A friends daughter has just given birth to her first child. As you can imagine there is much joy and delight for the families of both parents of this new being. This wonderful event has drawn my attention to muscles, and how they work.
Looking at and holding a new baby I am in awe of how quickly this tiny, soft bundle will go from no voluntary muscle control to, in 12 months or so, be crawling, balancing, toddling, all to the joyful encouragement of anyone on the scene. This child will also begin eating and drinking without assistance, turning pages in story books, attempting to put on shoes and items of clothing and mimicking what the “big people” are doing, all in the first year pr two.
All this physical activity is dependant on muscles. Without control of the voluntary muscles of our body we would be as helpless as that new-born baby.
Babies have their muscles in place at birth but these have too little tone for specific activity as yet. While in the womb there was no need for muscle tone as the environment was fluid, there was nowhere to go and nothing to do but let nature take its course over a nine-month period.
This is the real miracle to me – how a cell can be fertilized and begin to divide into two cells, four cells, eight cells and continue to follow a blueprint over nine months to grow into a whole baby.
And once born this baby will have to learn to live under the pressure of our atmosphere, a very different demand from in the womb. That very demand will develop tone in muscles till this little one can “find its feet”, stand up, toddle, walk and then run.
Muscle Is Remarkable Tissue
Muscles make up 70 to 85% of your body weight, depending on your physique and fitness level. Muscle fibres have the unique ability to contract and release, shorten and lengthen, and are responsible for almost all movement in and by the body.
Some muscles are classed as voluntary muscles. They are the ones we activate when we to cook dinner, draw up a plan, create a garden, use our computer, hug those we love, go for a walk or swim. These are the ones we can overwork at the gym or strain when lifting the groceries out of the car boot.
Other muscles are classed as involuntary muscles. They activate our visceral organs and keep them working as needed without requiring our conscious input. These muscles keep food moving through our digestive system, allow us to breathe in and out, and move waste material to the bladder and bowel ready to eliminate, among many other tasks that we mostly don’t think about.
Muscles are the most metabolically active tissue in the body and use most of the oxygen and food we provide. Muscle tone, or lack of, defines our shape and physical activity, provides stability for our joints, keep bones in place, is the source of our physical strength and influences our sense of power.
Our skeleton is held together and erect by muscles attached by tendons, ligaments and other connective tissues. It’s not the skeleton that holds us up. Without muscles doing their job we would be like a collapsed bag of disjointed bones.
Muscles work in groups with a prime mover doing the most to create a particular movement, in concert with synergists or helpers, stabilizers and bracers, and antagonists that release as the prime mover activates, to produce graceful, smooth, efficient movement.
“Any contraction in one part will necessitate lengthening in other parts, so that the entire musculature must always utilize many of the different directions of pull afforded by the arrangements of its fibres and many of the cables and levers provided by the tendons and the bones in order to execute any single change of shape,” writes Deane Juhan in Job’s Body.
In other words, any movement is not isolated to one area but engages the entire body’s muscles and connectors in greater or lesser adjustments to achieve change in body posture or movement. All your body muscles and their attachments are constantly communicating with each other and working as a single, united, synchronized whole.
This is why piece meal work on a muscle misses the point in terms of reducing pain and creating betterment in balance and co-ordination, as an isolated area of change needs to be integrated with the whole body awareness. The body operates as a whole and all upgrades need to include the whole muscle support system, not just a part. That’s what makes the Touch For Health Kinesiology muscle and energy balancing procedures so effective. You balance the whole body for every issue or stress.
Muscle Response Testing
Muscle tone and muscle responsiveness is responsible for normal posture, gestures and general movement. And it is this responsiveness of muscles that we look for and monitor in Kinesiology muscle response testing. We are testing this ability of the muscle to respond and hold its position in response to the gentle test pressure that is applied gradually to engage the lock mechanism. I train my students to feel and recognize this response in muscles. It is far more gentle and subtle than power or strength testing and avoids causing unnecessary strain.
The muscles ability to respond in this way to subtle testing indicates the conditions internally are available for the body to communicate effectively via the nervous system for efficient function and to give immediate feedback. When conditions are unfavourable the muscle effectiveness is reduced and the muscle does not fully lock and has to work much harder and recruit other muscles to do its job.
Actually, every thought can change the conditions for efficient muscle response by raising or dropping the energy flow according to the quality of each thought.
Do This
Close your eyes and hold your arm out to the side at shoulder level.
Now recall a time you were having fun. It might be the last time you were at the beach, or hiking in the hills, or sailing, or fishing, or pottering in the garden. Hold that thought for a bit and note how your arm feels.
Change your thought. Recall a time you were annoyed, fed up, despondent or anxious. Hold that thought for a bit and note how your arm feels.
Shift from the pleasant or fun thought to opposite thought a few times, waiting for a few seconds at each change to tune in and note the feel of your arm.
What you are likely to notice is that as you think of the “fun” time your arm feels lighter, easier to maintain, and when you shift to a “no fun” thought your arm feels heavier. That is your arm muscle, middle deltoid, demonstrating that you need more effort to hold out your arm for a “no fun” thought because your energy level to the muscle doing the job out just dropped.
Your habitual thinking can make you feel lighter or heavier, increase your energy or decrease it. Every thought has a muscle and energy pattern.
In everyday life muscles under constant strain can become overloaded and complain by causing pain. Muscles can also become underactive through congestion of accumulated waste products, or due to lack of fresh oxygen and nutrients to support cell action, or due to reduced energy availability.
The range of contraction and release will govern flexibility in movement. Reduced flexibility and use of muscles response will make us feel old and weak. “Some of the most tangible and troublesome features of age itself are simple conditions of muscular activity … that create all kinds of limitations to movement and that waste precious vitality,” says Deane Juhan in his book Job’s Body.
Muscles and how they work reflects how we think habitually. Constantly focused on energy sapping thoughts will drop body vitality and reduce muscle activity, creating a continuous downward spiral in health and energy.
Rigid muscles often reflect rigid habits and rigid thoughts that become more obvious as we age. Restoring muscle responsiveness to structural muscles returns power to the muscles, increases circulation and energy flow, revives flagging spirits and uplifts motivation and interest to a more youthful functional age – thank goodness.
Kinesiology muscle balancing brings holistic change to body, mind and spirit.
Cheers
Anna