How To Relax Muscles

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Can anyone suggest non-pharmaceutical substances or methods which promote relaxation of the muscles? Diazepam is not a long-term solution.
 

Dave Clark

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- Stretching
- Magnesium
How about tart cherry extract? PEMF therapy may help since it also reduces inflammation and increases circulation. Also, along with Mg, try increasing potassium if you are not getting enough, or trying a chelate like the aspartates. Progesterone relaxes smooth muscle, not sure about other muscles.
 
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GABA, Lysine, Skullcap
 

Literally

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Rosemary. Make tea with it. I often combine a big dose of peppermint with a small dash of rosemary (since the latter is quite potent).
 

fradon

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Can anyone suggest non-pharmaceutical substances or methods which promote relaxation of the muscles? Diazepam is not a long-term solution.

you may have anger issues. anger builds up and causes muscle tension. try using therabands or do a work out like tai bo.
 

systematic

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Can anyone suggest non-pharmaceutical substances or methods which promote relaxation of the muscles? Diazepam is not a long-term solution.

Hey,

I would strongly suggest you try Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR). Basically, it is a process of systematically relaxing all muscles in the body, whereby you tense each muscle for, say, 10 seconds, and then release it. Noticing the difference between the muscle in the tense and relaxed states automatically enables it to relax.

Another thing well worth trying - perhaps in tandem with PMR - is Yoga Nidra. It's a process from where you use your attention to relax the whole of your body at a very deep and incredibly profound level; it's a kind of conscious sleep. The Bihar School of Yoga have done an excellent book - and audio - on how to do this. There are also other audios out there, but it's best to make sure it's the traditional Yoga Nidra process, and not some cheap imitation someone has made just to piggyback on the name and make money.
 

Literally

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Short version: buy this book and a TheraCane (or one of the competing products) and go to town.

https://www.amazon.com/Trigger-Point-Therapy-Workbook-Self-Treatment/dp/1608824942/

Long version: My aha moments with trigger point therapy were coupled with reading some works by Moshe Feldenkrais regarding sensory-motor amnesia. I have invested a large amount of time in not just the trigger point therapy, but on learning to feel and sense gravity again.

Maybe you think you can sense gravity. But you probably can't. It's like driving a familiar road that seems "straight" as you navigate all the curves -- your body eventually learns the patterns and loses the actual sense of space. Cannabis is helpful for regaining it by the way. The first time I re-experienced gravity was breathtaking. One way to do this is to do a lot of symmetrical movements and feel very carefully whether the same muscular patterns are really the same on each side.

In general, what you want to do is the follow up the trigger point therapy with consciousness work and trying to figure out what muscles want to turn ON. Trigger point therapy is beautiful in that it tells you exactly which muscles are overworking and gives you a "button" you can press to disrupt that movement pattern. But it's as important what you do afterwards or you can end up just repeating the same bad patterns. There are some exercises int he back of the book that can help with this, but I'd look beyond the book to mobility exercises etc.

Oh yeah and it hurts like a (W#*@ $(*($ @)!#(... at least it does for me, when I need it. Short term pain for long term gain. My posture is way better from doing this than from any of the postural exercises I used to try. Strength throughout the body is more balanced. Basically any pain from muscular issues I know I can resolve pretty quickly, which is empowering. Including most headaches.

Use with caution... if you have a lot of issues, fixing one thing can just reveal more problems, can of worms style. You can incapacitate yourself if not careful. And you need to follow the reference to avoid poking organs and stuff, in certain places.

BTW there is some solid science behind this. Trigger points are objectively real. They occur at the points of greatest biomechanical stress.

Hope this helps!
 

ebs

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Thanks for this great advice. I've been looking into it myself and it has taken a lot of months of agony to figger out that trigger points seem to be causing my chronic pain. I happened to have bought a sort of theracane last week and I've been poking around with it to localize the exact trigger point spots. It has already been much more effective than those stupid tennis or lacrosse balls that only aggravate it.

These trigger points can cause hell with CNS issues such as brain fog and agitation, which is much worse than the pain itself. This is apparantly known as central sensitization that can be caused by this myofascial pain syndrome. (Here's an interesting link about it: Myofascial pain syndrome and sensitization)

I have them along my right shoulder blade and I think it all started with irritation of the dorsal scapular nerve. Ofcourse activation of these trigger points may have caused this too and I believe releasing them will relieve me of this burdening.

I've learned a lot from the painscience.com website which also recomnends this book.

Thanks to this massage tool I've been able to find this "button" that I suspect as the main suspect. Pressing on it creates a sharp pain that actually feels a lot better than the dull and deep ache it normally causes. It actually feels like a relieve (such as a deep massage) and I noticed it helps more if I keep pressure on it for as long as an hour (or two). It seems to be a really stubborn one and I think it will need a lot of work to be able to release it. How did this work out for you? Any tips?

I've also been doing some dry needling which seems promising. The therapist had been able to release a trigger point in the infraspinatus which immediately loosened up the muscle which felt great. But he hasn't released the most aggravating one so far in what appears to be the rhomboid because he treated the area around it.

I agree with postural exercises (and stretches) that seem to only aggravate it. However, good posture helps with the symptoms.

Overall I can relate to much of your description and you seem to be well versed in it. How long did it take for you to release your trigger points and did you do it all by yourself? Any more advice and tips will be much appreciated.
 

Waynish

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-- Enough calories
-- Enough minerals (topically too)
-- Enough signal from nerves
-- Correct posture
-- Breathing into them
 

Literally

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@ebs glad to hear you are making progress with this.

I hear that you are looking at trigger points as a cause, but I would suggesting also thinking about them as effects.

There are a bunch of reasons that trigger points can be sustained, but one of the key reasons they happen is that the body wants to lock down certain movement patterns after feeling unsafe, or getting injured. In this sense they are causing problems. But in a larger sense they are the effect of problems that have not been addressed.

Releasing a trigger point gives you the opportunity to create new movement patterns, hopefully exploring new kinds of body movements in a way that feels safe. Often that is enough. But in my case the root cause of the trigger points was severe "sensory-motor amnesia" as Feldenkrais calls it and a lifetime on building on top of a structural alignment that was out of wack.

If your issues are deep you may find that fixing one set of trigger points will soon be followed by trigger points in a new area. This can be frustrating, but think of it as peeling back the layers of an onion. Fixing one assymetry in your musculature may just reveal the next-most-serious one. But you can make progress if you keep at it. This means you need to keep exploring your body over and over again and looking for trigger points. They will rarely be obvious, even if you have a sense there is something wrong. This is "by design"... feeling all our aches and pains all the time is not good for overall functioning. So seek them out.

>> I noticed it helps more if I keep pressure on it for as long as an hour (or two). It seems to be a really stubborn one and I think it will need a lot of work to be able to release it. How did this work out for you? Any tips?

I have definitely had very stubborn areas like this. One way to think of it is that the body is clinging to one way of moving because it's "scared" or unfamiliar with the alternatives. So you will really want to keep working at it, until you can break through and find a new pattern. The official advice from a trigger point therapy perspective is to keep treatments brief, and make sure you are following proper technique (e.g. pushing across in one consistent direction to try to flush out the metabolic waste that accumulates around trigger points). However you can repeat the treatment every 2-3 hours and this is what I would do.

In many cases I used to have problem areas where repeated treatment like this would actually bruise me. People will find this shocking and it's obviously something you want to approach with some wisdom if at all. My attitude was: who cares about some superficial bruising if that is what it takes to disable the trigger points long enough for my body to find better alternatives?

Also when dealing with major problems like that, I observed the following pattern. I would have a major breakthrough, marked by feeling a better way to hold my body and feeling very good. Then 1-2 days later the old pattern and trigger points come back with a vengeance. This is when you double down and repeat the process. For me that is usually when it sticks.

>> Overall I can relate to much of your description and you seem to be well versed in it. How long did it take for you to release your trigger points and did you do it all by yourself? Any more advice and tips will be much appreciated.

Don't let this discourage you but I worked on myself for about 10 years before I felt like I had completely changed all my movement patterns. I did it all myself... it would have cost a fortune to have someone else do. But I had a lot of issues. I literally felt like I learned new patterns for walking, sitting, etc. During the process, some of the muscle alignments in my face changed so much that some of my wrinkle lines moved, believe it or not. Another thing, I used to have tiny calves. After releasing calves over and over again for years -- some of the most painful btw -- I now have bigger calf muscles than when I used to repeatedly lift. Same goes for biceps actually.

The book addresses many techniques for making working on yourself practical, including supported hand positions to use to you don't overstrain your hands. And whenever possible I would recommend finding methods that do not even use your hands. I can release the trigger points in my calves using my feet for example. You can release scapula by pressing back into a wall, etc.

If you keep working at this you will be able to help other people who think "their back is out" or who have headaches or whatever. It is very gratifying, but one thing you will learn is that many people are NOT in a place where they are willing to endure the relatively minor amount of pain of trigger point release even if it makes them feel better. I had a friend once who only let me work on him after months of knee problems when docs started talking about surgery. We looked up the his referred pain (i.e. pain that is located away from the source) in the book, and I released trigger points mostly around the back of his legs and while he practically fought me, screamed, etc. He went outside and ran after that and never had to see another doc or have another trigger point session either.

Once I showed a friend who had been having headaches a series of 6 or 8 trigger point releases from the book. He went and puked, slept from about 8pm to morning and woke up with no headaches... but would never let me work on him again. He does a limited version of itself now, but all this is to say... the pain of dealing with this stuff can be a huge issue for people. I would suggest that is part of how people get into problems in the first place. The puking was because of metabolic waste being released from so many trigger points at once btw.

So I would advise you to approach with a lot of care and caution, whether working on yourself or others. But how awesome is it that there is a technology out there that is free, science-based, and able to fix so many different kinds of issues?
 
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ebs

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Thanks again for taking the time to write down such extensive advice.

I'm not sure how to visualize these different moving patterns. There's only so much moving patterns that effect the scapula, and it mostly just involves the arm.

Also, what kind of release technigue proved to be the most effective for you? Putting pressure on the spots with the theracane and hold it for a few minutes several times a day, or was there more to it? How long did it generally take for you to release a trigger point and how did you know when it was released? Did the muscle loosen up? I've read on the painscience website that sometimes it can actually feel worse before it gets better.
 

Literally

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@ebs my advice to you would be that with/after trigger point therapy you just experiment with moving your body safely through as many different ranges as possible, while being deliberately conscious of your body.

Secondly, everything in your musculature is connected to everything else. This is not an overgeneralization, it is literally true because of the fascia. If you keep working on it, you will get to the point where when you release a trigger point you will also feel adjustments throughout your body that you can make to reduce the stress on that spot and/or compensate for that trigger point being turned off. As or after you release, just try moving your body in many different ways, try randomly flexing muscles. You will start making the connections. There is an exercise in the back of the blue book where you close your eyes and allow your body to start sort of shaking randomly. You might want to give that a try.

I don't think I can really help with your last set of questions as it is hard to describe this stuff in words. The blue book has a very good description, I would follow it. You should be feeling the trigger points release in many cases, and if they don't, come back to them.

>> can actually feel worse before it gets better.

IMO almost every significant problem has this characteristic. If there was a smooth gradient between where you were and where you need to be, you wouldn't be stuck with a significant problem. Mathematically this works out in terms of local vs global optima... to get to the deepest valley you might need to climb some hills. Conversely, to get to the tallest hill you might have to descend into some valleys. In folk medicine there is a principle known as "The Law of the Cure" and it is basically: things always get worse before they get better. While not every problem has this characteristic, there are deep reasons that many do. Just look at the example of a trigger point hurting before it releases.

Another way of looking at this is you often have to add significant energy to a system to get out of a "localized" sticking point. This is one reason Ray Peat's emphasis on metabolism is so effective. You could think a soccer ball rolling down a hill. If the low energy point at the bottom of the hill is the good place we want to reach, the soccer ball is likely to get stuck in the smaller bumps and depressions that cover the side of the hill. But if you kick it down with enough added energy, it will sail right over or bounce over the little depressions and won't get stuck.

Hope you will let us know your progress.
 
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youngsinatra

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Lowering lactic acid would be my approach.
Thiamin and magnesium, with a big delicious meal with adequate carbs and salt to taste.
 

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