What If You Could Change Your Muscle Tension Patterns for Good?
All of these therapies are amazing and all of them help us feel better … temporarily. But addressing chronic muscle tension via the muscles is like trying to clean a dirt spot off your face by wiping the mirror.
Emotional tension — better known as stress, anxiety, worry, and fear — actually BECOMES muscle tension.
Most of us agree with this statement, to varying degrees.
We have a general sense that our bodies and minds are connected. We know or have heard that meditation helps calm our blood pressure. We all understand to some degree that chronic stress isn’t good for us and that it causes physical symptoms that aren’t pleasant.
We try a myriad of therapies and practices to alleviate the muscle tension at the area of the tight muscles.
Massage helps us feel better for about 3 days. I know this because I’m a massage therapist and I love helping people feel relaxed and restored.
Physical therapists give exercises to redistribute the responsibility of the overworking muscle. I know this can help, depending on your practitioner, but for how long?
We do yoga and stretch out our muscles and feel good.
But have you noticed how the tension comes back if you miss your regular practice schedule?
All of these therapies are amazing and all of them help us feel better … temporarily.
“But addressing chronic muscle tension via the muscles is like trying to clean a dirt spot off your face by wiping the mirror. ”
What if we were to address the muscle tension at the root cause of the tension? What if we could change our habitual muscle tension patterns for good?
In order to make lasting change in muscle tension or pain, you have to go to the source of the problem.
I propose that working with the nervous system directly is working with the root of chronically tight muscles.
The brain and nervous system are where the instructions to tense and contract the your muscles originate, and that’s where they can be turned off.
Here’s an example of how mental tension — in this case, extreme worry and anxiety — might play out in your body.
Let’s say you went through a pandemic.
You spent over a year worrying about your health, your family’s health, your job, your kids’ school and social situation, your family’s mental well being. You felt isolated because you weren’t seeing friends and you lost your usual way of managing your stress.
When you left the house, you were on high alert — scanning the grocery store for who was nearby, did they have a mask on, are they too close to you? When you brought groceries home you felt worried because you didn’t know if you were washing them well enough….and this went on for awhile.
Your nervous system was in survival mode pretty consistently for 6-12 months.
When you’re stressed for a period of time, you practice certain familiar muscular contraction patterns throughout your body.
Nerve cells continue to wire in a certain predictable stress pattern called neural pathways. The stressful feeling happens and then its corresponding habitual muscle contraction happens. Over and over and over again.
This means that if your habitually take on stress by clenching your jaw or grinding your teeth, you end up worsening your jaw tension, TMJ symptoms, and headaches.
If your tendency is to round your shoulders, then you practice your habit and create more neck and shoulder tension or pain.
If you tend to contract your belly, you probably also are not taking full deep breaths because your abdomen is contracted, your diaphragm is not moving freely, and your shoulders are rounded forwards. It’s a predictable stress muscular pattern.
We can’t control or change these patterns by forcing ourselves to have “better posture.” These become habits of contraction that happen unconsciously each time we feel anxious or stressed.
The way to unwind these patterns for good is through your nervous system — the same way they were formed in the first place.
To conclude, it’s no secret that our physical bodies are directly affected by chronic stress that we experience emotionally and mentally. We can find temporary relief by working directly with the muscles involved, but relief only lasts for a short time. To find long term relief, we have to unwind the habitual unconscious muscle contraction patterns through the same path tension was created in the first place — through our nervous system.
Here’s a free audio lesson that will help calm your stress and relax your muscles overall. Simply lie on your back on the floor or your bed and eliminate any distractions for 15 minutes. You’ll find that by doing these small, slow, gentle movements as instructed, you’ll feel mentally AND physically relaxed and calm.
Did You Know You Can Rewire Your Brain to Relieve Muscle Tension?
If you’re like me, you’ve tried many different practitioners and therapies in an attempt to relieve muscle tension and chronic neck, shoulder or back pain. You may have felt better and relaxed for a few days after a massage or relief from a physical therapy or chiropractic session.
If you’re like me, you’ve tried many different practitioners and therapies in an attempt to relieve muscle tension and chronic neck, shoulder or back pain. You may have felt better and relaxed for a few days after a massage or relief from a physical therapy or chiropractic session.
But here is THE reason manipulations involving soft tissue (muscles) never seem to last: because the “issue” — whether it’s neck and shoulder tension, jaw tension, lower back or hip or even legs and feet pain — is not being treated at the source, but at the level of the symptoms (i.e., tense muscles).
The brain is the controller
What is the “source” then? The brain is the controller of the entire body. The brain tells up when to breathe in and out and how much oxygen we need at any given moment. The brain tells our organs how and when to function.
And the brain monitors our muscle tension — when to contract and when to let go. We can apply pressure to or stretch the muscles and they’ll release, but within a short timeframe, they go right back to their habitual “patterns” of contraction.
The brain is ALWAYS working for your benefit
These unconscious habitual patterns of “holding” or contraction were put into place by your brain when your brain perceived that there was some instability in you as a whole — perhaps you experienced a period of extreme stress, perhaps there was some injury somewhere else in your body, maybe while healing, part of you was immobilized to mend, perhaps you practiced some repetitive movement or posture so often that certain muscles became the stabilizers while others didn’t carry their weight.
Every single person’s circumstances and history are unique.
We don’t have to understand WHY, only HOW
But when we work with the brain, the interesting thing is we don’t have to definitively understand WHY certain muscles are contracted, or the exact path of what caused what, when. We only need to recognize the patterns that are presenting themselves.
In the Feldenkrais Method® we don’t work at the site of the muscles — we work with the brain, the master controller of the entire body!
So… this is why this method is very likely different from anything you’ve tried before.
And this is why there’s so much hope for you to find relief for most muscle tension or chronic pain.
I’ve seen it with my clients over and over again. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve had muscle tension or where it is.
It doesn’t even matter whether you completely understand the details of how this works or even believe what I’m telling you.
When we work in person, you’re moved gently and slowly in a range that is completely comfortable and where there is no resistance. We don’t push through pain or force or strain you. The same holds true for when you participate in online lessons — you make small, slow movements in a comfortable range and rest often. During the rests the sensory information you took in by sensing and feeling yourself as you move is fed to your brain and it’s almost as if this information is “processed” by your brain and muscles spontaneously release on your behalf.
Reinforcing new neural pathways
You may notice some relief from pain the first time you have a session or practice a lesson. But remember, you’ve been “practicing” old tension patterns for a long time. So it might take several sessions to reinforce the new healthier neural pathways. I usually recommend to begin with 6 session scheduled a week apart. For more information about how often to schedule sessions, click here.
If you’d like more information about what your pain is telling you, you may like to read “The Hidden Messages in Your Pain: Why You Should Pay Attention.”
Think about when you learned your multiplication tables. (The 6s were always a challenge for me.) I could remember them for a few hours but if I didn’t practice them every day for at least a week, I would forget them and have to look. But after awhile, they became second nature to me — the neural pathways were reinforced often enough that it became permanent. And now, if I forget them for a moment from not “firing those specific neural pathways,” I only have to remind myself and they come right back to me.
Because we’re working with your brain to release muscular contractions and creating new, more comfortable muscle tone, it’s the same idea. The muscle tension that has been part of your life for months or years will let go as new sensory information is received by your brain.
New healthier neural pathways override the old, unconscious, habitual pathways and when these movements are practiced with attention, and reinforced for a period of time, the old muscle tension is permanently gone.
How to Relax Your Back and Relieve Stress with Blanket Roll Practice
This is a daily practice to help release all the muscles along your spine, as well as head and neck. It balances working out, sitting at a desk for hours, standing, being stressed and holding tension in neck, shoulders, and lower back.
This is a daily practice to help release all the muscles along your spine, as well as your head and neck, pelvis and legs. It balances working out, sitting at a desk for hours, standing, being stressed and holding tension in neck, shoulders, and lower back.
If you suffer from chronic pain that includes back, neck, shoulders, jaw, pelvis… this simple self care practice is designed to help you! To learn more about how to personalize your own self care practice, click here.
During this practice, I recommend that you give your arms, hands and eyes a rest from scrolling on your phone. Listen to your favorite relaxing podcast or music, or simply clear your mind. Use the time to relax.
Try it each evening for 15 minutes for 3 weeks and see what you notice. You can use this during the day to restore yourself or at home before bed.
Roll a dense blanket up so that it is the length of your head/torso and lay it on the floor perpendicular to a chair or couch. Make certain your entire head and pelvis fit on the roll. (The roll does not have to be large. It is simply a reference point for your spine. Do NOT use a foam roller. A yoga blanket is perfect.)
Place two bed pillows on the floor close to blanket roll for your arms and shoulders.
Lie down on the roll so that your head and tailbone are on the roll. Rest your lower legs (calves) on the couch or a chair. (Your knees should be at a 90 degree angle, parallel to the sofa; your feet are neither lower or higher than your knees.)
Rest your shoulders and arms on the pillows. Push the pillows close to your spine/the blanket roll so that your shoulders are fully supported.
Optional: place a small rolled up wash cloth underneath your neck (not as a pillow, but as a support for your cervical spine only). The towel roll should “kiss” your neck, not lift it— simply touch it so that your neck muscles can relax and feel supported.
Imagine that all the muscles of your entire back body are "draped" over the blanket roll.
When you are ready to come out of this resting pose, roll to the side and remove the blanket roll, then lie flat for a few minutes on the floor and notice the how your back feels on the floor. Do you feel flatter? Wider? Does your back feel as if it’s “spreading” onto the floor?
This is the feeling of relaxed muscles that are not in contraction.
The more you practice this, you will prime your brain. And the more quickly your muscles will release.
Enjoy!