Myths of Massage

Comment

Comment by Gary W Addis, LMT on December 1, 2010 at 6:03pm

Mike, in my admittedly undereducated opinion, your long, detailed response doesn't negate the premise of not only myself but of numerous MT professionals who have authored articles relating to muscle memory.

I surely don't wish to engage in a detailed debate I cannot win at this early stage in my learning curve. However, I don't think anyone is claiming brain-like functions for the musculature-- I certainly am not. Lee's original comment seemed to be implying that muscles do not--by whatever mechanism--remember and correct for specific training and injuries. Your own comment, Mike, in my opinion affirms that this is just not so.

No, muscle fibers do not "think" in the manner you infer that others are saying and decide to get stronger here, relax there, build scar tissue over there to protect this or that bundle of cells. The body as a whole makes those decisions. The brain is merely control central. Individual cells decide when they need fuel, when to divide, when to give up life and dissolve into the ether. The brain doesn't order individual cells to eat and excrete; it doesn't get to delegate duties to individual cells. In other words, the brain isn't god to the body. The brain relies on the body; the body relies on the brain. The brain responds to signals provided by individual cells that react to internal and external stimuli. But it seems to be the contention of researchers that there is a mechanism through which muscles can and do interact with one another on at least a local level. I'm not educated enough to argue this point with you: I am relying on my probably faulty understanding of current research.

Am I wrong in assuming that your insistence on 100% mind control of body mechanisms denies the efficacy of energy modalities? of the spirit-mind-body connection? of reiki, qi gong, ayurveda and all other Eastern therapies? I myself haven't felt that energy flow to/from someone on my table, but I expect to one day, as I become more attuned to the universe. I am not religious, but I am spiritual, if you comprehend the difference.

I am probably not explaining my thinking very well. But then, forgive me, Mike, but I fail to see what a left hand helix or right hand helix has to do with the discussion, other than to display your superiority. I applaud your superior knowledge. As I said, I am just a student; I have lots to learn--but I will.

You may have inferred from my comments about muscle memory that I believe an individual muscle cell decides on its own to act; but that is not what I implied. Muscle responds to stimuli. As the brain itself responds to stimuli. In a very real sense the body is like, say, an ant colony or beehive. There is a queen who apparently directs daily tasks, but the queen herself is subject to the collective "mind" of the colony.

You snickered at my tongue in cheek metaphor associating adhesions and the formation of scar tissue with medicinal inoculations. A bacteria or virus gains access to the body, and the body responds. Because great harm can be done by the invader before the lymphatic system recognizes the body has been invaded, millions of years ago Nature endowed the lymphatic system with "memory"-- the next time that particular virus or bacteria comes calling, a bevy of specialized white corpuscles will be waiting to take it out immediately. That, Mike, is a form of memory...within the lymphatic system, independent of the mind. You said that muscle ganglia are programmed. What is the nature of the programming? Does it stem entirely from the brain? or is this programming inscribed within cell DNA? Doesn't the body respond to injury by the formation of scar tissue; by the formation of adhesions, which at least temporarily restrict movement either accidentally or on purpose, thereby preventing further injury?

I did not claim, nor did Lynne, that individual muscle cells decide, "Nope, I am not going to work today." An injured site informs the brain--and the rest of the body in the process--that it is injured. But if the conscious mind wishes to ignore the warning and continue to run, or lift that weight, or bang the injured fist against a stack of bricks, the entire organism will perform to its maximum potential. But only to a point. To prevent such foolhardiness by the conscious mind, Nature endowed the body with the means to protect itself. It is called the golgi tendon reflex organ. It is a chemical-mechanical process not initiated by the brain--but it can be defeated by the power of the conscious mind. Champion-caliber athletes develop the willpower to defeat this reflex (or they won't become champions). And in breaking that record, they always pay a hefty fine in pain... and, often, they incur a career-ending chronic disability.

Lynne made a point that I agreed with instantly: it made perfect sense. Adhesions and hypertonicity develop as a byproduct of activity. Perhaps, as Lynne suggests, they sometimes develop not to hinder activity but to enhance a specific activity. As in sports training, as in the skilled motions made by a brickmason or welder. It makes sense to me that hypertension in deltoid ligaments might have developed in order to help the joint perform repetitious movements with more precision and less energy expenditure. That this hypertonicity restricts normal, everyday movement, and is often painful, is not the fault of the shoulder, which tightened and formed helpful adhesions in order to perform its tasks more efficiently. That, friend, Mike, is a form of muscle memory. Not a form of conscious thought, certainly. But what is conscious thought itself but a chemical, electrical examination of chemically-inscribed memories in relation to new stimuli being sent to it by the muscles and other systems of the body?

I repeat: the body remembers. The mind remembers, the lymphatic system remembers, the musculature remembers--by whatever methodology, every cell in the body remembers its assigned tasks and responds to whatever stimuli its DNA programmed it to respond to. Labeling the process something other than memory is just semantics.

Comment by lee kalpin on December 1, 2010 at 10:25am

I posted the original statement on this topic, when I stated that muscles do not have memories, no matter how much it may seem as if they do. I have wanted to respond but didn't feel that I am the best person to explain the science behind my statement. I have called on my friend Mike Dale, BSc, RMT to help out, and he has written an excellent response, which I am posting below. Mike has been practicing what you would call "Medical Massage" since 1995 and has been teaching Physiology and Pathology in massage therapy colleges for many years. Here is his response----------

Muscles don't have nightmares ...... I mean memories. Brains do.
Personal experience and observation adds up to ..... belief. Evidence and science add up to best practice.
Strict diet regulation and resistance training ("training like a demon") adds up to fat loss and strength increase... no surprise there.
Basal ganglia are programmed to coordinate complex patterned movement. Dumb ass collagen protein chains aren't.
Old injuries will retain their disorganized scar tissue patterns unless you intervene to reorganize it along the original lines of orientation by using frictions to break down the fibers that go the wrong way and allow Mother Nature to encourage new fibers that go along the original lines of orientation. That is how you come up with the treatment plan timing. Break it down, let it heal randomly (the only way it knows) and break the new fibers that are going the wrong ways while preserving the good ones. At the end of the treatment plan, the only survivors are the fibers that go along the original lines of orientation.
Fascia and muscles inoculating themselves against future attacks????? There is no mechanism to do this other than their natural tone, which they have anyways.
Re:Fascia and its electrical system. Collagen is 120,000 times longer than it is wide, so think long and skinny. It is also a left hand helix (a corkscrew winding to the left). It is also electrically unstable, so it finds two others and they all twist around each other to become stable. This gives it the appearance of a right hand helix. It's actually 3 fiber twists that you're looking at simultaneously. If this is hard to visualize, take a rope apart and you'll see that this is true. The tubule is just looking down the end of the fiber. You are looking down the center of three spiralling tubes. What gets interesting is that this collagen fiber is a semi-conductor. This means that energy can change states. A conductor is like an electrical cord going to your lamp. Flip it around, step on it, .... no change. The light bulb is a semi-conductor. Electricity goes in and it is changed to heat, light, sound (if the filament vibrates), movement (if the filament vibrates), and some just stays as electricity. If you look at a one of those swimming noodles, picture it as a collagen fiber. Now put a bunch of + signs along the top and put an equal number of - signs along the bottom. It is balanced and electrically neutral. If you bend it, you compress the negatives along the bottom and stretch the positives along the top. This creates an energy imbalance at this point and electrons will flow. You just created a battery. This is the premise of the movie "The Matrix". People had to dream to keep them moving and so that they could produce electricity. Movement of any sort deflects collagen and produces an energy field. This does not mean it has purpose, it is just a phenomenon that occurs everywhere in nature. We intersect these fields constantly without consequence. We don't short circuit just because a collagen-filled cat spins around our shins.
Golgi tendon organs are not remotely like fascia. Fascia is a holding element with high tensile strength and low elasticity all the time. Golgi tendon organ is a neurologic control mechanism that can protect a muscle from rupture due to overloading. However, its main moment to moment function is to equalize contractile forces among the individual fibers in a muscle. When an individual fiber starts pulling ahead of the pack, it is prone to rupture but is inhibited by the GTO. Once its tension falls within normal limits, it is released to pull again.
In short, his science is well off the mark.
When you practice a skill such as dancing, fast draw, swinging a bat, etc., you are not teaching your muscles to remember. You are teaching your brain to stengthen a neuropathway. Like many other organs, it responds to stress by adapting. do it once and it copes as best it can. Continue the activity and the brain adapts to make it easier by increasing the size and number of vessicles producing neurotransmitters that are released into the synaptic cleft. The receptors on the other side multiply and become more sensitive. That is why a novice dancer struggles with the basics but an experienced dancer can learn a brand new routine by the second run. The patterns are already strongly imprinted on the neuropathways. This is also why studying every day for a little bit is more effective than cramming. If you want to transfer a memory into long-term memory, you have to exercise the pathway causing a physical, structural change in the neuropathway. short-term memory is a chemical pathway.
A physical, structural change in a neuropathway may appear to be a "muscle memory" but it is in fact a brain memory.
Feel free to use my name because, sure as s***, someone will take exception to this.
Mike

Comment by Gary W Addis, LMT on November 30, 2010 at 6:53am

Lynne, an excellent response. Somewhere back in my mind, it had recently occurred to me that, maybe, just maybe, all adhesions aren't bad. For instance, as a bodybuilder I work hard and diet tight in order to enhance muscle definition, to bring out striations in the muscle. Now that you've mentioned it, it makes perfect sense that what bodybuilders strive for is the development of adhesions that peg diet-thin skin to muscle fibers. Standing on competition stage, the bodybuilder's body is tight and rather stiff...the skin adheres tightly to the pecs, the triceps and especially to the quadriceps close to the knee--heck, the really well defined display striated glutes!

A couple of days ago, I pinned and stretched the skin of my upper lats and enhanced ROM of my arm and shoulder on that side--I had thought the tightness was due to a tight triceps or deltoid.

Thank you for your thoughtful response.

Comment by Lynne Stiller on November 30, 2010 at 12:33am

I agree that muscles have memories...but they are not always due to pain oe bad memories. We learn a new skill and as we become proficient at it we develop habits & 'memories' in the muscles. To 'break up' all adhesious we find would be detrimental to a rock climber or cyclist or any other specialized hobbiest or athlete (some may be careers too).
One of the biggest myths is that 'deep tissue' massage requires pressure. If that were true, acupuncturists would still have to use large, thick arrows to get good results. Instead most good acupuncturists use careful assessment, specific placement, and itty-tiny, thin, super sharp needles to accomplish amazing results. So why do massage therapists still blunder blindly through the body with broad, general, heavy forearm strokes and wiggly, sloppy, thick elbows and an assortment of clumsy, knobby, bumbling, numb 'hand-saving' tools without a clear goal, purpose, or even an educated guess as to the results beyond a well meaning, but ignorant "this feels tight here" and "you have a knot".

My dad was in construction in Chicago & when we moved to TX, he complained about an existing shopping mall that had a few ruts in the parking lot. I didn't have his training and knowledge, but he said that shopping center would always have problems because they poured dirt over marshy organic matter instead of digging down to bedrock or atleast removing the organic matter and putting down compacted stone or gravel. And he was right. That parking lot had to be repaved every few years & the foundation under the grocery store cracked & the grocery store had to move because you can't sell or store food over a cracked foundation.
As massage therapists, if we don't know how to assess and 'repair' the 'foundation' of our clients, then all we can do is play catch-up on their pain & problems. Every therapist is able to learn how to assess and balance the core muscles of our clients (repair the foundation). So why don't all therapists do a good assessment? Do they not care? Are the therapists too lazy? Do they honestly believe that relaxation massage is ALL that a therapist is able to do?
If massage therapy were truly limited to relaxation, then it should be taught in cosmotology classes along with manicures and brow waxing for rich, snobbish clientelle only.

Comment by Gary W Addis, LMT on November 26, 2010 at 2:20am

Just stumbled across this discussion. Lee Kalpin's statement that muscles do not have memories.

Although I am just an MT student, I am a certified personal trainer, and since 1978, I have been a bodybuilder. I competed and won some impressive titles, including Southeastern Mr America and the masters class of the South American Bodybuilding Championships. So, although I have yet to earn the right to label myself a massage therapist, I have been a student of anatomy and kinesiology and nutrition for decades.

Through both personal experience and observation, I know factually that muscle does indeed have a memory, and once formed retains that memory for a lifetime. On a number of occasions circumstances forced me into long layoffs from the gym--once for seven long years, a layoff that cost me fifty pounds of muscle mass. When I began to train again, in just 10 weeks I regained roughly 30 pounds of muscle while losing 12 pounds of fat; I went from 16% bodyfat to 3.5% bodyfat, stepped onto a competition stage, and won my division. And, no, before someone asks, I did not take steroids. I ate prodigious amounts of protein and consumed scads of legal supplements and trained like a demon possessed. Those of you who have trained anaerobically for mass and strength know that a gain of ten pounds of pure muscle in an entire year is astonishing. So, I safely say that the body remembered, and from the first workout began preparing to move the hundreds of pounds I had once lifted.
Bodybuilders and other athletes have long marveled at the phenomenon we call muscle memory. Hundreds of thousands of us attest based on personal experience that strength, muscle girth and lean mass, once achieved is much much easier to regain than it was to gain. The muscle remembers.

But, you may be thinking, that's just brain-remembered exercise modalities. With respect, I disagree. Muscles certainly remember old injuries. I suspect that memory of old strains & stress is one reason that fascia binds to muscle: it's a protective mechanism, as is the formation of scar tissue.

Consider what happens when the body is invaded by a virus or bacteria: the lymphatic system forms antibodies, the body in effect inoculates itself against future attacks by that particular invader. So, why wouldn't the fascia and muscular system have similar capability? Lymph and muscle and fascia are all composed of DNA-instructed single cells.

Fascia, as has been recently (the last couple of years) discovered, is permeated with tubules through which electrical signals pass-- I recently read that research has shown that fascia fires and delivers its communications faster when instantaneous actions are required than the brain can receive feedback and send its instructions. This is logical. Since one of the purposes of fascia is to help protect muscle from overstretching and overexertion; I think it shares that duty with the golgi tendon organelles. Am I correct that fascia, like golgi organelles are collagenous? It's well established that the golgi tendon reflex is essentially a mechanical biofeedback mechanism whose purpose is to shut the power off to ligaments that are in danger of tearing loose from their tendon--it's not a signal to the brain when time is critical but rather a signal to the muscle which is then relayed to nearby muscle and to the brain. But other muscle fibers, being closer, receive the message before the brain can order appropriate action. If not for the golgi protective reflex, even an untrained human could lift a ton (and destroy bone and muscle doing so). Athletic records are broken by athletes who train their minds to momentarily disable the golgi reflex. I am no anatomy instructor, but I do believe my science is not far off the mark.

Therefore, I again assert that muscles do remember.

Ever heard the expression that once you learn to ride a bike, you never forget how? How about typing with speed and accuracy? Once you learn to type, do you ever forget how? Or how about a skilled ballplayer? Why is he so skilled, so quick to react to the flight of the ball? A 98 mph fastball will reach a MLB batter sixty feet away before he has time to mentally react to it--yet he does. Now, once again, some may be thinking, no, that's just how fast the mind computes.

In spare time and for fun no profit I practice pistol fastdraw against timer lights. Including reaction time I can draw, fire and hit a target in less than 1/3 of a second, and instantly whirl and hit an unseen 2nd target. No matter how fast your own reaction time, I assure you that, untrained, you cannot fastdraw in less than 1.5 seconds, and you won't hit the target; you cannot swing a bat and hit even a 70-mph baseball; you can't dive to a precise patch of grass and intercept a speeding baseball hit to the shortstop with your glove hand extended to the precise spot the ball will reach --all faster than you can blink.

If not to establish muscle memory, why do baseball players practice? Why does fascia form lesions after an injury except as a method of memorizing and protecting? why does the body form antibodies, if not to establish memories of a defeated foe that may attack again?

The answer to all of the above: the body itself remembers

I apologize profusely for presuming to lecture experienced MT professionals. If I have annoyed anyone, I ask you to blame it on my inexperience coupled with the arrogance of creeping age. I am a 62-year-old bodybuilding MT student who--honest to God--looks no older than 61.

Comment by lee kalpin on November 23, 2010 at 9:49am

Well said Daniel! We all know this, but I have never seen it put quite this way before. I think all massage therapy students would benefit if their teachers impressed this attitude to them

Comment by Daniel Cohen on November 23, 2010 at 9:41am

Agreed, we have a responsibility to be up to date with current knowledge for our clients. If the massage works the way it should the client is in many ways defenseless to what we do and say. They have elected to be vulnerable before us.

Now if that doesn't require us to be as responsible as possible I don't know what would.

Comment by lee kalpin on November 23, 2010 at 9:28am

I quite agree. I think it is important, however, to be aware of the latest information available and to practice with that knowledge in mind, rather than working with theories which have been disproven or thrown into doubt. It is also our duty to educate and inform our clients, who have often been misinformed or who have a poor understanding of how the body functions.
And all the while we will keep our minds open to new information and new discoveries.

Comment by Daniel Cohen on November 23, 2010 at 8:11am

Myth or theories, it all changes as out ability to analyze and perceive from a different angle grows. We are very complex and our systems have redundancy on many levels. In a holistic view the parts form an amazing support network. Science has already discovered that many functions and reactions do not need to wait for brain instruction.
Here is an interesting article. It brings to mind the old saying, "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach".

Science is not so different than myth in some ways. Knowledge is still at an early stage. Science evolves. There will be many scientific theories to be thrown out as we progress as well as old myths.
We do our best to help the patient to help themselves.

Comment by lee kalpin on November 23, 2010 at 7:52am

You are certainly correct there Emmanuel. I guess the best we can EVER say is "our current understanding is that ------"
And keep our minds open to learning. It's also imporant to read research reports with a critical mind. They way the results are reported in the popular press is often inaccurate.

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• Next ›
• Page