Pain Relief Using Muscle Memory Natural Healing Remedies

Most of us have experienced a strained muscle or a torn tendon. Traditional muscle pain remedies such as aspirin and natural healing remedies like ice packs and rest usually get us up and running; but why is it that weeks, months or even years later, a minor muscle strain in the same location can cause muscle movement pain that just won’t go away? Have we triggered an even greater injury? Do we need strong drugs or surgery? Perhaps not. It is more likely your body is expressing a common physical response known as muscle memory.

What is Muscle Memory?

There is much information about the benefits of muscle memory; how to make the best of it when practicing your golf swing, learning the perfect yoga pose or playing a musical instrument. This article looks at how the same beneficial muscle memory can work against us, causing chronic pain. There are also highly effective natural methods of healing that will help you retrain your muscles; breaking the cycle of dysfunctional muscle memory and bringing relief from the pain.

"Your brain creates pathways through your central nervous system, and movements become automatic," says Wayne Westcott, Ph.D., fitness research director at Quincy College in Massachusetts.

Whether we practice bodybuilding, weight training, dancing or any activity that uses repetitive muscle action, the brain, nervous system and your muscle fibers work together, sending messages back and forth, creating a type of blueprint that we store in our memory. Most of the time muscle memory works in our favor.

Here’s an example. I used to play the piano and learned a few tunes by heart. It would be more accurate to say I learned by muscle memory because it was my neural system rather than my heart (I regret to admit) that learned this so-called talent. When I left home in my early 20‘s, I stopped playing the piano, but years later, when I was pressured into performing on a friend’s piano, I was surprised to find that after a shaky start, I could still play a pretty fair Solfeggietto.

Whether memory is stored in the brain, in muscles, in your cells or somewhere in the clouds is still being debated, but the fact remains - muscles have memory and that’s a good thing. According to William Kraemer, Ph.D., professor in the department of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, “if this phenomena didn’t exist, our body wouldn’t know how to repair itself when we get injured”.

As in most life experiences, muscles can become plagued with bad memories. If you have chronic pain on movement and you can’t figure out what is causing the discomfort, it may just be dysfunctional muscle memory.

Our muscles will always act as a defense mechanism; tightening up to defend us from pain or discomfort. If you continually raise your shoulders in cold weather, or strain your neck when reading a book, you shorten the muscles and create the blueprint for dysfunctional muscle memory and pain.

Injuries have the same effect. We may forget about them, but muscle memory never forgets, even after the injury has healed.

Muscle memory remembers your stretch limitations and continues to send a signal to your brain when it thinks you’ve reached your safe stretch limit. As a result, the muscle gets shorter and tighter and joints don’t function as efficiently they did in the past. The weakened area becomes prone to future injury and it is not uncommon to experience flair-ups of pain and discomfort in the area.

Here’s a scenairo; (one that haunts me to this day).

You go out for a jog. Suddenly, a crack in the pavement decides to connect with your toe, tripping you up. You are about to fall on your face, so you instinctively break the fall with your outstretched arm. Your palm and knees take a nasty scraping but you get up, wipe away the blood and utter a humiliating, “I’m ok” to the concerned onlookers dining al fresco at the nearby restaurant. After you get over the humiliation, you hobble home feeling like a kid who fell off his bike, or a fool (or both). You recover mentally from the drama but discover you have wrenched out your rotator cuff muscles. There may even be a torn ligament or two, so you ice and rest your shoulder for a couple of weeks. When you begin using the shoulder again, it seems strong, so you get back into your Yoga routine. (Jogging is no longer on your to-do list). Years pass. Everything seems fine, but one day you do too many downward dogs in Yoga class and feel a pain in your shoulder. It doesn’t seem serious, but over the next few weeks you find it hurts to raise your arm. Rest and ice do nothing to help, in fact, it’s still painful months later. You know you’re not that old and decrepit, so what’s going on?

It’s muscle memory, but not the benevolent kind that helps you remember to play Bach’s Solfeggietto.

Muscle memory is blind. It doesn’t distinguish between a smart mind/body connection and a stupid one. It only knows that repetitive movement tells it to create a very sticky physiological blueprint. Even after the minor injury has healed, the memory blueprint continues to send out painful stretch limitations to your arm and shoulder. Most people react to the pain by resting the area for as long as it persists, but in this case that’s the worst thing you can do. The muscle will get even tighter and more knotted. Movement will become more limited and the pain can persist for months, even years.

With the help of a trained therapeutic massage therapist I learned how to relieve the pain caused by stubborn muscle memory without drugs. Here are some of those helpful healing techniques.

You first must teach your body to know that it is safe to move, despite the pain signal.

1- Begin by finding a good massage therapist. Many fine therapists are associated with ballet companies or with doctors who specialize in sports medicine. Therapeutic massage is crucial in getting those super-tight muscles to relax and return to their normal length. You can also work with a physical therapist, but I have found that a qualified holistic massage therapist can also show you exercises that will facilitate natural healing.

2- Take regular stretch classes. If you are sure you do not have a torn tendon or ligament, stretching those shortened muscles past the stubborn painful sticking point will help get your body back to normal. It’s the only way to re-program your dysfunctional muscle memory. Body rolling is another great natural technique for stretching muscles. Just remember to warm up first.

3- Apply heat - Applying heat to painful areas relieves the tension, relaxes the muscle, alleviates pain and sends blood and oxygen to the area. Microwavable heating pads are easy to use (follow the instructions carefully) and the better pads provide up to 30 minutes of heat.

4- Ultrasonic massage - Ultrasonic or Ultrasound massage uses high frequency waves to warm up deep muscles and joints. Blood flow increases, alleviating pain to the sore area. Some of the higher rated portable massagers are listed on the Amazon links provided on this page.

5- Pain relief through visualization and meditation - If you have pain when you raise your arm, think about raising it without any pain. You may be surprised to find that at first, you visualize the pain along with the movement. Once you can visualize moving without pain, the muscle will respond. Meditation works the same way to help direct your focus away from pain.

6- Body Awareness - Become mindful of unconscious body movements that create muscle tension.

• When you carry something heavy in your hand, do you also raise your shoulder?

• Do you crane your neck forward when looking at the computer screen? Check out Maddie Ruud’s excellent Hub on proper posture for computer use.

• Purchase computer glasses; dedicated lenses that allow you to see clearly at 20”-28” from the screen. If you wear bi or trifocal lenses you may have to tilt your head up or down to compensate, creating dysfunctional muscle memory in you neck.

6- Check Out Mind/Body Fitness Programs like the Feldenkrais Method and The Alexander Technique. These programs are growing in popularity (especially amongst older adults) because they teach people to break unhealthful postures, facilitating pain-free movement.

7- Consider Other Natural Healing Remedies such as acupuncture and Reiki. Many holistic massage therapists are also trained Reiki practitioners.

Pain Relief Using Muscle Memory Natural Healing Remedies is for information purposes and is not meant to diagnose your specific injuries. It is always recommended that you first consult your health care provider before entering any therapy program or trying natural healing remedies at home.

If muscle memory is the cause of your pain, it’s very likely that these natural healing remedies can bring you lasting pain relief without the need for invasive treatments or drugs.

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