NeuroSoma® is the original work of Thomas Griner, author of “WHAT'S REALLY WRONG WITH YOU? A Revolutionary Look At How Muscles Affect Your Health." The book and the work are products of 30 years of detailed scientific research of human physiology and anatomy by a man with unique insight. Prior to his career in muscle research and myotherapy, Griner worked in engineering research for NASA in the Unmanned Space Program at the Jet Propulsion Lab in California. This extensive engineering background was instrumental in navigating the unexplored territory of muscle malfunction.
Born in
Ladoga
,
Indiana
on February 3, 1936, Thomas Griner graduated from Crawfordsville High School in the spring of 1954. That fall he attended the Allied Institute of Technology in Chicago for a year, where he received a Certificate for Engineering Design. He then went to work for General Motors, the Allison Jet Engine division, in Speedway, Indiana. From January through June of 1956, he attended General Motors Institute in Flint Michigan.
In the fall of 1956, Griner entered Purdue University in West LaFayette, Indiana,
majoring in engineering sciences. During the summer months, he worked as an engineering technician at the Purdue University Rocket Laboratory, where he helped construct set-ups for testing doctoral students’ experiments for their doctoral degrees. He completed 3½ years at Purdue before beginning work as research engineer for new processes for R. R. Donnelley & Sons, also known as the Lakeside Press in Chicago, IL (printers of Reader’s Digest, Encyclopedia Brittanica, Funk and Wagnel’s Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Americana, National Geographic, and Roe Peterson Textbooks). He worked there until the fall of 1961.
In 1962, Griner began working for NASA at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California as an engineering technician. He worked on chemical wind tunnel; chemical (hypersonic) shock tube; telemetery (testing spacecraft communications); spacecraft temperature control while in the space simulator; and modal vibration testing of spacecraft to check integrity between tests. In 1965, he left NASA to enter the Los Angeles College of Chiropractic.This departure and shift from a focus on engineering to one of the human body (although engineering has never been out of the picture) was precipitated by meeting a group of chiropractors who were practicing a non-traditional technique. The group learned of Griner through a patient who was also an acquaintance of Griner’s; they asked him to set up a test procedure to help them prove that although they were using a gentler technique, they were nevertheless still re-aligning the skeleton through special vector movement (what in chiropractic would be called a “directional non-force” technique).Griner felt that their system for trying to determine which way to push the bones was extremely naïve, in that it left out many variables. And when the test results were analyzed, they showed that the primary change was being made to the muscles, causing a secondary shift in the bone position. This was proved by the order of the progression of events. The chiropractors, thoroughly disappointed that Griner did not help them prove their premise, were certain they could find someone else who could set up a test that would prove them right (a less than scientific approach). But Griner’s curiosity had been raised: what caused muscles to become hyper-contracted?
Armed with a research project, Griner quit NASA, took a part-time job, and went to chiropractic college primarily to obtain knowledge in anatomy and physiology. His intention never was to become a chiropractor; rather, he hoped he would find the answers and information about muscles he was looking for: what causes muscles to go into permanent contraction, or hypertonus. But throughout chiropractic college, he never did find the answers.
He did however, while still in school, begin working on fellow students with a rudimentary form of what would eventually evolve into his therapy, and he even used these techniques while in the externship clinic. Although a graduate of chiropractic college, Griner has never practiced traditional chiropractic. After graduation, he continued to read and investigate those portions of the textbooks that were not covered as class material, including Guyton’s Physiology (3rd Edition). At this point, some of the mechanisms of muscle hypertonicity became apparent to him.
He then went into practice in 1971, using and developing his technique, including identifying and mapping the various patterns of muscle hypertonicity. And eventually, through working in his practice and the discovery of three important books, he finally was able to piece together the puzzle, and fully understand the entire mechanism of muscle hypertonicity. Those books were: Medical Physiology, two volume set, edited by Mountcastle; Fundamentals of Neurophysiology, edited by R. F. Schmidt; and Grant’s Anatomy. Discovering Grant was a revelation, in that theretofore he had always used Gray's Anatomy, which was unsatisfactory to his purposes.
In December of 1995, Thomas Griner retired from active practice and resides in Los Angeles (However, he can still be persuaded to treat special cases.) In January of 1996 he published, with Maxine Nunes as co-author, a book through Avery Publishing, entitled What’s Really Wrong With You? A Revolutionary Look at how Muscles Affect Your Health, ISBN 0-89529-658-6. The book is now self-published and is available through his website www.biopulser.com.
