11 Jul Muscles
Were you aware that you have over 600 muscles in your body?
Your muscles have a range of functions from pumping blood around your body and supporting movement from lifting weights to threading a needle! Your muscles work both consciously and unconsciously.
It is within your muscles that you can store stress and tension from how you react to situations and circumstances around you, your muscles contract and toxins and negative energy get trapped within them.
Long-term effects of stress on your body can be devastating, causing an increase of hormones that can hold you continuously in a Fight, Flight, or Frozen Response. The Fight Response will have you holding on tightly as if you were preparing to do battle and the same with the Flight Response always being on high alert as to when to run, and when you remain Frozen your muscle tissues shorten, harden, dry out and bond together.
As time passes, if you remain in these states then flexibility and spontaneity of movement become more and more limited, increasing more trauma and pain within the body. When you try to ignore that you are suffering then your body pain can become more intense and different areas of your body will accumulate more stiffness and pain.
You can carry repressed and trapped emotions within multiple areas of your body, without even recognising it, for years or even decades!
Firstly, this could be through social conditioning which can start early in childhood and reinforced by parents, teachers, your boss or even friends – as you grow older an example of these could be “only babies cry” forcing you to swallow down your sadness and tears.
Secondly, you can create psychological tension within your muscles through your perceptions of your thoughts, which can range from worrying about what somebody thinks of you or what you think about them, maybe, you do not like the way they treat or talk to you! You could have negative thoughts while waiting at the traffic lights or against another car driver, the more fearful or negative the thought is the more tension is stored in your muscles!
Thirdly, muscle tension can be caused by trauma which could range from having anger deliberately put on you like extreme violence or from something that was outside your control like a car accident. If these incidences are not consciously dealt with, the anger, grief, fear, and chronic anxiety will be stored deep in your muscles and can contribute to illnesses like PTSD, fibromyalgia, digestive problems, and mental illness to name a few.
Lastly, environmental factors can contribute to muscle tension. You may have a job where you have to stand for long hours or sit all day in a chair, it could be cold and draughty at times which causes you to tense up for long periods of time or maybe your bed is uncomfortable and you cannot sleep properly, the list goes on I am sure you can think of some more?
If you are not exercising regularly and eating correctly then your muscles will become weak and be unable to support your body, again causing more stress and tension within your body!
When you take the time to listen to your body, you will discover it is like a storage house with lots of different rooms to store every experience you have ever had and it doesn’t easily forget the traumas of the past, your body is very honest and trying to ignore or suppress how you are feeling will eventually manifest – your body always know the truth!
We all know the saying “carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders”
Shoulders represent life’s burdens and responsibilities, often you can carry not only your own problems, but you can also carry other peoples and worldwide situations as well.
A Frozen Shoulder can represent a complete unwillingness to shoulder your own responsibilities in life.
Your back, in general, represents the past—that which is behind you.
A pain between the shoulder blades could represent a time when you had been betrayed by somebody, so it feels like you have been stabbed in the back.
Upper back pain, often felt at the back of your heart, could be where there had been a painful experience of grief or rejection – so often a person can be hurt on the heart level and push it to the back of them to try and carry on moving forward.
The middle of your back is related to your life choices and supporting your upper body. When the muscles here become painful and weak it can represent not having the freedom of choice and having to hold back on the things you would really like to do.
Lower back can be about growing older and trying to keep up a youthful appearance. It is also connected with financial problems and fear of moving forward due to past experiences that would have been considered a failure. Also, trauma, abuse and sexual fear can be held in this area.
Your muscles are connected to your spine so when it is painful, depending on the area of the spine, it would be about feeling safe and supported in what you are doing.
Your muscles know that they are strong, supporting and holding your bones together, and are there to help create movement. You can take a hammer to a bone, and it would break, with a muscle it would bounce back or flatten and bruise the muscle!
Your muscles hold a lot of mental energy within them, so negative memories and thoughts can often be held within them and, as the muscles are aware, they have a big responsibility to support the foundations (bones) of your being and are there to aid you in moving forward in your life to discover who you are, then weakness in them can indicate different areas in your life are out of balance.
Weak arm muscles could mean that you are carrying too much – often a person can carry their own problems and add extra weight to it by carrying others as well. Weak muscles in the wrist would be about what you can handle in life and muscle tightness within the neck could be that the person is not able to turn their head properly and be aware of all that is going on around them.
Muscular pain in the hips is about decisions on what ideas you would like to give birth to, so if for any reason you are not able to create your desires then pain will reside here and then travel down into the legs as you are unable to move forward. The knees often represent a time when you have been brought down to your knees and also about being indecisive in your decisions. Your ankles are the support for your legs so when they are not being supported either from yourself or another person you can often sprain an ankle or have problems with swollen or weak ankles.
How many times have you heard somebody say, “that person is a pain in the butt”?
Well, remember that your body hears all you say and think, so be careful with your words or you could end up with a tight and painful butt yourself! The butt often accumulates repressed anger which in turn can expand into your hips.
One place that is not talked about very much both in men and women is the pelvic floor muscles, here you can store a lot of unconscious energy about survival and relationships.
You literally hold on to your fears here around health, family/tribe safety, financial security and the things that need to be faced in life. It is an area where your life force expression is created and where you are able to be your authentic self!
Fear is the biggest factor in this area, causing the muscles to contract tightly or become very weak, so if a person is constantly afraid that there will never be enough – money, food, a safe house to live in etc or has experienced abuse, witnessed abuse and/or have a fear of being abused, neglected, abandoned, been in or have a fear of poverty or lived through a war, or has had or witnessed major illnesses then the fear/s resides in the pelvic floor muscles which act like a stress container much like a bowl!
You know that feeling when you have a near miss while driving, receive bad news for yourself or a loved one, or are about to enter into a highly stressful situation? It feels like a sinking pit or a stab in your stomach, this will cause you to clench your pelvic floor muscles and absorb those emotions you are feeling into it.
Releasing trapped emotions within the muscles can be achieved by allowing yourself to really feel into the muscle tension and allow the pain to expand. It is important that you do not have any judgements on anything that arises such as guilt, negative thoughts, that it is bad or wrong etc as negative inner thoughts can add to the tension – simply allow the emotional pain to expand and dissipate, afterwards, allow yourself plenty of time to relax, as you focus on softening and loosening all your muscles throughout the whole of your body.
Do this at the end of each day to release any tension you have collected and remember – always be kind and loving to yourself! Intuitive Holistic Healing can help to soften, loosen, and release stressful negative painful thoughts and emotions trapped within your muscles, helping you to relax and enjoy your life more fully.