear the inner conversations in my subconscious - the constant negative messages that were keeping me stuck in a low level of fight-or-flight virtually all the time.

It's all part of the same process. Once I learned to listen to those negative messages, I was able to change them. The true message is that I'm safe, I'm healthy, and there is nothing wrong with me. In addition to accessing this skill every day, I also sometimes still need to sit down and figure out recent issues that my brain is repressing for its own silly protective reasons.

It's a delicate balancing act - there's the everyday stress of survival (that's what Richard and Rick taught me) and there's the emotional repression that our brains keep engaging in - they are subtly different, and need to be addressed with different techniques.

 

Jan,

Thank you for your reply! This audio tool sounds so interesting to me that I am definitely going to check it out!

 

The oxygen deprivation mechanism of trigger points in muscles spasms have been throughly explained and shown to be 100% real with special radiography. This was shown in the works of Simmons and Travels. The only thing that Simmon and Travels does not explain or connect is the origin, which thanks to Sarno, we now know that it comes from our brain defense mechanism. Once the brain start this small oxygen deprivation in muscle, and creates bigger muscle spasms, we can get several spasms that connect at the same time and seem like we have something much bigger(and feels like that too). I would not say it is only a theory. What we do not have is someone that takes Simmons and Travels work and use Dr. Sarno data to correlate. But there are a lot of mind body authors that point to studies about mind body relationships causing physical symptoms.

 

Where can I find their works, Joe? I've worked with TCM acupuncturist who seems to be able to cause the various trigger points to interact act the same time states of conscious change in what you might "loosely" call the mind. Would be interested in seeing some corroboration beyond the TCM world.

 

There are ooodles of books from the late 90's on Amazon Janet Travell MD. Prices range from $20 to $600. Most books seem to be about Myofascail and Trigger Points in many languages. I personally don't need to know the exact causes of Muscle Tension since most of the time it's 100% my personality.

 

I like this talk by Dr. Schubiner

https://www.unlearnyourpain.com/How MBS-TMS develops

There are many excellent resources on his website

 

Thanks for all these resources everyone!!!

 

Sorry, I was out for a few days. This is their main book but Amazon is way overpriced. I got used ones for 30 dollars each if you look around online.

https://www.amazon.com/Travell-Simons-Myofascial-Pain-Dysfunction/dp/0683307711