Misadventures of the Myofascial Kind (Part II)

Friday night's seminar was only 4 hours, so we didn't get through a whole lot--basically we discussed the structure of muscles and the relationship of fascia to muscle-functionality. Then we stared at each other creepily. Then we learned some exercises on the hands and forearms that would definitely be beneficial for carpal tunnel injuries. We left at about 10pm, knowing that we had to be back in less than 12 hours--joyous joys.

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Saturday morning. Pot of coffee. Eyes heavy like anvils. Yawns and lackluster looks all around.

We did another "trust" exercise to wake ourselves up--this time it was one of those trust-falls. Not harrowing. Not all that exciting either.

Then we dug right in to the material. Today's seminar would cover a) the upper-arms, b) the neck and a portion of the back, c) the front shoulder muscles and attachments, and d) the breathing muscles.

The upper arm-work wasn't anything all that surprising. They receive a lot of focus in our other massage classes anyways, so the only difference was the amount of force being applied.

The neck and back work was a bit more interesting, given that we worked on our partners in a sitting position. I've "learned" chair massage on a prior occasion, but that requires an actual massage-chair. This necessitates nothing more than something or another that they can sit on. So basically, the work we learned would be a convenient tool to utilize in office-situations. Nice for me.

The front shoulder mucles and attachments were a little bit new. Despite all the anatomy we learn, we don't receive a whole heck of a lot of instruction on palpating the actual muscles. So although I could point out, say, the rhomboid major on a diagram of the body, could tell you its origin and insertion, its action, and its innervation, if I tried to physically locate the muscle on someone's body, it'd be kind of like Ray Charles trying to figure out which marble is the pink one in a bag full of marbles. Not a clue. So it was kind of nice to be working on specific muscles finally, where we were told what muscle we were working on and how to palpate it.

Most definitely one of the most ridiculously sensitive muscles is the pec minor and where it attaches. Holy mother of god if getting that poked won't make you jump completely out of your seat. E literally shrieked when I did the pec-minor technique on him. (It was great.)

The most interesting part of Saturday, though, was learning techniques for the breathing muscles. Basically, much of the work we learned is intended to loosen up the diaphragm and open up the chest area so that the lungs have greater room to move.

Now, in regular massage classes, the chest is typically an area we stear clear of because of, well, da boobies. But not so in Myo. While learning techniques for the breathing-muscles, we were jamming all KINDS of things into the sides of the boobies. Sticks. Pencils. Rubber replicas of pterodactyls. Etc. (Ok. Mostly just the fingers. But yowza nonetheless.)

Interesting though is the fact that, as thin and seemingly easily-breakable as the ribs are, you sure as shit can put a lot of force onto them without doing damage, as long as you do so carefully and without abruptness. Much of the work we learned actually is intended to increase the flexibility of the ribs so that they can move with greater ease with every breath.

The strangest (but kind of coolest) techniques we learned (and this is mostly due to my awe in the fact that you can put so much force onto such body parts) was the rib-work and the diaphragm work.

For the diaphragm, you literally jam the tips of your fingers up and under the bottom of the rib cage to work one of the most important breathing-muscles. It's very strange when you have your fingers jammed up to almost the second set of knuckles in someone's upper abdomen.

The other area that amazed me was the rib-compression technique we learned, mostly because it was demonstrated on me, so I actually got to feel what a SKILLED version of the technique feels like. What the move entails is literally using pretty much all of your weight to compress the center of the person's rib cage. It looks uncannily like a CPR move, but it's done much more slowly and carefully and with much greater pressure.

The teaching assistant demonstrated on me by literally getting up on his knees onto the table next to me and leaning ALL of his weight into the move. He is not a big man (probably about 125 lbs. and 5'5" or so), but I am also not a big woman (about 125 lbs. and 5'6" or so). So the technique was a sight to behold. As he pressed down on my chest three times, my rib cage was literally pressed down to about 1/2 of its usual deepness. It was such a startling display of force (without an accompanying breakage) that people in the class were literally slack-jawed and gasping.

Granted, the next day my chest felt strange in that area, and I couldn't quite decide if it was discomfort or just a new sensation of openness. But damn was it a crazy-cool technique. This coupled with the other breathing-techniques we learned are supposed to be fantastic in opening the chest and lungs to make breathing much much easier.

And apparently they did, because on Sunday morning, several seminar attendees reported that when they worked on folks at home on Saturday night, they actually got astounding results--one woman's boyfriend who has been a loud-snorer every night for about 10 years DID NOT SNORE AT ALL.

Crazy crazy shit.

(Stay tuned for tomorrow's final installment of Misadventures of the Myofascial Kind)