Day 17 Anatomy Education

Back when I was in college and grad school I dove into learning human anatomy. It was a lot of information and fun. What i learned was just how many muscles there are and how little the average person actually knows about anatomy.

I recently decided to re-educated myself on anatomy for two reasons. One, it’s interesting and two it can give one a great perspective on what we assume is organ pain, or pain associated with a particular catastrophe (“oh my god my kidneys, or bladder, or heart etc”) can actually just be TMS -a reduction in oxygen to the surrounding muscles.


If you experience head pain is it a stroke? 99% of the time, no, it’s most likely a reduction in oxygen to any of the following muscles. If you experience pain in the front it’s most likely the Occipitofrontalis. Pain along the side can be either auricularis anterior, auricularis superior, or the Temporalis. That’s 3 sets of muscles on either side of our head and one set in the front. Since we know that TMS pain is caused by a mild reduction in oxygen then this can help us overcome it and not jump to catastrophic conclusions.


Chest pain: heart attack or TMS? The chest has the following possibilities: pectoralis major, minor, internal intercostal, and part of the serratus anterior which can reach into the armpit. Let’s not forget that their shapes of where they attach to bone and ligament as well as where they attach to the cartilage; any part of all of it can be affected by TMS. This is important Incase one thinks “well why do I only get a sharp pain here when the whole muscle is this large?”


Stomach Pain: it can very well be our stomach which is muscle, it can be our colon which is also lined with muscles designed to constrict. What about those weird pains that don’t feel like an urge to go #2 or like our stomach? It can be our diaphragm, believe it or not that is a muscle. Ever have side pain when running? That is your diaphragm spasming because you’re exhaling and inhaling at the wrong time. If you run and you inhale as your left foot pounds the ground what happens is you have allowed the diaphragm to bounce instead of properly extend to allow some room for expansion as you breathe correctly. Doing this over and over reduces oxygen and generates a spasm which is a stitch in our side. So sometimes our TMS pain can be a diaphragm spasm even if we are not running.


If you have pubic pain it can be the urethra, our sex organs also but there are also the psoas muscles, internal intercostal attachment, our rectus abdominals attach at the symphysis pubis, as does the transverse abdominal, as does part of the internal oblique.


The point I’m trying to make is that if we understand that what feels structural is merely a reduction in oxygen then we can learn to challenge the TMS with the tools provided by Sarno and Alan Gordon. Furthermore if one is not easily bothered by muscle pain but is concerned about having headaches which might be a stroke or stomach pains which one thinks might be organ failure or back pain which one thinks can be kidney damage, one should realize the array of muscles surrounding the areas.


When a doctor checks our organ function and we see nothing is wrong but we continue to feel pain in those areas. Liberate yourself from the notion that it is an organ. Learn some basic anatomy and take solace in the possibility that it is way more possible that it is TMS affecting any and more of the muscles I listed.