Massaging Muscles In Their Shortened Positions
Muscles melt when the person’s brain begins relinquishing its guarding. Guarding is the person subconsciously maintaining a higher-than-natural muscle contraction, day and night. Massaging muscles in their shortened positions triggers a neurological response of relaxation. One of your hands palpates or presses a muscle while your other hand controls muscle length by moving a limb or joint. In this way, your hands make a more direct connection with the part of the person’s brain which controls guarding.
Triggering muscles to melt is only the beginning. Once you notice and relish this response, you have the opportunity to respond back, continuing the dialogue, essence to essence. Service leaps to a deeper dimension.
Massage therapists relax muscles. The muscles need relaxing because they are guarded. Guarding is the person subconsciously maintaining a higher-than-natural muscle contraction, day and night. This article introduces you to the connection between your hands and the person’s subconscious awareness. Massaging muscles in their shortened positions triggers a neurological response of relaxation. After reading this article once, any student of massage, beginning, or advanced practitioner will be able to use this simple method. I hope you find that the muscles melt more easily than before. I hope the results from your first attempt will be promising enough to motivate you to practice, so you develop your connection with the people into a truly meaningful service.
THREE EXPERTS AGREE: TREAT MUSCLES IN THEIR SHORTENED POSITIONS
I was first directed to massage a muscle in its shortened position in 1994 by Rich Phaigh LMT. The muscle was the psoas. While the person is face up, one of the therapist’s hands grasps under the person’s knee and moves the knee superiorly, which shortens the psoas, then the other hand’s fingertips friction the psoas. When Rich showed me this position, I found the psoas began to melt almost immediately. I was very curious to learn more.
By 1996 I had attended all four of Rich’s 3-day OnsenTherapy workshops repeated one, memorized his 400 pages of accompanying notes and 8 hours of video, spent a week in Eugene apprenticing during his regular practice there, read several books of Osteopathic Techniques and manual methods, and created my own logic charts and assessment sheets. I am not suggesting you do this. I only tell of my wholehearted immersion into Rich Phaigh’s technique as an example of how intense practice, curiosity, and self-directed inquiry promote the effectiveness of any technique. Treating muscles in their shortened positions was practiced long before the Osteopathic Techniques arose.
Unlike other forms of yoga, Kum Nye does not emphasize stretches. Instead, the tense muscle group is contracted into a shortened position for several minutes until it fatigues. (Kum Nye Relaxation, by Tarthang Tulku, Dharma Publishing, Berkeley, CA) There is a Kum Nye pose coincidentally similar to Rich Phaigh’s psoas release. Don’t lie on a massage table or bed; it is too soft to accomplish the pose. Lying on your back, bring one knee at a time up until both thighs are touching your ribs. Contract the psoas as strongly as you can while relaxing the rest of the body. Do not lift your butt off the ground by contracting your abdominals. Trembling will occur, then fatigue. A warm energy sooths the low back. Set the feet back down on the ground and rest. Do this three times. Kum Nye is taught as a way of healing oneself, but not yet taught as a method to heal others.
Kum Nye is usually considered an esoteric energy technique, but I intend to show how shortening tense muscles encourages the brain to respond with muscle relaxation. When I showed the pose to Rich Phaigh, he said it looked like it caused lumbar relaxation by reciprocal inhibition. You don’t have to believe in anything supernatural to see the benefit of the neurological response to relax. But first, one more expert.
Lawrence Jones D.O., after treating thousands of people, discovered this: when a tight muscle is palpated with one hand as the limb or joint is brought through its range of motion, a dramatic softening is felt in the trigger point at a certain position in the range (Jones, Lawrence H., DO, Strain and Counterstrain, 1981 by American Academy of Osteopathy, Newark Ohio, p 21-27). No force upon the trigger point is necessary, except to monitor for when it begins to soften. Holding this position for 90 seconds, followed by an ultra-slow return to neutral, ends the guarding. The discovery is that precise positioning alone can trigger the brain’s response to relinquish guarding. It sounds simple but the art of precisely moving a joint with one hand (simultaneously assessing its quality of motion) while palpating with the other hand (assessing for softening) requires a good teacher and much practice. This art is not yet taught in massage schools, except as continuing education. What can you do today, to take advantage of this discovery?
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