I think about muscles a lot, my muscles, other peoples’ muscles, my dogs’ muscles, cats’ muscles and monkeys’ muscles.

Without even considering the physiology (the way they work) of muscles, the ethos of muscles is quite extraordinary. Think about this:

Muscles are a reflection of you on almost every level of your existence. They are a reflection of your physical existence, how they adapt and conform to the stress of your occupation, of your habits, such as physically standing with your weight shifted to one side, or sitting with your legs crossed, holding your head to one side… You can often get close to determining a person’s chosen sport or occupation just by looking at their physicality. Bones and joints don’t readily adapt to postures or physical stress. Muscles do.

Muscles are a reflection of you on an emotional level. Your state of mind is reflected in your posture, don’t some peoples’ bodies radiate to the world that they are happy, confident and self assured? Or that that they are miserable, despairing and grieving? It’s only muscles that can naturally pull the skin around your eyes into laughter lines, only muscles that create the furrowed brow or frown lines that become etched into the face from overuse. Muscles will hold the tension of your worry in your trapezius muscles (the muscles on top of your shoulders going up to your neck) and, if you stop worrying for a moment, turning your head will aggravate the tension, reawakening the worry in your mind, creating a negative cycle.

“Relax the mind and muscles will relax. Relax the muscles and the mind will relax.” Is a positive cycle.

“Tense the mind and muscles will tighten, tighten muscles and the mind will tense” is a negative cycle

Did you know the same thing happens in your gluteal muscles (in your bum), where do you think the phrases “he’s a pain in the A***” or “She’s a pain in the neck” came from?

Muscles are a reflection of your chemical composition, i.e. what you eat and drink. Muscle action is regulated by a complex series of reactions involving various substances. Electrolytes such as calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium need to be perfectly balanced for optimal muscle activity. This balance can be affected by water intake or lack of, by what we eat, or don’t eat,  even by what we breathe. Drugs can affect muscle activity, for instance the latest cholesterol drugs, statins, are well known for their muscle cramping side effects.

 I remember being taught at osteopathy college that ‘Muscles are the slaves of the Joints’ But I believe they are both slave and master to almost every facet of our existence!

They are a marvel, an enigma, a miracle of bio-mechanical magnificence beyond our ability to fully understand. The accepted theory of muscle physiology is the ‘Sliding Filament theory’

The ‘sliding filament theory’ is a bit like the ‘big bang’ theory, i.e. lots of clever people have done lots of study and explained quite well what happens back to a certain point, but beyond that it’s still all guess work.  The ‘Big Bang’ theory is great, but for me doesn’t mean much unless someone can explain to me the origin of all the matter that was to about to explode at the beginning of time.

Similarly with muscle action, the theory is grand until we get to the point of little microscopic oars ‘rowing’ and creating a ratchet effect that pulls microfilaments together. The only problem is, no one knows how this happens, let alone how it happens with enough power for a weight lifter to thrust 300 pounds over his head!

What we do know about muscles and about the body is that they want to be ‘normal’. They want to function at 100% efficiency. When the body is forced to adapt due to the factors mentioned above, (physical, chemical and emotional stresses) that function and efficiency is reduced, and if this state continues, or is repeated for long enough, the central nervous system will start to accept the feedback from these muscles as a ‘normal’ state and will eventually give up it’s efforts to re-balance them. (See Paul Sherwood ) So we end up with perpetually over stretched or over shortened muscles.

I find myself thinking of this in response to many observations over the years, children for instance: I remember once,  tossing and turning all night on the hard ground sheet of our tent, whilst my two young children snored peacefully beside me. I woke up feeling as though the cows on the other side of the canvas must have trampled me during the 4 minutes of sleep that I did get, whilst my children awoke refreshed and ready to go. What is it that happens to our muscles so that we can no longer lay comfortably on a hard floor?

We are conditioned to accept this as an inevitable effect of aging, but I’m not convinced.

Why? Because, I see my 8 year old Pyrenean mountain dog able to lay comfortably with her neck locked at 90 degrees to her body on the edge of a step for hours… 8 years in a Pyrenean is the equivalent of retirement age in a human. My neck is aching annoyingly as i write this, and it’s just slight bent forward!

My friend Carole has a cat of 18 years! That’s the equivalent of about 120 In human years! It is a bag of old bones, tatty fur and serious bad breath, but I’ve seen it jump over 3 times it’s body length from one high surface to another! Can you imagine grandma doing that!?

We possess that innate flexibility and bounding spring as children, so how come we lose it, but cats don’t?

Dysfunctional muscles are painful to press into during therapy (see Why do my muscles hurt?) and for a long time, I’ve wondered if some form of anaesthesia would enable me to work on the knotted over contracted muscle painlessly and if, when the patient awoke, would they find the knot had miraculously disappeared?

But some questions arise from this thought:- What little I’ve been able to discern about the affects of anaesthesia on muscles leads me to think that when a person is completely unconscious, there are no knots! There would be nothing for me to work on!

This would suggest that the number one source of physical pain in the civilised world, (muscle dysfunction) would have it’s genesis in the mind, somewhere in the sub-conscious. If this is true then big questions are raised about muscle knots and contractions, and all the philosophies upon which I base my practise would be turned on their head.

We could suppose that this is obviously not the case, because of the results I achieve through the work that I do (see Testimonials) but then again maybe I am affecting the sub-conscious, through my interaction with someone’s physical being ?(remember ‘relax the body and the mind follows’) Perhaps I'm working on more than the purely physical level?

I’ve long been aware that my explanations and reassurance are very important to most patients, and instrumental in their subsequent recovery.

It’s also long been observed that charismatic and confident therapists get better results with patients than their  perhaps more skilled, but less charismatic peers. 

Thinking along these lines brings us to another aspect of our being:- energy. I wouldn’t class myself as particularly charismatic, nor, at the beginning of my practise, confident, but I somehow developed a successful business run on referrals alone. It’s possible that this came about through my intense desire to make people better. There is no doubt that my skills and knowledge are far in excess of what they were 15 years ago, but back then I was still able to help enough people that my practice grew.

So what happened when I worked with someone? Was there, is there a change occurring in their body based on my intent? Independent of what I do physically? Is my belief that I will make a change the most important factor?

 What are the implications for our own muscles through self treatment...