Surviving Martial Arts:
Resources for Growth and Healing
By David Christine
Certified Craniosacral Therapist
B
Several years ago I received a vertigo referral from Carol Shifflet at Round-Earth.com. Surprisingly, Round-Earth is a martial arts website featuring sewing patterns for martial arts clothing, books and lots of valuable information on self-treatment of muscle strains caused by the martial arts or other sports. There is also a page with some excellent observations about concussions.
Schifflet had posted an excerpt from her book, "Surviving Martial Arts" that describes how dizziness and nausea can be caused by a martial arts injury to the sternocleidomastoid muscle or SCM. The SCM is the big ropey muscle that runs from the mastoid process of the temporal bone (the rounded bump behind your ear) to the joint between collarbones and sternum at the base of your throat.
The SCM is commonly strained by locks and pins and in rolling, especially among beginners, according to Schifflet. More advanced students may suffer as well; when taking throws from beginners they often fling the head back, then forward into a side-tucked position which can cause a sort of self-induced whiplash injury.
Although a strained SCM rarely hurts, problems can be referred to the head and neck, ears, eyes, nose and throat. Schifflet says that what she calls an “astonishing laundry-list of pain and dysfunction" may include migraine, sinus headache, trigeminal neuralgia, nausea, motion sickness, sore throat, difficulty swallowing, dry cough, ear pain, dizziness, car-sickness, reversible tinnitus/deafness, or balance problems.
While the pain may be coming from nerves entrapped by the muscle itself and referred by myofascial trigger points, as Schifflet suggests, I believe a far more complete explanation can be found in the craniosacral system. Because the SCM attaches tightly to the temporal bone, strain on the muscle can pull on the bone causing any number of problems directly through compression of nerves that pass through it, or between the temporal bone and other bones that articulate with it.
Spinning vertigo is caused when the temporal bones on either side of the head move in opposition to each other, thus sending mixed messages to the brain from the balance organs which lie deep within the bones. Although the movement is microscopic, the balance organs are incredibly sensitive to minute changes on motion.
The spinal accessory, vagus and glossopharyngeal nerves all pass through a notch between the temporal bone and the base of the skull. Because the spinal accessory nerve innervates the SCM, a tight SCM can compress the temporal bone entrapping the spinal accessory nerve which further tightens the muscle in a vicious cycle. Likewise, if the bone is compressed for some other reason, the same vicious cycle can result.