Somatic Anatomy
Muscles and the Postural Flute B y
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ost massage therapists The Postural Flute know the havoc poor posur postural muscles work ture can wreak on the together toward a single goal: body. It bends and stresses the to keep our bodies upright. Far less joints, locks major muscles in muscular effort is needed to supchronic contractions, restricts port a vertical spine oriented along movement and causes pain, and gravity’s pull than to maintain a gradually wears the musculoskelehorizontal spine suspended tal system down. Postural dysfuncbetween four legs. Because the postions can even result in injury, tural muscles work together to supwhich occurs suddenly when the port a single axis, the human stance smallest turn or twist snaps the is the most efficient of any animal. weakest link. In addition to all this, The drawback of this incredible poor posture simply looks and feels efficiency is that if any one muscle bad. along the chain of support fails to On an emotional level, posture is function, the economy of the whole attitude. Postural patterns often system declines in reverse proporbegin as protective cloaks we wear tion. For example, a forward head Figure 1. Muscles in the postural to guard against emotional pain, creates muscular compensations flute. which manifests both physically (read: excessive contraction) and psychologically. After all, it is throughout the body. Contract and Relax hard to stand tall when you’re feelOne can activate the postural he first step in changing body ing depressed, and it’s hard to feel muscles like the notes on a flute; patterns is awareness, or sensdown when you’re standing tall. harmony lies in the balance of tone ing the muscles as they work. A On a mechanical level, posture is among the notes (see Figure 1). muscle cell is limited to two funcmore than a position. It is the The key to effective postural educations: contraction and relaxation. dynamic balancing act of a group tion is determining which muscles The smallest contractile unit of a of postural muscles working along the flute are not working, 1 muscle is a motor unit—a motor together to keep our slightly swaythen activating them. nerve plus all the muscle cells it ing bodies upright. In this regard, innervates. A single muscle has posture is an inside job. Only you anywhere from fifty to thousands can change your posture because of motor units; the muscle’s only you can control your musresting tone is determined cle patterns. And if you can by the number of motor feel these changes in yourunits firing when the self, you’ll be better at body is relaxed. helping your clients do Muscle relaxation the same. is a graded process. Most of us have an Total relaxation is idea what good posimpossible. If all ture is, but how to Muscles your muscles were achieve it is the Contract and Relax and the to relax right now, issue. A common yet Axial Compression Postural your body would misguided correction Flute collapse. Lucky for is to straighten the us, the skeletal musspine and hold it cles work reflexively there. Yet when the (see Figure 2, page muscles tire, the trunk 78). Some motor units slowly sinks into an allare always working, too-familiar, unsightly even when we sleep. slump. In this article we’ll When we are up, all of our look at these dynamics, explorpostural muscles should be on ing muscle function through the to support us. postural lens.
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Client Education
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Instability and Pain
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somatic anatomy
Figure 2. Muscle functions and fibers.
Exercise 1. Contract and Relax The first step in training a postural muscle is being able to distinguish between contraction and relaxation. • Begin sitting or standing in a comfortable, upright position. Place your hands on your lower abdomen, right above your pubic bone (see Exercise 1). Let your abdominal muscles completely relax and hang out. • Slowly contract the perineal muscles between your sit bones, as though you had to go to the restroom and were holding it. Did the tone change in your lower abdomen? The muscles should tighten right above the pubic bone because the perineum co-contracts with the transversus abdominis muscles. • Relax the perineum. Practice slowly contracting and relaxing until you can feel the difference.
Exercise 1
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Adaptation and Habit keletal muscles are highly adaptable and can change in an instant. They can melt under skilled hands or seize up at a mere hint of danger. Muscles are also creatures of habit. Muscular habits show up in an individual’s unique stance and style of movement. When we recognize a friend at a distance by his distinct strut, we are registering the familiar shape of his habitual patterns. Muscles quickly habituate to how we use them because once neuromuscular pathways are established, nerve impulses like to travel along these familiar routes. Worn neuromuscular pathways are like ruts in the road: unless we consciously steer away from them, they are easy to fall into. For example, after twenty-five years of driving a standard car, I now drive an automatic. But when I’m tired or distracted, my foot still pushes for the clutch as though it had a mind of its own! Intentional movement is the key to breaking muscular habits.
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Exercise 2.Transversus Abdominis and Diaphragmatic Breathing Intentional diaphragmatic breathing is crucial to balancing vertical tone among the “notes,” or muscles, of the postural flute. • The lateral expansion of the lower ribs is the hallmark of diaphragmatic breathing.To feel this, place your hands over each side of your lower ribs. Close your eyes and breathe easy.
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• On each inhalation, expand your lower ribs into your hands (see Exercise 2). Continue to breathe like this until it feels comfortable. If you’re not a diaphragmatic breather, it will be difficult and may take months of practice to repattern. • Now allow your abdominal muscles to relax and distend your belly.Take several breaths, expanding your lower ribs on each inhalation. Distending the belly usually restricts diaphragmatic breathing. • Relax. Next, put your hands on each side of your lower abdominal wall. Slowly and lightly contract the transversus abdominis muscle, drawing your lower abdominal muscles back toward your sacrum. Use minimal effort and hold. • As you lightly hold your lower abdominals, return to breathing into your lower ribs.This should feel easier than the diaphragmatic breathing you did in step 3, when your belly was distended. Lightly contracting the transversus abdominis contains the viscera and keeps the diaphragm from bottoming out, so expansion from inhaling spreads along the length of the trunk rather than just bulging the belly. ¨
Exercise 2
somatic anatomy Client Education hildren are always learning something new—both wisdom and bad habits—modeled by their parents. Like children, muscles learn whatever we train them to do, whether or not the training is deliberate. The athlete trains the muscles for sport, the office worker trains for sitting, and the assembly line worker for repetitive motion. If you are slouching as you read this, you are training your muscles to slump, which can lead to championship slouching and a world-class pain pattern. Postural muscles work isometrically and can be trained in a stationary posture using slow, isometric contractions. A lot of massage is oriented toward getting our muscles to relax. All too often, the client gets up after a session feeling better, but leaves with the same body pattern and returns to the next session with the same old pain pattern. For this reason, it is important to teach clients intentional movements that organize new neuromuscular pathways. Having your client isometrically contract postural muscles during the massage benefits both of you. Your client learns neuromuscular pathways for optimal alignment, and your work becomes easier because once postural muscles start working, prime movers stop overworking.
• Relax. Slowly and gently draw your lower abdominal muscle above your pubic bone straight back and hold. Use minimal effort. • If you are doing this correctly, you’ll be able to hold this tonic contraction for a long time without tiring.This is the quality of contraction used to train all postural muscles.
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Tonic and Phasic Functions here are several different types of muscle fibers, the most familiar two being slow and fast fibers. Each fiber is defined by its physiology and varies in its function (see Figure 3). Slow fibers contract slowly and weakly, yet are fatigue resistant. Fast fibers contract quickly and strongly, yet fatigue rapidly. Although muscles have combinations of both fiber types, some muscles have more of one than the
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Axial Compression and Joint Stability ostural muscles also stabilize the joints by preventing excessive joint play as we move (see Figure 4). They work like cargo ties on a ship, securing cargo so that when the ship takes off the cargo moves with the ship rather than flying around the deck. The psoas major and multifidus muscles are local stabilizers that protect the lumbar spine by pulling the lumbar vertebrae closer together, increasing axial compression in
P Figure 3. Postural muscles support the abdominal viscera, anchor the scapulas, and stabilize the cervical spine.
other. Muscles with predominantly slow fibers are best suited for the “tonic” (slow) contractions. Because they are fatigue-resistant, these “antigravity” muscles can work all day without tiring. This means that if you are using the right muscles, you can easily sit and stand for hours without pain. The muscles that generate movement (the prime movers) generally have more fast fibers. The prime movers are usually large, extrinsic muscles that are well suited for “phasic” (fast and strong) contractions. Exercise 3. Differentiating Tonic and Phasic Contractions For effective postural education, it is important to feel the difference between tonic and phasic contractions. • Sit in an upright position, on top of your sit bones. • Contract your abdominal muscles hard and fast, then hold.This strong phasic contraction will flex your trunk and pull your ribs down. How long can you hold before your muscles tire? Notice how it affects your breathing.
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Figure 4.The deep postural muscles stabilize the spine to prevent excessive joint play.
an agonist/antagonist relationship (see Figure 5). If the lumbar curve is too flat, a person can activate the psoas muscle to restore a natural lumbar lordosis. If the lumbar curve is overly swayed, a person can activate the multifidus muscle to pull it back.
under your fingers. (If it is already working, you will not feel a change in tone.) • Keep this muscle contracted as you lean back and return to your original position. If your multifidus is off, this sounds easier than it is. • When both psoas and multifidus are gently contracted, you should feel a long stable curve in your lumbar spine.
Figure 5.The deep postural muscles pull the vertebrae into axial compression.
Exercise 4. Activating Postural Muscles in the Lumbar Spine • Sit upright, on top of your sit bones. • Lightly contract your lower abdominal wall as described in Exercise 3. • Place your fingertips over your psoas tendons to monitor them. Keeping your spine straight, rock backward over your sit bones (see Exercise 3). • Keep the psoas contracted as you lean forward and return to your original position. If your psoas is off, this sounds easier than it is. • Next, place your fingertips along your lumbar spine in the lamina groove. Keeping your spine straight, rock forward over your sit bones (see Exercise 4). Feel the multifidus contract and bulge
Joint Instability and Pain oint instability is common in people with poor posture, particularly with collapsed or bent spines. Each movement outside normal joint range injures an unstable joint, overstretching its ligaments, causing muscle spasms, and increasing mechanical stresses. Joint instability creates a twofold muscular dysfunction: one in the postural system, the other with the prime movers. Pain from joint instability causes stabilizing muscles to turn off and the prime movers to take over their job. Since the prime movers span long distances and have strong lever arms that bend joints, they work poorly as stabilizers (see Figure 6). They also fatigue rapidly and become ischemic and fibrous, which causes more pain, further inhibiting the stabilizers and leading to more pain and spasm, and so the cycle escalates (see Figure 7, page 82). The cycle can be broken with a twofold intervention, using bodywork to release overworked prime movers coupled with intentional movement that activates underworked stabilizers.
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Exercise 3
Exercise 4
Figure 6.The prime movers bend the joints as they contract, usually generating joint motion.
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somatic anatomy your postural muscles are co-contracted. Use minimal effort. If you tend to overwork, only visualize each muscle contracting, which will be enough to begin waking them up. • Sit or lie in a comfortable position with your Figure 7. A pain cycle showing dysfunction spine in neutral (no between the postural muscles and prime movers. excessive curves or slouching). • Perineal muscles. Control Versus Strength Lightly and slowly pull raditionally, the solution for coryour sit bones togethrecting faulty alignment includes er and hold (see strength training. The prime movers Exercise 1). respond to this type of training. • Transversus abdominis musPostural stabilizers, however, usually cle. Next, slowly draw the musdo not need strengthening; instead, cles above your pubic bone we need to regain their capacity for straight back toward your sacrum control of alignment. Control means (see Exercise 3). contracting them at will, keeping • Psoas and multifidus musthem on, and coordinating their concles. Now increase tone along tractions with the prime movers the front and back of your lumduring movement. bar spine (see Exercise 4). Training postural muscles is • Diaphragm. Gently breathe into quite easy once you learn to feel your lower ribs, widening them as them work, although their miniyou inhale (see Exercise 2). mal contractions provide little • Lower trapezius. Imagine sandfeedback, making them difficult to bags on the bottom of your sense. In contrast, it’s easy to feel scapulas, lightly drawing them the large muscles contracting down (see Figure 2).Allow the strongly during a strength-training front of your shoulders to lift and workout. Another difficult part widen. Stay wide and relaxed about training them is the focus between your shoulder blades. and mental effort it takes to get an • Cervical intrinsics. Lightly lift inert muscle working. The the back of your head without amount of effort is akin to trying lowering your chin, which should to get your limbs moving again lengthen your neck (see Exercises after they fall asleep. 5A and 5B). The most difficult part of postur• Playing each note. Breathe easal muscle training is avoiding overily while mentally reviewing each work. Many people are oriented note on your postural flute. Sense toward working muscles hard, your neck lengthening front and strong, and fast in strength trainback; feel your scapulas sinking ing. This training requires a quiand widening, breathe into the eter, slower orientation—it takes width of your lower ribs; sense patience and the ability to track tone increasing along the front subtle changes in tone. and back of your lumbar spine; feel your lower abdomen drawing Exercise 5.The Postural Flute back; and sense tone gathering Lightly contract one note at a time. between your sit bones. Keep it contracted as you move to • Gently hold and breathe into your the next note so that by the end, all lower ribs, then completely relax.
Exercise 5A
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Exercise 5B
Remember, posture is an inside job. Your body is the instrument and you are always in training. Since the stabilizing muscles work without movement, you can train them anywhere, anytime. No one can tell you are practicing subtle isometrics, so contract your postural muscles whenever you can— while sitting or standing, during massage, as you travel, and even while reading this magazine. Play your postural flute every day and it will pay off! You’ll look better, feel better, and become adept at therapeutic patterning skills your clients are likely to want and need. M B &
Mary Ann Foster, author of Somatic Patterning (EMS Press, 2004), has been a massage therapist and movement educator for twenty-five years. She teaches movement classes at the Boulder College of Massage Therapy in Colorado. Contact her at
[email protected].
Note 1. There are many different ways to activate a postural muscle. Because of space limitations, only a few are named here. For more exercises, see Chapter 9 in my book, Somatic Patterning (EMS Press, 2004).
