As a therapist I am often asked, “What is a knot?”
Our bodies are incredible healing machines that continue to take care of us as we stress and push our muscles and tendons to their extremes, especially with repetitive actions or stagnant positions as we type away in chairs hunched over computers day after day. Yet while we do this, we are creating knots. Sneezing can make a knot! Even sleeping creates these troublesome spots… Knots form in our bodies during the transitions between activity and inactivity.
In general, one knot consists of a constellation of knots. It is fascinating: most knots are charted in the same spot from person to person. These are called trigger points. Before I get ahead of myself, let’s start with a brief biology lesson.
Go back to your high school biology classroom and try to envision the dusty skeleton in the corner. Many science teachers are oddballs and name their skeleton, even dressing it up with a scarf or a hat. The skeleton in my memory is Aimee. Aimee, the skeleton, is held together by all kinds of pins and screws that take the place of the muscles and tendons that animate our skeletal systems. A tendon is the fibrous glue that attaches the fleshy muscle to the bone. In short, our bodies are a series of bone-tendon-muscle-tendon-bone, set on repeat.
Dr. Gil Hedley, Ph.D. describes muscles as “bone paint,” which is a wonderfully expressive way to explain the layering of muscles on the skeletal system. Paint muscles onto Aimee, and she transforms from a dusty skeleton to a human body. There are more than 600 different types of muscles in our bodies including smooth muscles, which are the intestines, bladder and muscles behind your eyes, and cardiac muscles, which are the muscles that make up your heart. Muscles can also be split into two other categories: voluntary and involuntary. Voluntary muscles are deliberately activated, while involuntary muscles involve some of our most essential systems, like breathing, digesting food and blinking. The human race would not last long without those muscles!
Going deeper on to the cellular level, a muscle is made up of protein filaments called actin and myosin that glide along each other to make the muscle cell contract, which, in turn, changes the length and shape of the muscle cell. Muscle cells are called muscle fibers, so a group of muscle fibers becomes a fascicle, and then a bundle of fascicles become the muscle belly. A trigger point or knot is made in the muscle fiber and a build-up of the neurotransmitter called acetylcholine causes the restriction of the healthy glide between the actin and myosin. This contraction of the muscle fibers prevents blood flow from bringing nutrients for the muscle to stay strong. The build-up can be caused by direct trauma, overuse, stillness, or even psychological stress. And what is this build-up called: A KNOT!
So that is the brief physiological breakdown of a knot, a small but potent chemical build-up in the muscle that dams up the flow of energy.
Has this inspired you to book a massage to tend to all those taut muscle fibers? It should!
– Jean Rim, massage therapist