Is the pain in your body being caused by TMS?

In this fascinating audio interview, the UK's leading expert on Tension Myoneural Syndrome (TMS) Georgie Oldfield (pictured right), explains how your clients' pain could in fact have an emotional cause!

Listen in to find out more...

TMS explained:

Tension Myoneural Syndrome (TMS), previously known as Tension Myositis Syndrome, refers to a group of emotionally-induced conditions including most cases of chronic or recurring back pain, neck pain, limb pain, RSI / Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and Fibromyalgia.

The TMS theory has been developed by Dr John Sarno, Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine at the New York University Hospital School of Medicine and author of Healing Back Pain, The Mindbody Prescription and The Divided Mind.

The TMS concept demonstrates how repressing negative emotions throughout our lives can result in physical health problems in the future, but by understanding and accepting this concept people with the pain of TMS can recover. In fact, all of us can reduce our chances of succumbing to many health problems and pain in the future by applying the principles of the TMS Recovery programme and ensuring we acknowledge our emotions as they occur, rather than trying to get on and ignore them.

The TMS Concept

Typical of the British ‘stiff upper lip’, many of us don’t express our emotions openly as we go through life. It is normal for us to repress negative emotions such as anger, jealousy, anxiety and fear and try to just get on with our lives. Unfortunately by doing this the emotional tension builds up in our unconscious minds (or as Dr Sarno calls it - our ‘reservoir of rage’), arising from three main sources:

stresses and strains of everyday issues, such as home and work responsibilities

childhood experiences

self-imposed pressures resulting from personality traits such as being a perfectionist, highly sensitive, ambitious, overly nice, self-sacrificing, a people-pleaser and/or self-critical.

When this emotional tension builds up and threatens to not only become conscious, but completely overwhelm us, our mind considers this to be not only embarrassing, but dangerous for us. Therefore in order to prevent us from being overwhelmed by these mounting emotions, our central nervous system restricts the blood flow to certain muscles, nerves, tendons and ligaments. This results in a lack of oxygen to these tissues and a build up of waste materials causing pain, altered sensations, tension and spasms.

According to the TMS concept, this real and often severe pain is designed to distract us from these negative emotions which are threatening to overwhelm us, and therefore keeps them out of our conscious awareness. The symptoms of TMS can be very debilitating, but as the pain is purely due to the lack of blood supply to an area, this can be reversed quickly and therefore the symptoms can also disappear just as quickly without causing any lasting damage.

A simple example demonstrating how an emotion causes a physical response is when we are embarrassed (an emotion) which makes us blush (a physical response due to blood being diverted to the face). Remove the embarrassment and the blushing resolves.

For more information, contact Quantum School member Georgie Oldfield on 01484 452500 or visit: www.tmsrecovery.com