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This is the same workbook given in the Melting Muscles and Atlas&Axis courses. Currently 60 pages, the book grows each year as new editions include improvements and additions.
$27.50, includes shipping anywhere in the world.
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To Melt Muscle
[this and two following pages are excerpts from the Melting Muscles workbook, Fifth Edition]
Steps to Melt Muscle
1. Effleurage or petrissage "warm up" of muscle is unnecessary. Instead, "wake up" the muscle by rubbing across its fibers (the nonverbal greeting, hello muscle, hello cerebellum).
2. Using one of your hands, palpate the muscle (feel its shape). To palpate well, it is very important to use exaggerated strokes that are perpendicular to the muscle fibers. Palpate in several areas along the length of the muscle, to find its densest spot. Palpate in smaller and smaller strokes until you find the highest ridge or densest peak of the muscle. In this exact location you will begin the melting.
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Try to not use your thumbs at all. Instead, use your fingertips, the heel of your hand, and your elbow. Especially when using your palm or elbow, it is still important to use a cross-fiber motion to discern the shape and direction of the fibers, and narrow your stroke down to the exact ridge. It will require practice but you can become very sensitive with your elbow or palm.
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Keeping presence with the shape and density of the muscle is the key to melt muscle. You must remain present with the original shape and density to know when this flattens or softens
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(I recognize you…)
3. With your other hand, place the muscle into a shortened position. Your first hand still feels the muscle shape, which will have changed in this new position—maybe it is thicker.
(I recognize what your job is, can I help you accomplish it?)
4. Lighten up on your pressure. Use only enough pressure to monitor the muscle’s shape, so you’ll be able to tell when it begins sinking. It might be sinking already! Greater pressure could be considered a threat, and may inhibit melting.
(I am not going to force you to change)
5. Wait to feel a response. (their answer to your initial question) A response could be one of two things: either your first hand will feel the muscle begin to soften, or your other hand will feel the limb wanting to move back toward neutral. At first, it may be twenty seconds before you notice the response. Once you have some experience, you will often feel melting within one second. If you have waited forty seconds without sensing change, the pressure sensors in your fingertips (palm, elbow) have "accomodated" and will no longer have presence with the muscle shape. Without letting the muscle come out of the shortened position, make slight cross-fiber motions to reawaken your own pressure sensors. Whenever your presence with the person’s muscle has drifted, gently bring your awareness back to it. This rubbing also reminds the brain to check if its aim (bringing one bone closer to the other) is already accomplished. If the brain realizes the aim of guarding is accomplished, it can afford to relax.
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Maybe you don’t feel anything yet because this muscle is truly not melting. Soon you will have enough experience to compare normal and natural rates for relaxation. Then if you feel one muscle group takes abnormally long and still has not melted, it is clear to you that the person’s brain is guarding this area with greater intensity.
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You may never know that they did, in fact, respond. Therefore, Melting Muscles provides opportunities not just at the time of service, but later as well.
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Be willing to move on, even if this muscle has not melted. By leaving, you demonstrate that you uphold the decisions made by that person’s brain. When you leave, part of that person realizes that he or she lost an opportunity for relief. Having lost this opportunity once, he or she may be more motivated the next time an opportunity arises. The next opportunity may not be with you--
6. As soon as you feel the response, respond back. (yes, I hear you, good job, well done). Respond by moving the limb back toward neutral. Ask out loud, "The muscle is melting right now, do you feel it?"
7. Slower! Allow the limb to return to neutral at "cranial" speed. If you don’t yet feel guided by "cranial motion," don’t worry, just pretend--take a whole fifteen seconds to return the muscle from its shortest position to neutral.
Even if you are not hoping to feel "cranial motion," imitate the speed, deceleration, and acceleration of cranial motion. Two metaphors may help:
Imagine you are driving through a suburban neighborhood with a full cup of coffee in your lap. When you see the first stop sign, you begin to slow very gradually so you won’t spill. Especially when you are about to stop, you let off the brake slightly, so the car does not jerk when the stop is complete. You look both ways before starting again. Accelerate very gradually so you don’t spill, until you are up to speed mid-block. There’s the next stop sign already.
The second thing you can think about while imitating cranial motion is the changing seasons, which follow a sine wave. Like muscles coming to their shortest position, on December 29 the days are shortest. The day length remains short for a couple of weeks before changing much, but by March 29 the day length is changing dramatically. Soon after this, the rate of change slows, and not much change is noticed for several weeks around June 29, the longest day. Change is again maximized, now toward the shortening of days, on September 29.
Cranial motion is a slight force. Maybe if the person was sleeping while floating at the International Space Station, you could see the limbs and head actually moving, but down here in the gravity the force of cranial motion is rarely enough to cause actual motion. Therefore, the "wanting" to move only provides you a clue as to the direction or inclination of motion--you must provide extra force in order to actually move the limb or head.
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We believe "cranial motion" is the force of annulospiral fibers contracting within the muscle spindle, which is a proprioceptor. While these are muscle fibers, these fibers are not intended to actually pull one bone closer to another,
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"Cranial motion" sounds too mystical. A more accurate description would be "cyclic variance in muscle contraction."
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they are only very small,
they do not originate and insert on bone but end within a short space about midpoint along a muscle cell. Annulospiral receptors exist not for contraction but to monitor limb position and acceleration. This variance probably serves at least three purposes: One, the proprioceptor reports stay fresh. By varying the annulospiral receptors signal cyclically, several times per minute, sensory accommodation is avoided. Two, the degree that the proprioceptor contracts directly influences the strong motor muscle cells. This variance moves the muscles slightly, especially muscles attached to organ positioning, causing the organs to move helping digestion and fluid circulation throughout the body. Three, and not least, variance probably allows the cerebellum to maintain awareness that muscle guarding decisions remain enforced.
8. Continue pressing lightly while the muscle begins lengthening, until the muscle reaches mid-length. Repeat if you like, moving the muscle more quickly to its shortened position, then following "cranial speed" back to neutral. You are following only one-quarter of a complete cranial cycle. (To follow a full cranial cycle would mean you would not stop at neutral but continue following cranial speed as this muscle passes neutral, lengthens, returns from its lengthened position to neutral, then returns from neutral to its shortened position. This approach would require four hours to do what we will do in one hour)
9. One stroke of melting muscles takes about a minute, but has more effect than many minutes of petrissage, efflourage, or friction repetitive strokes. One stroke is enough, if you felt melting.
10. You may find the muscle will twitch soon after the cranial motion has begun lengthening from the shortest point. You may find that immediately after the muscle twitch, the motion stops for about ten seconds. When the motion returns, it may be in either direction. About ten seconds after the twitch, you will feel the muscle dramatically melt. Many therapists think that the twitch is the relaxation, but the melting happens about twenty seconds after the twitch.
11. When the muscle melts, the muscle is reducing its percentage of contraction, so you should feel the limb or joint "wanting" to return toward neutral and farther. If the limb does not yet want to return, but you have felt melting, this indicates there is another muscle still guarding this joint. Look around to see what other muscles are capable of pulling these two bones close to each other.
12. If the person is "helping" you shorten his or her muscles, this is not a problem. Helping means the person is contracting the same muscles you are shortening. This truly does help the muscle become shortened. While palpating a "helping" muscle, it will feel a vibrating contraction, like holding a squirming live animal, rather than the simple hardness of guarding. We believe the part of the brain that "helps" or "resists" comes not from the cerebellum, but a little farther forward in the brain, probably the motor cortex. This contraction feels notchy and nervy, compared to the subtle, slow contraction of cranial motion, which we believe arises in the cerebellum. "Helping" makes it more difficult for you to feel when the muscle begins to soften, but if you are not distracted by this diversion, and you remain firm with your positioning, you will feel the muscle soften.
13. If the person is "resisting" your shortening of his or her muscles, this is not a problem. Do not be distracted by the fact that you cannot get them into a fully shortened position, but continue to apply a stable force going in the direction of shortening. While the person is resisting, your positioning will have a tendency to waver, so you must put your heels firmly on the ground and provide a very stable, but not overpowering positioning force. You’re not trying to win a fight against the person’s resistance, you are just meeting their force equally. While the person is resisting, the muscle you are palpating will soften more quickly because of reciprocal inhibition—their own spinal column will relax this muscle because their intention is to move the opposite direction.
14. How you speak to a person who is helping or resisting can become a problem. For example, if you complain about the person’s helping or resisting, he or she will see you as an emotional threat and be less likely to relinquish guarding. People’s brains are different, and some people truly have no conscious control over helping and resisting. Who knows, a part of their brain may be testing your patience! Your nonjudgment of this, your not being attached to it, will have a healing effect, even if this effect is never shown to you. You don’t have to mention that you notice helping or guarding-sometimes they do not even know they are doing it. If they do know, sometimes they apologize, but you can say, "Don’t worry about it, with this technique it does not matter whether you help or resist, whether you are awake or asleep, it works regardless."
Click here to view the simple exercise, shoulder elevators and depressors, supine
Click here to view the more complex exercise, atlanto-axial joint
copyright © 2002-2008 by Patrick Moore do not print! visit
www.MeltingMuscles.com for your copy
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