Psoas Secrets: Your Jaw and Cranium Control Your Psoas/Hip Flexors

how is it that your soas and jaw can combine to create postural instability and muscular skeletal pain and a lot of other horrible symptoms well it's through the autonomic nervous system and that these connections is what this video is about before I get into the details here is the big picture ventral vagal dysfunction just think of front of the face the mouth your tongue your larynx your vagus nerve your visual system your auditory system all of that when something goes wrong inside there that ventral vagel system it increases sympathetic trunk activity which is your torso

which means increased sympathetic trunk creates extension extension of the lower back will tilt the pelvis forward on one which is what we call the left AIC pattern as defined by the post restoration Institute or both which is called the bilateral AIC pattern or PE pattern so that means that increased sympathetic activity trunk activity increases hip flexor over activity hypertonicity so your hip flexors get overactive and your lower back gets overactive which holds you in this state of extension now the big question comes how is it from the cranium and the jaw well now I'm going

to delve into the details this this young man has a rib cage that is extended extended he's overarched and thus he cannot pass his shoulder internal rotation tests he also has a pelvis that is forward on both sides actually I only show uh two tests I only show the left arm and the left leg but his pelvis is forward on both sides he's in sympathetic extension toned overactivity the only way he's going to pass this test because I know his jaw he has a TMJ issue his jaw was not position properly was off to the

right the only way he's going to pass this test is by taking a little plastic mouth guard and put putting it over his bottom teeth so the moment his brain senses something different between his teeth the sympathetic nervous system over activity immediately decreases the sympathetic trunk extension activity goes away his pelvis pelvic tilt goes away and he can now pass his shoulder and his leg test and that's what you're going to see so his left shoulder does not internally rotate his left leg does not add duct it doesn't go down he's extended now he's going

to put a little plastic mouth guard in over his bottom teeth and immediately immediately he can add duct his hip flexors turned off and his back extensors and the front of his neck also relaxed why was he stuck in this sympathetic figh ORF flight type of situation what was coming from his jaw his jaw was off to the right and I know that's a big problem and you'll see in uh later on the video pictures of me I was in the exact same situation when that jaw is off to the right that body that neck

is influenced into a state of tension it pulls the head and neck forward extends the rest of the body and now you're stuck in this sympathetic trunk activity so his vental vagal dysfunction which was coming from a jaw that was not position properly that his own brain was sensing as a threat that ventral vagal dysfunction was fight ORF flight and extension tone it it it promoted fight ORF flight extension tone which then increased sympathetic trunk activity which then created disordered breathing neck breathing he's still in fight or flight so you get stuck in this triangle

of tension and sympathetic activity that just feeds off itself the moment that little tongue that little well this is a this is a real mouth guard an acrylic one uh the moment that went over the bottom teeth it was like a a circuit breaker the whole system just relaxed because the only reason he was in that state was because of his jaw his TMD his I'm sorry his TMJ his Tempo mandibular joint so first you have to understand the autonomic nervous system because that's the player his his body and anyone with this type of issue

their body is being held hostage by the sympathetic fight ORF flight system so the ventral vagel system system it's a better way of explaining the fight ORF flight phenomenon basically the trigeminal nerve that's the mouth the facial nerve self-explanatory uh but the trigeminal and facial also influence your the the hearing muscles of your of your ear the glossop farang so the back of your throat and the back of your tongue your ability to swallow all these are very important things uh the vagus nerve who doesn't know the Vegas nerve at this point that's the major

parasympathetic the rest and digest nerve and then the accessory nerve which is is really interesting and we'll get to that separately the accessory nerve is the 11th cranial nerve and it controls your scms and your upper and your trapezius muscles which allow your head to turn and rotate so your brain can figure out where you are in space so taking altogether the ventral vagal system controls or is responsible for orientation where am I in space remember you might see where yourself where you are in space but your brain stem the part of the brain that's

trying to figure out all of this try to trying to integrate all of this sensory input so it can figure out where you are does not know where you are it does not your it's weird to think about but your brain has to figure out where your body is what your body is doing from the Great Book how emotions are made she says from the point of view of your brain your body is just another external source of information that it has to figure out what you're feeling what you're sensing whether that rumble on your

stomach is because of appetite or nerves they're very similar so your brain is constantly trying to figure out what your body is doing internally and then what how your brain and body are relating to the external world so orientation your environment orientation where am I where's the ground where's visual space where's that car where's that tree where's that guy about to hit me communication humans we communicate more language all comes from the front of the face and obviously the body and feeding swallowing eating all of life happens with this ventral vagal system and when any

when whenever something goes wrong in that ventral veal system like TMD temporal mandibular dysfunction because of a TMJ that's not positioned properly however that occurred or teeth that have been pulled especially molers and canines whenever that happens that's threat and once that once your brain is threatened uh you go it promotes extension fight or flight this is what the cranial nerves look like there's a lot of them and they all go into the midbrain and the brain stem which which is the autonomic regulator so your fight ORF flight whether you're in fight or flight or

whether you're you know rested and digested is happening at that midbrain and brain stem and that's all ventral vagal system all the information your brain is is collecting whether you're in a threatening environment or not or you're in a peaceful environment that all goes back to that midbrain brain stem area which then regulates your heartbeat uh regulates your breathing prepares you for fight or flight now again you see all these nerves and I'm those are not just the cranial nerves those are also the we'll get to them the the brachial plexus the the cervical plexus

and the brachel plexus uh we'll get to that but what I do show is the the the upper trapezius and the SCM the sternal clom mastoids whenever you're threatened and that's part of the ventral vagal system so whenever this ventral front area is threatened by the situation you're in uh a tooth that got taken out a jaw that deviated someone you know uh your own voice got a little bit thrown off you can't swallow anymore you had a throat injury that ventral vagal system is threatened and when that happens the SCM and the upper traps

pull your head and neck forward into a forward head position and then simply that promotes neck breathing and neck breathing that's disordered breathing neck breathing is fight ORF flight activity and it doesn't even have to be something an insult to the front of the head or the face or something it could be you sat too much you sit in a chair too much you're too stationary you sit and stare at computer screens that's all ventral vagal head and necks fall forward and you hyperfocus your eyes that is the autonomic nervous system so you know not

everyone who ends up in a in this consistent state of tension and fight or flight has anything wrong with the oral cavity you know just because your hip flexors are tight doesn't mean it's coming from up here it could just be a forward head posture that's putting you into increased sympathetics which then increase the hip flexor activity so so once that head and neck fall forward for any reason whether it's something with your mouth or not or just too much sitting and too much neck breathing your spinal sympathetic chain which is going from the from

the top of your uh from the top of your spine from T1 all the way down to L2 uh which is the lumbar spine uh which would be right about here is L1 2 3 4 5 then the sacrum all right the those are the fight ORF flight muscles think back extensors and hip flexors so yeah the moment your cranium or the mouth the TMJ because that's the discussion we're having right now once that's threatening and your brain says whoa that's not good you that sympathetic nervous system kicks in you extend your rib cage goes

up your pelvis Falls forward and now you have back extensors lower back muscles and hip flexors that won't shut off and those are pelvic destabilizers and now once your pelvis stays unstable because your brain is saying no we're just we're this is a threatening situation you lose stability in your pelvis you lose your hamstrings your glutes and your pelvic floor and I'm going to show that uh and now again you just get stuck in this feed this this Loop of disordered breathing tension and then eventually you develop an unstable pelvis which creates even more of

this uh fight ORF flight uh tension Behaviors real quick if you like this video you think it's interesting could you share it subscribe comment give it a thumbs up anything to promote this because a lot of people are still in the dark about these situations now this sympathetic trunk you can see it all in the front of your spine and you can see how it really starts all the way up here and starts to drop all the way down that's the sympathetic chain um it also is regulating heart lungs organs gut genitals so your sexual

function as a male or female will be greatly impacted by the sympathetic TR if your head and neck fall forward let's say because of TMJ a jaw that's not positioned properly your brain finds it threatening or simply the jaw is not positioned properly and the neck muscles are now not uh positioned properly you go into extension you get shifted over to your right side because remember we know that right bigger right diaphragm is underlying everything so we're all right dominant we go to that right side we extend and now that sympathetic trunk is overactive your

vagus nerve never gets to calm everything down it never gets to exert its influence the more sympathetic you are the more your vegus nerve recedes its activity but it's the vegus nerve activity that keeps things calm so the way fight ORF flight works is you're happy you're in a parasympathetic State you're sing you know you're in your car you're singing your favorite song you're nice and relaxed your Vagas nerve is firing everything's cool someone cuts you off and all of a sudden you whoa what the f that's sympathetics once that occurs the Vegas the the

Vegas nerve withdraws its tone its influence and your sympathetics come into full blast because you were threatened now once that situation ends you're like H what a jerk but he speeds away and you get back to your song that's when the vagus nerve should start to exert its influence again and start to calm everything down but when you're in a forward head posture and you're you you have pelvic instability at this point and you're neck breathing and your brain is saying oh that missing tooth is a real problem I need that Moler back because I

can't sense where my head and teeth are or where my jaws going uh then that that nerve that the veg nerve never gets to reassert its calming influence and that's the problem that's how you get stuck in that cycle of of tension the Vegas nerve simply doesn't get to re-exerting influence so it's not about it's not about treating the Vegas nerve or yeah it's not about treating the vegus nerve or it's about what's feeding into the dysfunction that the vus nerve is not allowed to exert its calming influence now some people do know about this

not a lot unfortunately but there are and in fact this little passage here comes from this book face to face with the face that's what this is all about I think they're in England actually Thomas atlay yeah he's in London I don't know how old it is but so this is known cranial sacral therapists know this this dentist works with cranial sacral therapists to try to deal with its interconnectedness so just see what he writes he says the teeth and jaw are an integral part of the rest of the body if they are treated in

isolation without awareness of that interconnection then the benefits may be limited and the effects potentially disruptive an uneven bite or malocclusion may lead to unbalanced muscle use jaw muscles throat muscles neck muscles with dominoes through the rest of the body and you can have all these types of uh compression of the jugular framan impinging to jugular vein the spinal accessory nerve the vagus nerve headaches ear pain ttis respiratory cardiac digestive disturb all of it they know this I know this I've experienced it myself post restoration knows this this is what we deal with all the

time uh but it goes further than that it doesn't stop here it goes all the way down to the pelvis all the way to the ground and that's what's so fascinating this is a vestibular system input an upright balance issue uh how your brain orients how your brain figures out where you are in space how it moves you forward is all influenced by the head and the jaw and the teeth as he's saying so the problem with extension is in terms of movement your ability to move forward without restriction you need hip flexors that can

alternate between being on and off that soas has turn on and off to help move the pelvis forward to help rotate your body to the opposite side and to help turn the leg out but really who cares about the biomechanics the biomechanics can't work unless your body is is in a more or a non- heightened sympathetic State all movement is sympathetic so it's not like you're not moving in a rest and digest parasym parasympathetic state but it's not an all or not you're not either in sympathetic or in parasympathetic it it's kind of described like

that quite often but it's not it's it's it's there's a ratio of everything it wouldn't even make sense so uh but your hip flexors have to go through cycles of on and off on alternating sides so that the pelvis can move forward and the spine can rotate otherwise you're you can't move otherwise you're extended so if both sides of the pelvis come forward at the same time you can only do one thing extend you can't move you're going to move forward but with strain and eventually it's going to start to hurt and break your body

down so the problem is when you're extended the somatic system like hey I your your goal directed I want to do this I reach for this you'll still reach but because of the extension the tension and the limited movement of your body you're going to strain to do it and over time you're going to start to use the wrong muscles to do it and that's what starts to hurt very normally the right arm once you're in this position for too long you're extended to for too long in the pattern your neck really starts to take

over the right arm you're not going to be using your serratus muscles and your and your lower trapezius and your tricep and your bicep they're not going to be because your scapula is not going to be positioned properly so the neck and your lat will start to take over the use of the right arm so you know your cervical plexus these are the muscles of the neck and diaphragms it's all up through here uh those muscles and you're going to see a picture of them those nerves NES control all these muscles well once that head

and neck come forward you could very easily first of all you're going into extension as you do it but you could get compression in any of those nerves uh those nerves may not fire optimally so you know there's a lot in that area it's there's no open space so that could be affected that could be thoracic outlet syndrome type of uh type of symptoms then you have the brachial plexus which uh C5 to T1 so it's mid neck down to the top uh thoracic vertebrae muscles of the shoulders and arms so here's a picture of

that y shoulders upper arms lower arms and hands I mean it's on both sides just one side is maroon the other one is uh yellow but there's a ton go look at how many how how many of those nerves go through the between the collar bone and the rib cage underneath the moment that head and neck come forward and you extend that space gets smaller so in postural restoration we're always trying to expand the rib cage with air to clear up space so those nerves conduction and and function can go back to being normal the

sacral plexus so The L4 to S4 so your lumbar lower lumbar spine uh well your your yeah your lower lumbar spine and to the sacrum area pelvic floor glutes hamstrings lower legs and feet those are pelvic stabilizers when you're in the state of extension and your thorax is in that uh extended fight ORF flight State and your hip flexors are on on and your lower back muscles are on constantly you lose the ability to use your pelvic floor to breathe with your diaphragm so you can no longer diaphragmatically breathe you lose your glutes you lose

your hamstrings uh you can so and those muscles are needed to work with the hip flexors because the hip flexors are not bad they just need to be used appropriately but you need but hip flexors need glutes and hamstrings to be able to alternate you from side to side so if I'm if if I'm taking a step and I want to swing my right leg forward I'll use my right hip flexor to swing that leg forward as my pelvis is turning to the left as that left hamstring and left glute are stabilizing that left side

and then you do the opposite so you have to have alternating cycles of hip flexor and hamstring glute pelvic floor activity but if you're stuck in a state of extension on one or both sides because of uh extension tone being driven by the jaw or anything or just disordered breathing doesn't matter that is compromised and now the pelvic becomes those pelvic stabilizers no longer work properly they'll work to a degree but not the way they're supposed to and now you become less stable in your pelvis because your hip flexors have taken over and remember pelvic

uh non-stop or overactive hip flexors are pelvic destabilizers so your pelvic stabilizers don't get to activate so the video the gentleman uh in the video his hip flexors were so overactive because of his jaw he never had his he could not feel his hamstrings or his glutes in any type of posture restoration activity and here you just have an image of that sacral plexus uh that's a that sciatic nerve is gigantic okay so anytime that pelvis is forward on both sides and those legs have to externally rotate on one or both sides to compensate for

the pelvis that'ss forward that sciatic nerve could be impinged and a lot of people have sciatic pain it's really not that hard to figure out to be honest it's it's the pattern that we're talking about extension okay so now that we have the nuts and bolts of the position and the limitations what does this mean for you and your brain and movement well from the brain From the Inside Out by gorgi I don't know how to pronounce it busak I mentioned it one time previously and I didn't mention it properly and obviously someone from a

Hungarian individual kind of scolded me for not saying it properly so I don't know how to say it but anyway he's a genius and he has a lot of great uh Neuroscience books that's the thing you have to you can't think about you can't think like a physical therapist when it comes to this type of stuff you have to think about neurology about Neuroscience it's about the brain much more than it is about the physical body so here it is the brain's experience of movement your brain has to experience movement to understand where you are

when you sit too much all all of this that I'm about to read goes away because you're not moving your brain loses sense of where you are you're in a non-gravitational state you're sitting gravity is not pushing you into the ground it's pushing into the seat but your feet are not necessarily sensed on the ground like they would be if you're standing or squatting so sitting in chairs and staring at computer screens takes away everything I'm just about to read so your vestibular upright balance sensors your inner ears detect changes in acceleration in velocity that

means your balance system your Balance Centers of your brain needs movement to understand where you are needs to be upright to understand where you are the head Direction system neck rotation for your head to rotate and for your brain to understand where you're headed you have vast neural networks it's fascinating read the book uh uh dark and distant places it's called the Neuroscience of navigation that's what that's about your brain has vast networks spread throughout all regions of the brain not just one region it's a network of cells devoted to only one thing where is

my head located it's freaking fascinating at any rate the head Direction system system relies on rotation if your neck doesn't rotate it that whole system falls apart uh extended bodies and extended necks can't rotate so if you're an extension you can't navigate your brain can't figure out where you are in space everything is altered motion third line motion by your brain is directly experienced from vision optic flow Vision your visual system it has to understand and pay attention to to space passing you by the environment passing you by as you're going through it that's how

it's figuring out where you are in space that's why uh monovision and that's why progressive glasses are so bad because they take away your peripheral flow you cannot get anything these people are tight when they're wearing either of those types of of of glasses and tactile flow tactile would be the sense of your feet your heel Arch big toe hitting the ground and the feel of uh tactile flow could be your own hip joints compressing and decompressing As you move forward so once you're too extended for too long especially if that head and neck really

do come forward and you're stuck and you're locked up through the jaw uh you all of this kind of breaks down you're still going to move and it it's all these circuits overlap so it's not like there's a lot of redundancy in these systems but the pain and the tension that you make feel is coming because of this slide uh this is the big picture all you got to do is get out of extension get the head and neck back into their normal POS this is what posture restoration does it restores normal position of the

pelvis the rib cage the spine the neck and the head through normal posture restoration activities you're going to need to find someone I mean it's complicated but that's what it's designed to do so this can start to work again so your brain can figure out where am I and then the tension can drop oh oh here it is dark and magical places the Neuroscience of navigation basically if you disrupt the vestibular system you disrupt the head Direction signal a rat can no longer navigate as accurately if its vestibular system is damaged and neither can a

human so anything that's influencing the vestibular system anything neck is because of neck rotation so if a jaw is mispositioned or too far back and the airway is is is is compressed and you can't die from ially breathe and you're stuck in a state of extension that's all that's all influencing your ability for your head and neck to rotate and your torso to rotate and your pelv to rotate without restriction so all those vestibular signals are being diminished and now your brain gets a little bit threatened and again you stay in this cycle of tension

and here you go this is from a book about the vestibular system when you lose sense of the ground which happens when you're extended because you can't go from side to side appropriately so your feet go through a cycle of heel Arch big toe your brain does not sense the ground appropriately and don't even get me on minimal shoes they will not help the situation I've already made videos about that but what happens when the floor is moved from underneath an an individual they're going to use extension and that's what this graph is showing uh

the tibialis the quads the gastro uh the the SCM the neck the traps and the par vertebrals your lower back muscles it does say um abdominals and hamstrings but I can tell you in that position that you see that figure in that is lengthening that's not concentric uh that's not the way the abdominals and hamstrings are being they're being used in an extended position let's just put it that way so that can be a little bit misleading because you might say hey but I know about PR and we want hamstrings and AD and and abdominals

you do or actually I don't even is that abdominals or abductors quadriceps gastr back muscles abdominals yeah but they're length they're in a lengthened position because you're extending that figure is extending they're lengthened they're not being used the way that nature intended so a lot of people are in disbelief about the brain sense of the ground and how a jaw position could influence your brain sense of the ground I got a lot of nasty comments on a video a year ago that reached a million viewers and that's where I'm revisiting the subject uh a lot

of most were most comments were positive but some were very nasty and just they just don't get it but here it is the association between masticatory muscle activation and foot pressure distribution in older female adults doesn't matter who they were this is the way it works you bring your teeth together on the right your body shifts to the right you bring your teeth together on the left in the molar area body shifts to the left that's what they found in the study read it you can look it up but that's what it says when people

have Jaws that are mispositioned or they have missing teeth or the Jaws too far back whatever it is that that ventral vagal system is disregulated through the oral cavity that's why sometimes these splints are made to restore normal sense of the mouth so when I bring my teeth together on the right I can go right when I go left I go left when a jaw is mispositioned that a that's not going to happen you kind of have a crossbite situation your brain gets confused so just like you should be able to put one foot down

and pick the other foot up you should be able to bring one side of your mouth together and not feel the other side when you can alternate sides of the mouth your body is free your neck is free your torso is free but once the jaw is mispositioned or any type of Mal occlusion anything going on in the mouth and you can't separate those sides you can't shift from side to side end of story I mean you'll shift but not appropriately you're going to do it through strain you're going to do it through compensation so

this is why we use those splints to harmonize the mouth particularly in the back with the ground underneath your heels more so on the left than the right but either way you need them both sides this is me from my late 20s or early 30s I can't remember but this is that image is from this book that's a cranial strain pattern that jaw is over to the right that head is collapsing on the right and you this I am that figure that is a cranial it's not a good one it's a bad cranial strain no

I mean no strain pattern in your cranium is good uh but this is a a very bad one let's put it that way you can see my right canine is displaced because my jaw had shifted so far to the right everything got pushed out so I got stuck over on my right side but I was there from a very very young age so I had vestibular navigation upright activity dysfunction I was all extended I was all back and quads and neck and that's how I got through life uh and it was painful and that's what

led to the chronic pain I don't have pain anymore I still have ring in my ears but it's way better than it used to be uh but I'm painfree so posture restoration that's all I did if you're Wonder like I know I get the comments well what do I do to fix this postural restoration postal restoration Institute that's what I do that's what I practice that's what helped me I did nothing else I did need Dental intervention through a splint and an optometrist who understood what I was talking about my vision uh but I was

in this situation when you look at my face when that jaw shifted and my head literally collapsing and you can see a picture a difference between my old head and my new head here's a comparison from just 2017 I was still in that I was in that pattern my head was still collapsing to the right my jaw was still to the right and that was better than it used to be but now you can see me in 2024 my head is much more upright uh everything has rearranged that was all this my brain is finally

figuring out where I am in space my neck is free to move I can rotate my head Direction system can figure out where my head is in in in in relation to the environment I can navigate without problems I was in Chicago a couple weeks ago I walked 8 miles a day no pain uh that would not have happened the last time I was in Chicago which was right around 2017 I was in so much pain uh it was misery so to sum this all up and bring it to a close if you have TMJ

well TMD temporal mandibular dysfunction if you have a visual system that's a little wonky like you have one eye that looks you have a big difference between your two eyes you have a missing Moler you have hearing loss uh significant hearing loss can influence your upright your cranium uh your or your uh your cranial nerves your autonomic nervous system so anytime there's oral cavity or cranial dysfunction that will facilitate that spinal sympathetic extension chain fight ORF flight uh pelvic destabilizers hip flexors and back extensors those and then that area inhibits your ability to stabilize with

your pelvic floor your glutes your hamstrings your lower leg and your foot which are the pelvic stabilizers so Cranium dysfunction anything in here vental vagal system if it's dysfunctional over time it doesn't it's not all and it's not all or nothing some people have something going on and they're not in a lot of pain some people are in significant amounts of pain uh they can have really weird symptoms like mittis uh they can have you know upright they get very off-balance very quickly they get very laded things like that uh that facilitates extension fight or

flight and as extension and fight or flight go on longer and longer it inhibits or uh takes away your ability to stabilize your pelvis with your pelvic floor muscles glutes um hamstrings lower legs and then your feet can't go through their normal cycles and then the brain gets lost with the ground and it just again it just becomes that that uh Circle of Death so to speak