… from the introduction of Melting Muscles by Patrick Moore
available in print and as an ebook in July 2010
Melting Muscles is a technique for relaxing another person’s muscles.
Introducing Muscles To You
Imagine muscles are people who speak a different language than you do. While they don’t speak your language it is easy to think of them as maual laborers, servants or slaves. In these conditions you may be able to persuade them to do what you want… or maybe not.
What if you learned their names? What if you learned their language? What if you learned the language well enough to ask them who they are, what family they come from, how they feel about their neighbors, if they believe in a being that is more advanced than muscles are, and what they want from life? What if you could tell them, in their own language, that you agree to adopt their values and that you only mean to help them? I think you would have a much better chance of gaining their cooperation.
Name Introductions
To be introduced to someone, you first learn her name. Do you want to learn muscle names in Latin or in the language they speak? Okay, what language do they speak? Muscles’ motor nerves allow them to a) contract, and b) relax. That’s their entire spoken alphabet. Contraction can be long or short, pulsed, strong or gentle. That’s their entire spoken vocabulary. Muscles’ sensory nerves allow them to sense: their length, and how fast the length is changing. Pressing into these sensory nerves also gives them a sense of being touched, including relief, like dogs love to be touched. Each muscle is named, “the muscle that connects this bone to that one.” By this and that bone, they do not mean the Latin names of the bones, but simply the bones they can feel gripped in their two tendons. If you wish to address a muscle by its own unique name in its own language, you would a) press into the muscle, which is like its first name, and b) move one of its bones so that it is closer or further from the other one, which is like its family name (there may be brother and sister muscles that also connect the same two bones). Memorizing the Latin names, origins and insertions of the latin names of the bones, and actions, is helpful as a preliminary. But then to be fluent, you’ll make a transition—not exactly forgetting the Latin but suddenly seeing each muscle as “the being that pulls these two bones together.”
Handshake Introductions
Introductions, when done well, serve to relax the parties being introduced. Shaking hands gives each party a sense of the other, and elements of the handshake transfer a sense of sincerity and trust. I recently joined a gym where the salesman shook my hand six times during the hour. He used a new handshaking technique with his fingers splayed wide open. I took this as an advertisement of openness, transparency. However, as I began to see through his motives, I began to see his handshake technique as false advertising.
When you are introduced to new muscles, how do you set them at ease? We need to know how muscles relax. Can muscles be forced to relax? Can muscles be tricked to relax, like the salesman’s handshake?
Relaxing means stopping contraction. Muscles contract only when nerves command them to do so. Muscles relax only when nerves command them to do so. Muscles that have been commanded to contract continue to contract during sleep—the parts of the brain that control muscle contraction do not sleep. We call ongoing contraction guarding. In the absence of new signals from the brain, muscles will remain guarded day and night for years or decades. In fact, muscles that were contracting at death will remain tense for days after death.
Muscles cannot be forced to relax. Can the brain be forced to relax the muscles? Trainers think they are mechanically lengthening a muscle when they use force to pull the limb further from the body (called stretching). Therapists think they are mechanically softening a muscle when they mash it or spread its fibers. However, muscles are so strong they could tear the tendons right off the bones, as people sometimes do in emergencies when a baby is trapped under a car. A trainer is simply are not strong enough to force even the weakest muscle to lengthen, unless the brain decides to let the muscle lengthen.
When force works, it works by persuasion, with the brain’s agreement. Her brain notes that the trainer is trying to force her muscles to lengthen. Her brain calculates the pros and cons of allowing the trainer to succeed. Perhaps the brain just wants to be polite, thinking if it lets the trainer win, the trainer will feel like he did a good job. A few hours after the stretching is over, when her brain is no longer invested in making him feel successful, it simply restores the muscles to the previous settings. Another scenario is that her brain realizes it could win the battle but with the amount of force he is using, something may tear if she does not let go. Her brain does not want to allow anything to tear so it chooses to relent. Again, once she has left the trainer’s presence, there is no good reason for her brain to continue the change she was forced to accept. When force is used to lengthen her muscles, she will wake up the next morning with muscles no longer than they were the day before, because it was not her choice to relax.
The only thing that can relax her muscles is her brain’s choice. The very generalized reason muscles would remain contracted even when trying to relax, is that they are protecting something that does not feel safe. When you introduce yourself safely and maintain your message of safety throughout the session, she can afford to choose to relax. Soon we will see what muscles consider to be safe.
This is good news. A person who thinks she has a bad neck thinks she has a mechanical problem that, short of a neck replacement, she will have to live with. Not so. All she has to do is change her brain’s choices and even a neck that’s been tight for 70 years will relax. All you have to do is have a safe conversation with her muscles. Soon we will see how to converse with muscles.
… below are two pages from the technique portions of the book:
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