​​In recent years I have discovered that a major cause of disease is stress. When people think of stress, what comes to mind is emotional stress. While emotions are one of the causes of stress, there are definite physical stresses that play a huge roll in the effects of stress on the body and mind.  

These include dietary stresses even from so-called healthy diets that leave out major nutrients. Irregular lifestyles, too little or too much exercise, not enough natural light, noise, pollution, electromagnetic field stress plus many others wreak havoc on our health.

Body work pioneers such as Thomas Hanna and Thomas Griner discovered that stress creates muscle tension and continuous spasms that cut off the circulation to bones, joints, organs and glands. This leads to diseases as diverse as back pain, allergies, chronic fatigue and even cancer and heart disease.

Here is why this happens. There are many types of muscles including cardiac, skeletal and smooth muscle walls of internal organs and many parts of the body. Skeletal muscles make up the bulk of your muscles at 50 percent of your body mass. Many muscles are involuntary, or not under conscious control. Skeletal muscles are both voluntary and involuntary.
 
Skeletal muscles naturally contract when you stand or are sitting upright. But in order to stay healthy, skeletal muscle needs to relax after every contraction.
 
The capillaries deliver fresh arterial blood containing oxygen and nutrients to the muscle and exchange them in the cells for carbon dioxide and metabolic waste, hence becoming venous blood. Because many skeletal muscles close like fists around their tiny blood vessels during contraction, waste products can be removed only when these muscles relax. Each contraction should be immediately followed by a full relaxation in order to clear the muscle of waste.
 
Things start to go wrong in the muscles when this doesn’t happen, and this is partly what doctors don’t understand. Doctors are typically not trained to know how muscle malfunctions, or even acknowledge that it can and usually does malfunction, by permanently automatically contracting to the point that it impinges on nerves, squeezes joints together, cuts off circulation, and even disturbs body chemistry.
 
There is evidence according to Thomas Hanna’s brilliant work that muscles contract under any kind of physical, mental or emotional stress.  A normal response to any kind of stress is for the muscles to contract whether it be for the beneficial effect of learning something new, physical exercise or emotional strain.
 
If the stress, whether good or bad occurs often enough, the body muscles can be locked in contraction. At first, the back of the body is affected. If the stress occurs too often or too long, the front of the body starts to contract. Traumas can throw off the balance of the right and left sides of the body by creating excess contraction on one side.
 
When the muscles are contracted, lactic acid builds up in the muscle. Lactic acid is toxic waste produced during your body’s energy combustion of glucose and oxygen; it must be removed through the veins to the liver. If the lactic acid is not removed, it sends a signal to the brain to keep contracting. Pain may or may not be felt because the body produces natural pain killers called endorphins. Contracted muscles are muscles that are in continual spasms.
 
The buildup of lactic acid occurs through any physical, mental or emotional stress. On a physical level, that’s exactly what happens when muscles are overstretched and/or held in static stretch, injured, overused  (i.e. too many repetitions of any contraction with not enough rest time between contractions - running long distances), or underused (yes, couch potatoes get spastic too).
 
Something must be done to release the muscle tension before it impacts the joints or organs to create damage and disease. If there is already damage to the joints or organs that is creating disease, it is important to physically correct these muscle contractions.

I discovered that one must release the muscle tension by the right kind of exercise and/ or massage. Some forms of massage and stretching can actually create more muscle tension.

There are several ways that I’m teaching people to release the muscle tension. Here are a few:

1. Avoid long periods of exercising that create layers of contraction in the muscles such as heavy weight training and long distance running and bicycling. Moderate practices of these exercises are fine as long as you release the tension in the muscles after.  The bulging muscles of body builders are muscles in chronic contract. Could there be a connection with the severe heart disease that several well-known body builders have suffered?
2. Avoid overstretching muscles. Gentle stretches that are held for short periods are more effective.
3. Learn chi gung exercise sets. These sets include gently dynamic stretching that releases the muscles.
4. Study Somatic movements. These movements work by getting your brain to release the muscle tension.
5. Gentle massages are helpful, but avoid deep massage. Deep massage can create more muscle tension.

 
I teach chi gung and somatic movements, and give somatic acupressure bodywork. All these methods help release muscle contractions and spasms as part of restoring and maintaining health.
 
Cutting out stress by correcting one’s diet, lifestyle and thinking is important to stop the causes of stress.

Incorporating exercises that release the muscle tension caused by stress is important.

Stress can be considered light wet cement. If the original tension is not corrected, the wet cement becomes hardened. Over time this hardened cement or muscle tension starts to cut off the circulation to our organs and systems, making us feel bad emotionally, mentally and physically.

Somatics: Reawakening the Mind's Control of Movement, Flexibility, And Health by Thomas Hanna
Somatic Yoga by Eleanor Criswell

I’ve studied multiple aspects of health and healing in order to aid and guide me in my natural health teaching and counseling for more than 40 years. What I’ve discovered is that my learning is more like a tapestry than a library of knowledge. Each discovery is layered on top of each other to form an intricate and interconnected brocade of my understanding of health.

In the last few years, I discovered the link between all diseases - stress.  When we think about stress, what often comes to mind is emotional or mental stress. Although this is a common stressor for people, there are many other stressors that create cumulative harmful effects over time that lead to various diseases.

In my Diagnosis+Nutrition™ Health Coach Training Program, my 21st Century Health Program Audio Series, and my 10 Class Certificate Video and PowerPoint Course, I address the different types of stress that eventually lead to health problems. The major stressors that affect humans are from diet, lifestyle practices, environment and the mind and emotions.

A few years ago, a friend and mentor turned me on to the pioneering work of Ida Rolf, Thomas Hanna, Moshe Feldenkrais and other 20th century bodywork pioneers. The knowledge that I gleaned from their writings confirmed what I intuitively knew.  The body reacts to the various kinds of stress with very specific muscle tensions. Over time, these muscle tensions create habits that distort the posture and cause malfunctions of the organs.

These postural distortions lead to all major and minor diseases including arthritis, heart disease, chronic fatigue, thyroid imbalances, anxiety and depression, cancers and other serious disorders.

The body reacts to long term stress in very particular ways.  The first reaction is by tightening the back muscles, straightening the legs, and accenting the curve in the lower back. This indicates that physical and/or mental effort is being made. When the body is tired from too much effort, the muscles in the front of the body pull forward, collapsing the head neck and pulling the shoulders forward.

Both of these body habits over time start to cut off the circulation to the organs and systems in the body.
As I started to be aware of these postures, I noticed these postural distortions exist in every person who comes to see me for health consultations because of their poor health or serious diseases.

One example of this imbalance was in a woman in her 50’s who was diagnosed with kidney disease.
 
For many years, she worked in a factory, standing for many long hours during the day. When I first met with her, I noticed that the muscles of her entire back were locked in muscle spasm which is another word for extreme muscle tension. The curve of her lower back was accented with the muscles being as hard as a rock, and her legs were hyper extended.

In addition, the neck and head were being pulled forward along with the shoulders.  These habits of posture arose from various stressors with her diet, thinking and lifestyle along with long term work practices over many years.

With an understanding of stress body mechanics, it is easy to see how the kidneys in this woman which are located in the lower middle back were being pulled in two directions like under a vice, cutting off the circulation to the kidneys.  These long term body habits resulted in causing poor kidney function.

Another example is a client that I saw who was in her late 60’s. She was experiencing extreme hip pain. When I touched her lower back, it felt hard and tight like cement.  The whole back was also hard. She was diagnosed by modern medicine with severe arthritis in the hip.

For many years of her life, indeed many decades, she would diet severely to lose weight when she gained weight and do excessive amounts of aerobic exercises. Her personality was always to push herself in every way. I believe the end results of these mental and physical stressful habits were to create strong spasms or muscle tension in the body. These tensions cut off the circulation to the hip, creating the severe arthritis.  Most cases of arthritis can be seen as resulting from a combination of muscle tension pulling on the joints and bones and poor nutrition.

These case histories reveal that in addition to getting rid of as many dietary, lifestyle and other stressors as possible, it is important to physically reverse these body tensions through a type of massage, the right type of exercises and postural awareness while sitting and standing.  I emphasize the correct type of massage and exercises because certain types of exercises create more muscle tension which worsens the person’s condition. Excessive weight training, aerobic exercises and hard stretching are common forms of practices that worsen body tension.

In my own practice, I teach how to correct these in classes, and private qigong somatic exercise and acupressure sessions. Specific types of correction exercises have been designed which include various somatic exercises and qigong sets.

Without correcting these body tensions, I don’t think that the body can really fully heal and recover health. 

​The Middle Palace
 
In my Acupressure sessions, I stimulate pressure points with finger pressure that are the same as those used in acupuncture.
 
All the acupuncture and acupressure points are numbered as well as having names in Chinese and Japanese or translated to English. Lung 1 is one of the most important points that I use for improving someone’s health. It is translated as central treasury, central residence and middle palace
 
Each pressure point has an Energetic Nature. The energetic nature of this point is that it is the entry point of the Lung meridian. The Lung meridian is related to one’s respiratory function. In Oriental medicine, it has a wider application of usage, not the least of which is that it is a main source of energy for the entire body through the energizing aspects of oxygen and the balance of carbon dioxide in the human body.
 
Lung 1 is, also, an Alarm/Front-mu point. Alarm points are diagnosis points. Pain on pressure in this point indicates an imbalance in the Lung meridian and overall Lung functioning. Symptoms such as shortness of breath, immune weakness and overall fatigue are often signs of lung imbalances and weakness.
 
In Oriental medicine and the Taoist healing exercises of chi gung, the lungs are responsible for gathering energy from the environment. What is gathered is considered oxygen and something subtler from the air that energizes the body and mind.
 
The Lung is said in Chinese and other oriental medicines to govern the breath and is minister and chancellor to the Heart, relaying the communications of the Heart.
 
In the ancient system of the Five Elements or Phases, the lungs are related to the element metal. Metal is formed by processing. Because of this, the lungs are seen to be involved in the daily processing that creates our condition of health. This is one of the reasons that breathing through particular breathing exercises in chi gung and yoga or just by general exercising improves overall health.
 
This pressure point, Lung 1, is said to gather the energy from the atmosphere making us feel connected to something greater than ourselves. This is said to bring clarity to the mind and vitality. If this point is weak or disturbed, it is said that we can get stuck in grief or in the past, have difficulty perceiving quality in our lives, and seeing a positive future and have a lack of vitality.
 
The point Lung 7, Narrow Defile, can be a good point in combination with Middle Palace to help release grief, so the Lung energy can descend and allow a fresh intake of inspiration and reconnection with heavenly energy from the atmosphere.
 
Lung 1 also strengthens digestion. It regulates and tonifies Lung energy and functioning, regulates all the organs in the chest, clears lung inflammation and congestion, and chest pain while enlivening the mind and spirit.