Sunday, June 22, 2008

Trouble Sleeping?

A lot of people do. The causes are many. Sometimes the problem is muscular and circulatory.

At least that's my experience. When I had tight abdominal muscles, there seemed to be a throbbing that sometimes kept me awake. My theory is the throbbing is your heart trying to force blood into the tight muscles.

When I put ice on the tight muscles, the throbbing went away. Apparently the cold causes something to contract and blood can flow.

Indeed, cold has been used to treat muscular trigger points. Janet Travell, a physician that literally wrote the book on trigger points, used cold to alleviate trigger points.

Resolving trigger points and myofascial adhesions with massage also seems to alleviate the throbbing. Either way, sleeping is much easier when blood can flow freely into your abdominal muscles.

I wonder how many people are taking drugs to sleep when the problem is something completely correctable like tight muscles. We really need MRE.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

What is Rolfing?

Rolfing is a form of bodywork that pulls apart myofascial adhesions, the binding that can occur in the containers of muscles.

Rolfing is much easier once the muscle sarcomeres have been opened with Qi Gong or some other method.

If you've been working on your sarcomeres and find the tightness keeps returning because of your activities (or lack of activity), you might want to check out rolfing.