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Muscle clamp is a state of chronic tension of the entire muscle, and more often of the muscle group responsible for the expression of emotion. Synonyms: muscle spasm, muscle shell, muscle block.
Muscle clamps are the cause of many troubles and their indicator. The more muscle clamps, the faster a person gets tired, the more negative he has, the poorer and more monotonous emotional life.
Not every muscle tension can be called a clamp. Normal muscle contraction can meet current needs and stop in time. Unlike normal muscle contraction, muscle clamp exists for a long time after the situation that gave rise to it, is difficult to consciously relax and intensifies in response to some emotional stimuli.
Those spasms and clamps that psychologists usually talk about and work with are spasms of the “first degree of neglect”. These are cases when the brain gives incorrect commands to control the muscle tone of the spasmodic area, but the muscles and nerve fibers function normally, spasms are not yet accompanied by loss of innervation and serious changes in muscle tissue. In such non-critical situations, high-quality psychological training, work with a psychotherapist or auto-training sessions allow you to straighten a person’s brains, relax their muscles a little and thereby solve the problem. Unfortunately, there are also clamps of the “second degree of neglect”, in which the innervation of the affected area is seriously disturbed and the muscle fibers partially atrophy, and in these cases it is necessary to turn not to psychologists, but to doctors.
Muscle clamps and the formation of fears
If some situation caused in the soul — that is, in the body — a reaction of fear, this means that somewhere in the body a muscle tension has arisen. Most often, in response to fear, muscle tension occurs in the collar zone (the head is pressed into the shoulders), in the area of the diaphragm (breathing stops), in the muscles around the eyes (glazed eyes) and in the hands (hands tremble). If the fear reaction is repeated or lasts (sometimes it stretches for hours, days and even years), muscle tension turns into a muscle clamp: a storehouse of fear. If a muscle clamp has formed in you according to the pattern of fear, you begin to feel fear even when nothing terrible is happening around you, just the memory of the body works in you, forming a general feeling of anxiety and an acute feeling of fear when something similar to a dangerous situation appears near you. And where a person with a «clean body» will not be scared (or the fear will be weak, easily overcome), a person with heavy muscle clamps will be seriously scared, sometimes to the point of nausea and complete paralysis of the body.
Relaxation of muscle clamps
Relaxation of muscle clamps is useful. Relaxation of muscle clamps leads to the restoration of mental balance, there is a feeling of complete, deep rest, which is primarily reflected in the face. Blood supply improves, venous and lymphatic outflow normalizes, elasticity of muscles and skin is restored. It is good when a person is able to be aware of muscle tension and learns to relax them on his own.
Muscle tension, muscle clamps and all the troubles associated with this are “carried” by most adults. Why? After all, everything seems to be so simple: when you feel tension, relax! No, it just doesn’t work that way. Firstly, most people do not feel their muscle clamps — both because they get used to them, and because they are simply inattentive. Secondly, few people can relax themselves, even if they want to: the ability to relax needs to be developed, like any other skill. Besides, the ability to relax is one thing, but the habit of monitoring your own tension or relaxation is another, and this quality is both rarer and more expensive.
Auto-training helps to remove superficial muscle clamps.
Deep muscle clamps can be removed using other techniques. For example, the holotropic breathing technique or the Rosen method.
Muscle clamps and personal (emotional) state
The drawing of muscle clamps says a lot about the personal, emotional state of a person and largely determines it. Mutual feedback — the state forms muscle tension and clamps, clamps create a mental, personal, emotional state.
The removal of clamps (during a massage or special breathing) is sometimes accompanied by a memory of the situations that caused it, sometimes it is not. There is a hypothesis that such memories are induced artifacts, artificially created by preliminary processing of the client’s psyche.
As a rule, removed muscle clamps return quite soon (from several hours to several weeks). Causes:
- negative environment,
- an arsenal of beliefs of a person, habits and skills (or inability) characteristic of him in communication and relationships,
- familiar image of me
- conditional benefits of negative states and experiences.