Yeah. And really get that going, right? You can even make the Hulk noise too. That's good for your vagus nerve. Okay.
Let's get right into it. We're going to talk about a muscle that many of you probably didn't even know you have. And for those that did know you have it, you probably haven't been doing anything on purpose to actually take care of it.
which means train it, strengthen it, okay? Hey, I was guilty of that too. I'll be honest with you.
I didn't even look at this potismal muscle, but then when I started working on it, I got absolutely hooked. And I'm gonna tell you right now, when you do the stuff I'm gonna show you coming up here, you can make a huge difference in the ability to keep your cervical spine and your head and neck more stable. And that's a good thing, because if you lose that, stabilization or stability in your head and neck, you will pay the price in your head and neck, but also everywhere else, because word on the street is everything in your body is interconnected.
If you have this bowling ball weighted thing sitting on your cervical spine, or is your brain and your skull sitting off center, well, that's going to pile drive down to your. feet. And that's the person who's going to say, dot. It's the craziest thing. I started to do this platysma freaky thing you're showing me.
And is it crazy that I feel better in dot, dot, dot, dot region? Nope, absolutely not. Okay. This is a big one.
And I want you to see it right there. I mean, that's what it looks like, except it's not orange on you, but you have a right one and you have a left one. And I want you to look where it goes.
It's right. below the collarbone here don't worry i'm going to show you in a moment how you work this thing when i make the screen bigger and then it goes along the side of the neck and tattoos underneath the jawline mandible in towards the face region there on both sides you have a left side and a right side okay i'm gonna tell you this right now if you've had a whiplash of any type that's where your head goes whips forward or backwards or side to side all right maybe an auto accident a slip or a fall or you've had a concussion, because a concussion is usually going to be some type of whip to the head, this muscle is likely going to be a culprit of causing some pain, and you'll need to work it. All right? So what is this muscle?
Okay. It's a muscle of facial expression. So whenever you open your mouth or frown, it usually is with the... Edges of the mouth go down like a frown, like that.
We're going to show you that's one of the things you're going to do to actually work it. But every time you open your mouth or move your jaw or turn your head, that is going to come into play. So it's part of facial expression. It's innervation is via the facial nerve, which is a cranial nerve that comes off your brainstem. Okay.
Now, why is that important? Because Let's look at this really quick, all right? I'm going to go over some anatomy. You've got your autonomic nervous system.
That means it works automatically without you having to think about it. Because if you had to think about every time you needed to swallow or breathe or digest food, your head would explode because there's too much going on. It's always working in the background, right? So that's two parts of it.
Well, there's actually three, but here's two big ones. It's a sympathetic nervous system that you see on the left-hand side here. That's your fight or flight, you know, uh, get away from the tiger.
It's called hypervigilance. You're just stuck in this mode of, how about we don't die today? And I want you to notice, first of all, where most of those live.
They live along your thoracic spine in the back and along the side of your neck and what they call sympathetic chain ganglia. And then they're down in the upper part of your lumbar spine, your lower back, right? Now that's...
really important. No, that's why diaphragm breathing, breathing with your diaphragm makes such a difference for you, but that's another episode. Let's look over to the right one. Now you have the parasympathetic nervous system.
That's the relaxation, healing, and recovery. Call it wine, dine, feed, breathe. That means I can eat, I can drink, I can have conversation, I can have sex, I can do all those sorts of different things.
So your autonomic nervous system has two may. two modes, fight or flight or healing and recovery. Here's the thing. It cannot do both at the same time. I'm going to say that one more time.
It cannot do both at the same time. One has to be on, the other one has to go down and vice versa. Problem is when you're stuck in fight or flight all the time, then parasympathetics don't work so well.
So let's look over to the right-hand side. You see, it says cranial nerves. Cranial just means skull, brain stem here. Anything that's close to your brain is more important because it's closer to your brain. You've got several nerves there, all right?
We're just going to pay attention to this number seven right there, all right? And then look at the bottom. You have your tailbone.
that sits right there. It's called your sacrum, sacral S3234, okay? Now, that's really, really important for you to know because if you work the platysmal muscle, if you work cranial nerve number seven, what are you going to do?
You're going to stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system, which can what? Help relax you, take you out of fight or flight, and help possibly decrease pain where? Yes, everywhere, everywhere, okay?
So it's extremely powerful sensory input to the brainstem, okay? All you need to know there is extremely powerful and brainstem. Basically, in a nutshell, if you do what I'm about ready to show you, maybe you'll feel a lot better, okay? Now, you're going to have some nerves that come out.
right above the collarbone. This is called supra. Supra means above, clavicular means clavicle, right here. And I'm going to show you in a moment when I go big on the screen, they pierce portions of that platysma muscle. Now, why are those nerves important?
Because those nerves go back to the spinal cord in the back, and they can cause you to have neck pain. all along the backside here. And everybody's chasing the back of the head.
And where you need to go is you need to work the front here. All right? Now, this is a really big thing in relationship to helping you kind of relax and get out of fight or flight. Look at the bottom here.
We're going to go here at the last sentence. The platysma is often an overlooked muscle of facial expression due to its location on the neck. but it contributes nonetheless, right? Plus you'll notice you'll get to get better tone in your neck.
And I will tell you right now, when you do this the first time, the next day, your neck is probably gonna be so sore, it's gonna blow your mind. You ever been to the gym and done lunges for the first time and your butt was so sore, you couldn't sit on the toilet or walk? That's kind of like this is gonna be.
And it may last you three to. of five days with the soreness. That just means you needed it. And then I'm going to tell you, don't do the exercises again until your fatigue or your muscle soreness gets a little bit better. And you're going to keep at this for a month and see what kind of changes that you have.
All right, let's go back. Now, I just want to cover really quick the facial nerve, cranial nerve number seven. All right, don't let all this stuff intimidate you.
I just want you to Notice this thing right here. It says facial nerve number seven. That's going to come off part of your brainstem called your pons, okay?
And then all of these nerves sit really close to it. So whenever you have an issue or you stimulate your facial nerve, you can influence the other three nerves here that are really close to it, right? This one here on vestibulocochlear nerve is going to be...
to be a lot with what vestibulo balance, right? And hearing your vestibular system. Abducens nerve supplies a muscle in your eye called your lateral rectus that gives you the ability to look sideways.
And your trigeminal nerve, that sensation to the face and also the ability to chew, your chewing muscles, the jaw muscles and your temple muscle. It's called your master. and your temporalis, all right?
I mean, you can even feel those really quick if you want. Put your hands along the sides of your jaw muscles and then clench your teeth. You'll feel them engage the masseter. That's the trigeminal nerve.
And then put your hands up along your temple and then clench and you'll feel those get to. And those are the muscles that get tight and tense when people grind their teeth or you're like under stress, right? You see the blood vessels popping out of the temple when they're under stress.
Look down below at the cranial nerve number seven. It's facial expression. It also has a lot to do with, you know, tearing in the eye, taste to the anterior third of the tongue. That's kind of a big deal for you to be able to taste things. And a muscle in your ear called your stapedius muscle, and that's the ability for you to actually hear low tone sounds.
like that and that's a lot to do with your survival reflex for instance like you should be able to hear the low tone of a tiger creeping up on you that's about ready to take you out And when you have an issue with the facial nerve, you lose the ability to hear sounds effectively. And then that could put you into a stress response as well. All right.
Oh, here we go. Now, this is something that I want you to look into the poly bagel theory. Just type in poly bagel theory.
And also listen to this. I want you to watch the podcast episode. Listen to it and watch it.
on this YouTube channel. And you can just look under my category of podcast. And I interviewed this guy right here, Stephen Porges, who was the creator, founder of the Polyvagal Theory. It's one of my most successful episodes. I highly encourage you to get that book, start reading on this, listen to my interview with him, and this will make a lot more sense, okay?
But they're gonna tell you in that. Theory, what I want you to look at here is a couple of words, autonomic nervous system. And right.
And we just told you that. And what else? Sensory pathways. What do we what do we just say?
Sensory input. What else is here? Brain stem helps regulate the autonomic nervous system function, fight or flight or healing. OK, we'll get the last one. OK. striated muscles of the face and head to produce an integrated social engagement system.
That means that short and sweet, do this platysma thing and it can carry over to helping you what? Relax, chill, get out of fight or flight, and that can hopefully help you feel a little bit better. You got some watching to do. Now, why is this stuff become an issue for people? Well, it's called living in the modern world where people have text neck and you look down at something.
And when you look down your muscles in the front of your neck at what they can get shorter when you look down. But when your head goes really far forward, they can get longer as well. It's a combination of the two. Either way, I don't care.
What you're going to probably find is that they're weak. And then you pile drive a lot of tension in the back of that neck at the top of the shoulders. And you get that big giant hump that you don't want at the top. But look how straight the cervical spine is. And you get a lot of tightness and tension in that connective tissue in the front of the neck called fascia.
What I want you to take away from this slide is. When you have your chin tucked down like that, looking down, curling forward, that puts you into a fight or flight survival posture. Flexion is a survival type posture, okay? And that's what we look at today because every time we turn around, somebody's got their face on a phone.
It's not up, talking to people, social engaging with other people, or actually looking at what's going on in the world. This is going to cause you to have platysma issues. Now, why is that head position important?
Well, you have this connective tissue all over your body called fascia. You've probably heard of that term. It's like saran wrap.
And you have different layers. Superficial, that means closer to the top. Intermediate, and then deep.
And guess what? They all connect to each other. So whenever you influence one, you influence the other. Whenever you work on the body in one place, you change the body every place else because the body is one piece.
It's not parts. We treat it like parts, but that's mistake number one, because your brain and your nervous system don't even know what the heck parts are. All they know is that they're one piece.
Everything talks to each other. OK, your brain doesn't even know what a platysma muscle is. I mean, humans name that muscle. It just knows, hey, do what Dr. Perry is going to show you next and you'll likely feel better everywhere else. But look at this.
See how the head goes really far forward over the shoulders. Look, see. You stress this tissue in the front of the body here, and these muscles can become long, stretched, and weak. When you tuck your chin down, looking at your phone, they can become shortened and weak.
It's a mixture of both. Now, why is that position important for your body? Well, your head is roughly the weight of a bowling ball, and it should sit further back.
sitting on top of your shoulders, so your chin shouldn't be three feet out in front of you. And look what happens to your back. And that's what you see today, right?
But look at this down here. For every inch of forward head posture, it can increase the weight of your head on the spine by additional 10 pounds. Now imagine walking around all day like that or sitting and compressing your spine from the butt up and then your head's forward.
Your spine's going to be screaming. And that's the person who says, my low back hurts all the time. Everybody's been doing everything to my lower back and it's not getting better.
That's because you just, you can't just treat the lower You start there, but then you look everywhere else. I usually go to the top with what I'm going to show you here. That's what my business name, my brand means.
Stop chasing pain. It doesn't mean stop treating it. It means start where it hurts and then look everywhere else because pain is usually where the problem ended up, not where it started. Now, here's a cool thing I want to go before I start to show you how to work the muscle.
This is from Michael Hall. Forward head carriage reduces vital capacity by one third. And you're thinking to yourself, I don't know what that means. Well, here you go. What is vital capacity?
The ability to take air into your body. Total volume of air that can be displaced from the lungs by maximal expiratory effort. Okay?
So that's what? Breathing. Why is that important? Because the better air delivery I have, the better chance I have to get oxygen into my body. And cells need oxygen to actually work, but I also need to be able to expire and get rid of carbon dioxide waste.
And if you have a breathing issue because of a forward head posture issue, you're going to change your blood chemistry in relationship to oxygen and carbon dioxide. And then you can feed an environment for inflammation and pain around the cells of your body because your interstitial fluid becomes a hot mess. That's the fluid that your cells actually sit in.
That makes sense. So there's a lot of stuff going on here from this freaky thing I'm going to show you to do. Let's show you where the platysma must. I'm going to warn you now that when I do this, I'm going to scare a lot of you. I'm going to look like a lizard.
Okay. Now let me show you first. It goes from the collarbone. Remember, this is the clavicle.
So imagine that, let me get a pencil. Imagine that this pencil is my clavicle. and then this is the bottom of the jaw line called your mandible right and that muscle goes from where underneath the collarbone it goes so it inserts right here not underneath but below i don't want to confuse you below and then it comes over the collarbone so it's superficial and then it comes up and attaches here now watch i'm going to go like this you ready see it look down here see these tendons like this Just ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
Look at that. And then it comes up. And then look.
See, you want to go like that? So if you do this, you kind of frown down like a lot. And even jut your chin out a little bit. Or down kind of diagonally. You'll figure it out.
That's like the Hulk. Like you're hulking out from here. And just notice the difference that you might feel in here. You shouldn't have any pain. I don't want you to have any pain at all.
When you do any of these movements, okay, no pain, no pain. If you have pain, I want you to stop or ease it up. Now that's the muscle. And because we are like this, very far forward, many people looking down at their phone all the time like that, or they have their mouth open because they're mouth breathers, the tongue.
You know, we have a video on YouTube here called Tongue Circles that you need to watch. It's gone ballistic viral because people are saying, that's the craziest thing in the world. I can't tell you how much better I feel everywhere just from doing that freaky tongue circle thing.
That's nuts. Nope. That's neurology.
Okay. And the tongue sits at the bottom of the mouth when it's supposed to sit at the roof of the mouth, the whole thing. And then you look like this and you breathe in and out here and then everything goes.
bonkers all right because you take about 20 20 000 breaths a day that's kind of a lot right now let's talk about the um supraclavicular nerves and then i'm going to show you how you what you can do about it so look there's a collarbone and then above the collarbone won't be able to see it with what i have here but i'm going to try to draw on me you got these little holes that sit here all right it's not working but there's little holes you that sit here, right? They're called, where the nerves, the supraclavicular nerves come out of, but it's, you know. Underneath the skin, okay?
And these supraclavicular nerves, they talk to the nerves in the spine here. When you get tightness or tension or issues with this muscle being weak, this area gets inflammation. This sends sensory input into what?
The cervical spine. That sensory input can be interpreted by the brain as pain. Because you have so much stuff coming in from here and coming in from here, but you don't feel the pain here.
You feel the pain here and here. Now, this area is really, really important too, because this is an area where your lymphatic system drains. And we talk about the lymphatic system a lot.
I'm the lymph doc. Lymph is my jam. That's why we teach you the big six lymph reset.
So go back and watch our big six lymph reset video. That'll change your life. That'll also help you open this area up for what you're about ready to do now. And that's why when you do this action, watch.
What am I doing? Pump, pump, pump, pump, pump. And that helps drain what? Lymphatics in the head, neck, face, and also helps pull the lymphatics up from the rest of the body that's trying to drain to the caudal bone, right? And then also is what?
What's this here? Blood flow to the brain. And what? Blood flow away from the brain through veins.
Where does it go? Right here, right here. This is big, everybody.
This is really big, okay? So even though this looks silly, it's not silly. You are affecting a lot of neurology here, a lot of physiology from nerves, arteries, veins, lymphatics, and fascia.
And you need to do that because cells don't work without those working well. Here's how we do it. show you how this goes. We're going to do three to five repetitions on each one.
I'm going to show you some of my favorite variations, but let me highlight some things. Nothing should hurt when you do this. If it does, I want you to stop or I want you to lighten the intensity or don't do it as often because these exercises might not be for everyone. Did you hear that?
They might not be for everyone. Okay. You should always consult your own individual healthcare practitioner before you begin any new program, especially if you feel like it makes you uncomfortable or anything seems like it worsens in here.
It should not. Okay. Let's go with this motion first.
Let's kind of get this frown down. Now, here's what we're going to do. We're going to bring the chin down towards the collarbone.
And I want you to go like that. But watch me before you do it. If you need to change your angle to watch me, go ahead.
You're going to bring your chin up and away from your chest as you're doing that, looking up towards the ceiling like that. Okay? So it's going to be like this. Here.
And go up. And really get that going, right? You can even make the Hulk noise too.
That's good for your vagus nerve. One. You could do an exhale.
So if you want to like that, I just relax. Okay. Yeah.
I'm sure you felt that three to five reps. That's it. Start with. Now you have a left one and you have a right one.
So if I, if I bring my chin towards the right side or the right, and I bring. and I try to touch my caudal bone, what am I doing? I'm shortening up that platysma muscle.
See how these are coming closer together? So what I'm going to do, watch first, is I'm going to bring my chin up and away from that side, and look what gets longer. The platysma muscle gets longer, okay? So it's going to isolate more on the right, right?
And you're going to do the same thing. And then make the noise if you want to. And here we go.
down to the corner, go up, chin away, one, relax and bring it down, again, two, three, all right, move each arm around a little bit, now we go over to the left side, chin down to the left collarbone, then diagonally move it away, here we go. one notice does one side feel tighter or different than the other two three and relax okay just rub that a little bit now what else do you think you can do in there you can do that same thing here and just turn your head from side to side like this keeping it engaged now you may feel stuff creaking and cracking back in here that's normal but it shouldn't cause any pain And the other one you can kind of do are like a little like U shapes like this. OK, you need to go easy with this one because many people don't move their head like that. And I don't want you to have any discomfort back here. But this is how it looks.
And you do about three repetitions that way. Now, I want to show you an advanced move, but I only want you to attempt. this one after you've practiced those for a little bit.
This one takes a lot more practice, and I need you to be really slow, easy, and careful here, especially if you have any TMJ jaw issues where your jaw kind of pops or deviates to a side. You may not be able to do these, okay, because this is an advanced move. That's why I want you to practice the participant muscle like we showed you first for a little while, and then you can... Try this one. The reason I'm telling you that is because the bottom of the jaw, here is where that muscle attaches to.
If you move your jaw away from a side, so I'm on my left-hand side. If I deviate, which means move my jaw away from here, the spotisma, it's going to stretch it a little bit more because it's moving away from there. If I move it towards it, that way, towards it, sorry, you're going to get a little bit of shortening of there. So this one, I'm going to show you the first part of a move that you already know.
And then we're going to do a little bit of a jaw flip to the side. Right? Here we go. So let's do the right one first.
Bring your chin to the collarbone. Do this. Come up and away.
And then watch. My jaw on the right, I'm going to move sideways slightly to the left. And when you do that, you'll feel it under here even more. Okay. And then come back towards the center.
And you would do that three times. Let me show you a full one here. Deviate, back, relax, and down.
Do not deviate too far. Then you do the same thing on the other side. Let me show you one rep on the left.
Bring it down. okay go here and you hulk it come up then jaw goes to the right and then back and then down you're going to feel everything in this region take hold and you're going to get movement of the largest lymph node in the neck that sits right here behind the angle of the jaw right next to cervical one cervical two that's kind of a big deal spot everybody. Okay. So let me wrap this up for you and tell you what I'd like for you to do. This looks simple because it is, but because it looks simple, it doesn't look like, ah, what's that really going to do?
That's going to do a lot. Yeah, it looks silly, but hey, I don't care if it looks silly. It's a lot of physiology and neurology going on, but I'm also going to tell you this, who cares if it's silly? One of the things that you're probably going to find out when you do this thing is you're going to feel silly and you're probably going to laugh and you're probably going to smile.
And that's good. Those are necessary for healing. And what I'd like for you to do is if you do this with friends, right?
If you get into a group or you do it with somebody that you're videoing with or something and you start to do it together, I guarantee you this, you're going to start cracking up. And that's community. That's connection. That's...
healing. That's what that is. Okay. And even if you're like, doc, I mean, you know, this, this is too much for me.
I don't think I could do it because it looks silly. Try it once. That's all I'm asking you. And then I want you to notice what you feel in here. Okay.
And don't do it again until this area starts to feel a little bit better. It's just like going to the gym. You don't want to massacre a muscle and then train it again until it's had the ability to recover and see if you can do that as often as you can.
through the soreness for a month and notice what changes. And I think that you'll actually feel yourself. You know, I'm a tall, lean, mean, and confident.
Like you're pulling your head back over your shoulders a little bit more here and taking pressure off this area. Just try to watch your daily habits during the day as well. And I'll give you one last clinical tip. If you're living out here like this and this is elongated, try to pull your head back the other way.
Feel in the back of your head right here. You got a big bump there. Okay. That big bump is called the external occipital protuberance.
Big fancy word that means big bump, okay? And I want you to imagine that bump being pulled straight back. And look what my chin is doing this way, right? And then I want you to imagine that that thing is now lifting up a little bit, like you're trying to take that bump up to the ceiling here, like I'm making myself taller. And what happens to the chin?
It kind of pulls back a little bit. And what do you feel in here? You're engaging these front muscles, that sternocleidomastoid muscle, that anterior fascia, and you're giving yourself better cervical spine next ability, which can help you feel better everywhere. Okay.
Then double bonus. If you can try to keep the tip, the middle and the back of your tongue at the roof of your mouth, when you do the pullback. Lift up, tongue at the roof of the mouth.
Try to breathe in and out through your nose only. You're going to be locked and loaded, my friends. Okay?
That's a position of strength and power and stability. And stability always precedes force production. What does that mean?
Power, strength. All right? Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you found this helpful. Leave some comments below on what this felt like.
for you. Try my best to answer all the comments in due time and share the love. Hit that subscribe button.
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Dr. Perry from Stop Chasing Pain. Our mission is to educate you to help yourself and others not suffer. from chronic pain. That's a good thing. Bye.