Following on from my first posts introducing our Base-Line muscles - pelvic floor and rectus abdominis muscles - are "our core pillar of strength", the central connector for mind and body and the key to learning to use your body correctly, here are two more of the 5 main muscles of movement that connect the legs to Base-Line support:
The gluteus maximus muscles - big ass muscles and the largest muscles in the body. Think "buns of steel" the powerhouse for movement linking the legs to our Base-Line. The gluteus maximus muscles cover a lot of complicated anatomy prone to strains and pain if these muscles are not functioning to their full potential.
The rectus femoris muscles that run down the front of each thigh from pelvis to shin. These muscles when fully engaged and working in tandem with the gluteus maximus, form a strong pole down the front of each leg and align the hip and knee joints correctly.
When properly functioning, the main muscles of movement provide the central framework for the body to work as it should - strong, balanced and pain-free.
It takes time and focus to learn to use these muscles if you are not used to using them, and there may be a lot of pain and tension to release in order to fully work these muscles, but it is worth the effort in the end!
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LeighBlyth
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It should be possible to move each leg through a range of movement, in a smooth and controlled manner, without effort or strain.
Front, back, side to side, in big circles, little circles - everywhere - with the rest of the body remaining still.
This is possible when the gluteus maximus and rectus femoris muscles of each leg work together, connected to Base-Line support (and the body is free of the restrictions ).
But this is not achievable if the gluteus maximus and rectus femoris have been under-utilised for any length of time. The body tries to compensate and keep us moving by using other muscles of the hip and thigh - which bits depend on what we are doing and the position we are in at the time. As the stress and pain builds up in the other muscles e.g. the hip adductors, other quadriceps and the upper parts of the hamstrings, we lose the full range of movement, get tight and stiff and increasingly sore.
Engagement of these leg muscles is about feeling them contract and strengthen. Solid supports that correctly position the legs in relation to your Base-Line, 'aligning' the hip and knee joints so the other muscles of the hip and thigh are in the right place to also work correctly.
Aim for balanced contraction of both muscles, left and right sides, in all positions.
Having a connection to your Base-Line muscles gives you the central support and reference to work from to then feel the relative positions of these leg connectors.
To use these muscles it's firstly a matter of finding them on your body and then just to think about them being active and strong whatever you are doing:
GLUTEUS MAXIMUS:
The superficial muscle layer of the buttocks.
"Buns of steel" - solid rocks anchoring your legs to your Base-Line.
Hands on buttocks. Feel for these muscles contract and tighten.
RECTUS FEMORIS:
Upper attachment:
Put your fingers on the ridge of bone at the front of your pelvis/hip bone. Feel down the ridge. The rectus femoris attaches here.
Bottom attachment:
Find the bony bump near the top of the front of your tibia (shin bone), then feel slightly above for the patellar ligament - a band of strong connective tissue leading to the kneecap. (bend and straighten your knee as you feel). As you contract your rectus femoris you should feel movement, your kneecap 'lifting'.
Focus on the rectus femoris muscles engaging along their full length - a solid and strong pole down the front of the thigh.
I describe it as pulling my kneecaps up and feeling like I am walking on stilts.
At first, when I was not used to using these muscles, I struggled to maintain the contraction as I moved, but little by little my connection grew, and with it the feeling of being able to move my legs a little more each day. Slowly releasing the pain and regaining my movement.
For a beginning where there has been no previous use I find no problem with your description. One has to start somewhere. Your description is the beginning of a journey. Long term it is problematic.
You are going to need another tool. Meditation and mindfulness.
See my Post "Meditation and Mindfulness for person with long term health disability"
Muscles are strongest at there longest length. The more contraction the weaker a muscle becomes. Strength is dependant on recruited muscle fibres. Muscle fibres are connected together as a bundle with its own nerve to give command to contract. So we aim to recruit bundles of muscle fibres to engage in the movement.
We also need to engage the arms. Everything is connected by fascia and spinal reflexes. There are spinal reflexes from head neck balance which influence leg movement. There are spinal reflexes from arm movement which influence leg movement.
There is proprioception. You have a sweet smelling rose on a table in a room. When you enter the room you notice the perfume. After being in the room for a little while you no longer notice the perfume. Proprioception depends on change. So by doing small moments to wake the proprioception the spinal movement centre will respond better as it will know where everything is.
I will stop at this point. I am interested what you think about the information I have given.
I was so far out of contact with my body, so overwhelmed with pain signals that mediation and mindfulness were just words. Nice ideas, but so disconnected from my reality that I felt like a failure when I tried. I couldn't find a comfortable position to stay still long enough to even start trying various methods I read about. I was depressed I couldn't see the point, and quite frankly a lot of BS gets attached to the basic concepts.
I understand mindfulness now, but it was a process that I had to experience rather than trying to emulate. To feel the growing connection with my body, to release the emotional baggage that affected my mental health, to feel calmer and accept what I was going through.
I tried breathing exercises, mantras in the mirror (that never ended well for me or the mirror) but I never stuck with anything. It felt forced, not helpful.
At some point during my healing I did develop the thought "there is only now" as I breathed with my Base-Line. The past is in the past, and the future is yet to come but this second now is what I have and trying to make that a little better for myself, releasing a little bit of positive energy into the world. In times of stress etc. I try to "centre myself" with the "there is only now". And that is what I feel the Base-Line muscles are - our center. (There's lots of phases people use and they all lead back to Base-Line in my mind!)
Everything in the body is connected. I'll be doing a post about the upper body connection - the trapezius muscles, but it's a lot of information to take in at once so that's why I've tried to break it down into sections:
Everything starts from the Base-Line pelvic floor and rectus abdominis muscles. Connecting with these is the key to then connecting with the rest of your body.
Then these leg connectors, then the upper body.
Conscious proprioception is an important part of healing:
"The ability to sense the position of your body in space and being aware of where you should be able to move."
An awareness of the sensory feedback your body provides about the position of your body.
Feeling the relative position, motion and equilibrium of each of your main muscles of movement. (Pelvic floor, rectus abdominis, gluteus maximus, rectus femoris, trapezius.)
Feeling the relative alignment of the anatomical structures on the median plane. (Linea alba, supraspinous and nuchal ligaments.)
Feeling where your natural range of movement should be able to take you.
Being able to see/sense/visualise your presence in space.
The connection between body and mind.
The basic idea:
Throughout the body, various 'sensors' produce sensory feedback (information) that is sent to the brain (via our nerves).
The brain processes the feedback about our position and movement for the sense known as proprioception. (PRO-pree-oh-SEPt-shun)
Definition of proprioception: "The ability to sense stimuli arising within the body regarding position, motion, and equilibrium of your body."
Your sense of proprioception will be running in the background, as your body subconsciously makes adjustments in order to maintain a 'functional posture'.
Conscious proprioception is when we are aware of this proprioceptive information our body and brain have for us. When we can consciously sense/feel:
*The position of the parts of our body.
*The motion of our body, and where we should be able to move.
*Our equilibrium - whether the body is balanced or not.
Your Base-Line muscles and conscious proprioception:
To describe the position of something you need a reference.
→ The position of the rest of your body is relative to your Base-Line.
To describe a motion (a change in position) a reference is also needed.
→ All movement should originate from your Base-Line.
To be in equilibrium means to be balanced, but balanced around what?
→ Balance either side of the median plane.
According to Base-Line theory:
We have a 3-D map of the body stored in our brain. This map is based on our body when it has a full range of movement - our potential rather than what we can currently achieve.
Proprioceptive sensory information from the whole body should be applied to this map, giving us a mental image of the layout and relative positions of our head and limbs extending from our Base-Line.
Sensory feedback from the pelvic floor provides the Base starting point for reading the map accurately.
The anatomical structures on the median plane (our midline) provide the guides to orientate the map in the right direction, beginning with the linea alba. Sensory feedback from the rectus abdominis muscles that lie either side of the linea alba provide the sensory information about the position of our central Line.
We can experience the whole map when there are no physical restrictions to block the proprioceptive signals on the way to the brain.
The map in the brain can become skewed. The map maintains its approximate shape but becomes misaligned on the body. If the map is misaligned, motor signals (commands from the brain to muscles) go to the wrong place, causing imbalances and increased stress on our muscular system as other areas of muscle rather than the main muscles of movement are activated as we move.
I had wanted to add the actual physiology of muscles is much more complex that the contraction/relaxation scenario e.g. concentric, isometric and eccentric contractions for various muscles.
I am trying to use terminology that fits with the experience of using these muscles and makes sense to people. When I started to describe focusing on the main muscles of movement I was using the phrase "engaging the muscles" but feedback from a few folks said they didn't understand what I meant.
I have used contraction to describe how to work with the gluteus maximus and rectus femoris because that's what it feels like - they are getting stronger and firmer - solid muscles when active and supporting the legs through a full range of movement. The rectus femoris a long strong pole, the gluteus maximus a solid rock.
The main muscles should be free to move in all directions, which means to be as long/wide as possible - allowing maximal movement of the body and working towards true body alignment based on the anatomical structures on the median plane - especially the linea alba, nuchal and supraspinous ligaments.
It's about building a conscious connection, feeling the main muscles "work" (not totally happy with the word work either!).
Being aware of the condition/state and relative positions of each pair of muscles relative to your Base-Line - which is part of body mindfulness but I'm my experience a strong physical connection needs to be established before more subtle movements can be appreciated.
I know what you mean by terminology. It is a nightmare. It is like two people looking at a carpet. I call it a red carpet. The other calls it a blue carpet. We can agree that my red is their blue. When it comes to internal body matters neither can share the others internal state. Thus it becomes guesswork.
I once worked with two people together to do a particular muscle exercise. One person grasped it in less than a minute. The other person was still trying to understand what I was trying to get her to do ten minutes later.
I have a post called "Mental state and the state of the fascia Part1" I think you will find it useful.
I understand the issues with the word engaging. I am not sure what it means. Where as using the muscle to make movements or contractions is a little bit more understandable maybe?
I have a sneaky feeling that fascia has a input into pain perception. Think back to the old technique of a child falls over and hurts itself. The mother goes to the child and rubs the affected area and the child immediately feels better. Does the fascia manipulation alter the pain response or does the fascia manipulation modify the emotional response?
Over contracted muscle and stuck fascia layers need physical manipulation. Hence the pain when treated by the manual therapists. Is part of the problem that some people is finding the body response overloading and other things need to be done to bring the overloading down?
To engage - to activate, to interact with - it made sense to me! I'm swaying more to "connect with" and "feel the condition of" but words don't quite cover the experience of fully working with the main muscles of movement. These legs connectors are all about strength, the trapezius muscles about expansion...
I don't like the term "fascia". It's a bit vague and rather misused in my opinion so I'm sticking with "connective tissue" for now. It's mostly collagen fibres in these tissues. I imagine them crosslinking and kinking, something like the spikes of velcro, stiffening the body over time. I would be very interested to see the histopathology the chains of lumps and thickenings I could feel all over my body in my subcutaneous tissues. The "knots" that I've slowly released through movement accompanied by a lot of crunching and cracking, pops and pings. I feel safe doing these releases because I can feel where I should be able to move guided by my connection to my Base-Line muscles and my sense of conscious proprioception that has developed with time.
Releasing my tissues released a lot of emotional issues. I was amazed at how interconnected my feelings and physical state were. Emotional baggage that seemed to be physically stored on my body that I couldn't mentally let go of until my body had released them. I've gone from a depressed wreck, constantly focused on the worst case scenario that couldn't ever relax to a state of calm, and real sleep and feelings of dare I say it, happiness. Almost zen now!
So yes, physical manipulations to release tissues are good. I've done them myself as I regained my natural range of movement, primarily using the roll-down action supported by my Base-Line muscles, feeling the tissues release little by little. Then moving my arms and legs and head as felt good.
Over the decades I've seen many a osteopath, chiropractor and massage therapist. They helped a bit, for a while, but because the underlying problem was that I didn't use my body properly the pains would always return. A combination of focusing on using the main muscles of movement to their full extend and a good manual therapist to help release the tissues would be good!
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