How Do We Get Stuck in Hyper-Arousal?

Breaking the Atlanto/Occipital lock

Breaking the Atlanto/Occipital Lock. When the Occiput is jammed too tight on the Atlas either one sided or both sided, because hyperextension at the Occiput is expressive and reflexive of the Alarm or Startle Reflex, it keeps your nervous system in a constant state of Hyperarousal, making it difficult to sleep, heal, breath deeply, and generally relax. This neuromuscular lock cannot be forced to release by pressure alone.

Your body is always doing its best to follow your orders.  If you established a strong imperative in a time of injury or shock, your survival system will persevere with that strategy, using every ounce of available energy to hang on to that survival strategy it chose at the time of a threat.  If you succeed in softening a tight tissue using deep tissue or trigger point approaches, it’s likely the body will begin to recreate that strategy as soon as your client is up off the table.

In this video you will see me creating an oscillation at the Atlanto-Occipital joint while asking the client to hold his breath out until the survival system panic button goes off.  When the Survival System encounters a new threat to survival it abandons its previous stored strategy.  Because I am oscillating the structure at the time and holding the joint in traction after the next inhale, and because the client is being supported in a neutral cervical/cranial alignment following the challenge there appears to be a long lasting change in the ‘set point’ of the body’s alarm system.

I am grateful to Dr. Maud Nerman DO for her brilliant explanation and description of this process.