Using the hands the IMT therapist energetically links specific sites and contact areas in the body, assisting it to process areas of dysfunction. 

For generations, Chinese Medicine has understood that body parts and organs not only store physical pain and dysfunction, but energetically store emotions as well.  By linking these sites with areas that can assist in drainage for the body, we facilitate the elimination of pain & dysfunction.  This process works on all levels; physical, mental, emotional, psychological and spiritual.

It is difficult to explain the physiological reasons as to why this occurs. Nevertheless, it is widely accepted that referred pain happens when nerve fibers from regions of high sensory input (such as the skin) and nerve fibers from regions of normally low sensory input (such as the internal organs) happen to converge on the same levels of the spinal cord. The best known example is pain experienced during a heart attack. Nerves from damaged heart tissue convey pain signals to spinal cord levels T1-T4 on the left side, which happen to be the same levels that receive sensation from the left side of the chest and part of the left arm. The brain isn't used to receiving such strong signals from the heart, so it interprets them as pain in the chest and left arm.

Take for example a pain in your shoulder.  You'd probably think something was wrong with your shoulder, maybe you injured it playing tennis or slept on it the wrong way. In most cases, if the pain occurred directly after something then you are most probably right.  But what if you experience this pain for no known reason? It is unlikely that you would think that your shoulder pain is a sign of something insidious happening in your liver, gall bladder, stomach, spleen or lungs. Yes, conditions as diverse as liver abscesses, gallstones, gastric ulcers, splenic rupture, pneumonia, and pericarditis can all cause shoulder pain. Why? These organs nestle up against the diaphragm, which is innervated by two phrenic nerves (left and right). These emerge from spinal cord levels C3, C4, and C5.

Most of the time there isn't any sensation to convey from the diaphragm, at least at the conscious level. But if a nearby organ gets sick, it may irritate the diaphragm, and the sensory fibers of one of the phrenic nerves are flooded with pain signals that travel to the spinal cord (at C3-C5). Neurons at C3 & C4 also receive sensation from the shoulders (via the supraclavicular nerves). So when pain neurons at C3 and C4 sound the alarm, the brain assumes (quite reasonably) that the shoulder is to blame.

IMT builds on this knowledge, taking into account the diverse systems of the human body and addressing dysfunction at the cellular level. By treating the cause in stead of the symptoms, the results are profoundly more effective and fast.  IMT is especially effective for chronic pain sufferers or for those persons who experience pain for no known reason.