Dr. Richard Hazel, DAc - Range Of Motion Acupuncture

06/18/2026

Ever wonder why a tight, stiff neck can suddenly morph into blinding pain right behind your eyes? 🫣💥

It’s not magic—it's neuroanatomy. Let's break down the hidden connection between your neck muscles, your nerves, and facial pain.

# # 📍 The Suboccipital Tight Squeeze
* Sensory nerves, including the greater and lesser occipital nerves, travel from your neck through the suboccipital area to innervate your scalp.
* When you are dealing with forward head posture or upper cross syndrome, your suboccipital muscles get severely overworked.
* Specifically, muscles like the **obliquus capitis inferior (OCI)** and **re**us capitis posterior major (RCPM)** can become rock-hard and trap these occipital nerves right against the bone and fascia.

# # 🧠 Scrambled Signals at the TCC
* Around the C1-C2 vertebral levels, these irritated occipital nerves communicate directly with the trigeminal nerve at a neurological junction called the **Trigeminal Cervical Complex (TCC)**.
* When chronic pain signals constantly bombard the TCC, the wiring gets scrambled.
* The **ophthalmic branch** of the trigeminal nerve extends down into this C1-C2 region. Because of the neurological cross-talk at the TCC, your brain misinterprets the neck nerve compression as pain originating in your face.

# # 👁️ Why Your Face & Eyes Hurt
Because of this nerve entrapment and TCC irritation, a neck issue frequently triggers:
* **Deep ache or shooting pain** behind the eyes and in the forehead.
* **False "sinus" headaches**, creating pressure across the bridge of the nose and under the eyebrows.
* **Autonomic disruptions**, including intense light sensitivity and tearing/watering of the eyes due to the lacrimal reflex.

# # ⚡ How Acupuncture Resets the System
> When an MRI comes back completely normal but you're still experiencing daily migraines, the culprit is often a subclinical peripheral nerve entrapment that imaging simply can't see.
>
By utilizing orthopedic and neurofunctional acupuncture, we target the precise motor points and active trigger points of the suboccipitals (like the OCI) and the upper trapezius.

05/24/2026

I had a canvas made of my dogs and it looks amazing in my clinic.

05/20/2026

05/18/2026

The Courses I get to teach in Sydney are always fun and rewarding. I get to work on my fellow acupuncturists to demonstrate techniques and we can almost always find someone who needs treatment for what I'm demonstrating. I get to show the real efficacy of the assessment and treatment not just talk about a theoretical scenario.

Thank you all for your continued support and for trusting me if you're new.

05/17/2026

05/17/2026

It's a wrap!

Thank you to China Books Sydney for bringing me back to beautiful Sydney!

Thank you all for coming out!

I'll see you next year!

05/05/2026

The 2026 Male Athlete of the Year is Red Murdock from football!

Before being drafted by the Denver Broncos, he earned Second-Team All-America honors as he finished with the NCAA record for forced fumbles in a career.

05/03/2026

🛑 Stop scrolling if you deal with constant jaw popping, TMJ pain, and a stiff neck! The root cause might actually be your posture. 👇

**Upper Crossed Syndrome (UCS)** is a very common postural imbalance caused by spending hours hunched over desks and phones. It creates a "cross" pattern in your upper body: tight chest and upper neck muscles paired with weak mid-back and deep neck flexor muscles.

This imbalance forces your head into a **Forward Head Posture (FHP)**. When your head shifts forward, it stretches the muscles attached to your throat and jaw, which mechanically pulls your lower jaw backward and compresses the temporomandibular joint (TMJ).

But the connection isn't just mechanical—it's highly neurological, and it all comes down to your **suboccipital muscles**. 🧠

Here is how poor posture scrambles your jaw's motor control:

📍 **The Body's GPS:** The suboccipital muscles at the base of your skull are packed with sensory receptors (up to 242 muscle spindles per gram). They act as a sophisticated "GPS system," feeding your brain high-speed, real-time data about exactly where your head is in space.

⚠️ **The "Garbage" Signal:** When you have FHP, these tiny muscles have to stay chronically tight and spasmed just to keep your eyes level with the horizon. In this state of constant tension, they start sending distorted, "garbage" spatial data to your brain.

⚙️ **Garbage Input = Garbage Output:** Your brain relies heavily on this neck data to coordinate movement. When the brain receives distorted feedback, it can no longer properly coordinate the complex muscles of your jaw.

💥 **The Result:** This loss of motor control leads to the uncoordinated firing of your jaw muscles (especially the pterygoids), which clinically shows up as **uneven jaw tracking, joint instability, clicking, and popping**.

**The Takeaway:** You can't separate the jaw from the neck! To truly resolve TMJ dysfunction, you often have to address the Upper Crossed Syndrome, release the suboccipital tension, and restore accurate sensory feedback to the brain.

05/03/2026

Want to get better, lasting results for TMJ issues? Check this out. Online Courses: https://richardhazel.podia.com Instagram: