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Gratitude is the understanding that many millions of things come together and live together and mesh together and breathe together in order for us to take even one more breath of air, that the underlying gift of life and incarnation as a living, participating human being is a privilege; that we are miraculously, part of something, rather than nothing. – David Whyte
Coincidentally, I encountered this quote shortly after hearing a lecture on happiness in which the speaker asserted that when we truly recognize our privilege, we readily feel enthusiastic and grateful about whatever we’re engaged in, work included.
It’s easy to forget to be grateful though, just as it’s natural to expect life to continue in roughly the way it always has, with ample clean air, water, food, electricity, safety, and everything else that supports us. Sometimes it’s not until we experience contrast that we recognize our privilege.
Having a period of sickness makes us appreciate our health. Smoky air makes us appreciate fresh air – and firefighters and rain. Traveling in an area with mediocre food options makes us appreciate farmers’ markets and well-stocked grocery stores. All of our adversity, including even our day-to-day micro-adversities, can become prompts to recognize what’s still working and good in our life. You can even try making a rule for yourself that every time you complain about something – even just to yourself – you follow it with a statement of gratitude.
When traffic is bad, what’s good? When there’s pain in your back, what parts of your body still work well and feel okay?
Of course, we don’t need to wait for suffering in order to pay attention to our gifts. It’s just that suffering – especially when it’s really painful – has a way of capturing our attention. The key is the paying attention, and we’re in the habit of letting our attention go to whatever’s loudest or most dramatic, like media, interpersonal conflict, and worry.
Sometimes we need to grab our attention and put it on something else. And when I say “sometimes” I mean virtually all the time – choosing intentionally what we’re putting our attention on. Might I recommend a good place to put it: on the total experience that is happening right here, right now. Your breath and the air entering and exiting your lungs. What it feels like in your body. What you’re currently engaged in. The land you’re sitting on. The beating of your heart. The sun illuminating the world. The soft clothes on your skin. The feeling of the earth’s gravity acting on you.
We want to feel spontaneous gratitude, the exalted kind that comes to us with strong emotion, rather than needing to prompt ourselves to think of something to be grateful for. But the chosen form isn’t any less real. And it has the same benefits of promoting happiness, broadening our perspective, and focusing our energy on good things.
I am grateful for you.
Love,
Peter & Everyone at the Dragontree
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A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the differences between acupuncture and “dry needling” to alleviate pain, and in that article I explained a bit about the phenomenon of myofascial trigger points. After I said I believe these are the cause of most of the physical pain humans experience, a number of readers asked me to explain more. For the science lovers out there, I’m going to dive deeper this week.
Besides the most common forms of pain, like lower back and headaches, I’ve had patients with digestive problems, sinus congestion, chest pain, ear ringing, numb hands, painful intercourse, acid reflux, vision changes, and other health issues that were eventually discovered to be due to myofascial trigger points. I believe everyone should know about them and how they work – it could save us a lot of time and worry.
Basically, a trigger point is a small, irritable region in a muscle (or the surrounding connective tissue – “fascia”) that stays stuck in a contracted state, making the muscle fibers taut. This can cause reduced muscle strength and range of motion, pain, numbness, itching, and other forms of dysfunction. Sometimes a trigger point feels like a palpable nodule or “knot,” but to untrained fingers they’re often tricky to find.
A unique property of trigger points is that they’re able to produce symptoms in other parts of the body – from a few inches to a couple feet away. For instance, there’s a trigger point that can form in the soleus muscle of the calf that’s capable of producing pain in the lower back. For this reason, the work of Janet Travell, MD and her colleague David Simons, MD, was groundbreaking. For each muscle in the body, they mapped where trigger points tend to form and what kinds of symptoms they cause.
If you were experiencing pain along the outside of your leg, you might assume that something was wrong with that part of your leg, perhaps with the often-tight iliotibial band (IT band). But this diagram might be helpful. The X’s show where trigger points can occur in a muscle called gluteus minimus above the hip socket. The red shading shows the potential areas of pain that can result. You might not suspect this muscle because, as you can see, there’s no pain at the site of the problem!
There are a handful of mechanisms that can promote trigger point formation, such as irritation of nerves, chronic organ problems, nutritional deficiencies, and autoimmune disorders. Most often, though, the cause is trauma to our connective tissue. When a muscle is strained by being worked too hard, too fast, or beyond its natural range, there is frequently a sort of “recoil” that occurs as segments of the muscle fibers bunch up and remain that way.
This is especially common when someone works out without warming up; when someone does a very ambitious workout after not having exercised for a long time; when someone makes a sudden movement (like reaching out to catch something or trying to stop oneself from falling); and especially when someone does any of the above when in a state of diminished resilience (e.g, when stressed, upset, sleep deprived, eating poorly, etc.).
Even more commonly, the trauma is a form of “postural stress” that’s demanding on muscles in a way that’s difficult to perceive at the time – such as doing the same relatively motionless activity (like sitting at a desk or driving) for hours, days, months, or years. One possible mechanism is known as the “Cinderella hypothesis.” During static muscle exertion – holding a position for a long time, as dentists, musicians, typists, and others engaged in precision handwork do – the body tends to engage a certain group of small muscle fibers, called Cinderella fibers because they’re put to work first and are the last to be disengaged. Even though they’re not doing heavy lifting, these muscle fibers (often in the neck, shoulders, back, and forearms) are continually activated and overworked, which makes them susceptible to trigger point formation.
Whatever the cause, the result is that eventually the muscle never completely relaxes. Muscles are composed of numerous parallel fibers that work together to shorten (contraction of the muscle) and lengthen (the return of the muscle to its relaxed state). Within each of these fibers are many end-to-end contractile units called sarcomeres, and in the case of a trigger point, a group of sarcomeres gets “stuck” in a shortened state. This makes the affected fibers taut and often “stringy” feeling.
To make matters worse, the contracted region clamps down on tiny blood vessels causing local ischemia (inadequate blood supply), reducing in-flow of fresh, oxygenated blood and out-flow of toxins. This leads to a localized hypoxic state (not enough oxygen). The tissue pH changes, local metabolism is impaired, and fluid and waste products tend to build up in the area. This combination of factors ultimately activates pain receptors – it starts to hurt – and when this happens you use the affected muscle less.
Instead, you overload “synergists” – nearby helper muscles. The body makes the surrounding musculature tense as a protective mechanism. Meanwhile, there’s a disruption of the balance between the affected muscles and their “antagonists” – those muscles that lengthen when the primary muscles shorten and vice-versa (for example, the triceps is an antagonist of the biceps). Altogether, this restricts natural movement of the original muscle, which just perpetuates the imbalance. Finally, with longstanding trigger points, the body may deposit gooey lubricant compounds called glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) between these triggered muscle fibers, resulting in a gummy lump called a “myogelosis.”
The good news is that there are now books, charts, online tools, and practitioners that can help track down likely trigger points that may be implicated in your discomfort. I have such a tool in my online pain relief course, Live Pain Free, and I teach many approaches for deactivating trigger points.
The most basic methods involve simple mechanical disruption of this holding pattern. First, drink some water if you’re not well hydrated. Second, you or a friend can methodically feel around (ideally guided by a trigger point chart) for points that are sore, and ideally that reproduce the very sensation you’ve been experiencing. Third, maintain firm pressure on the epicenter of the point (with a finger, elbow, ball, or other tool) for about half a minute, consciously breathing into the area and intending to let it go, until there’s a palpable release. Then move on to all the other nearby points that are tight and tender and do the same.
This approach is called ischemic compression. By compressing the tissue enough to block blood flow, the body responds with reflex vasodilation, meaning it opens these vessels and flushes the tissue with a dramatic increase of blood. This will usually produce a significant improvement in the pain or dysfunction, though it will typically return sooner or later. These points tend to go from being active trigger points to “latent” trigger points, which have a certain “memory” (not the good kind of muscle memory) and are capable of getting reactivated. For this reason, persistence is important. The best results come from working on a trigger point consistently – usually from one to several short sessions per day (or less frequent if the sessions are intense) – and continuing for a while even after everything seems better.
As I said, this is a most basic approach, and while it’s often effective, sometimes a more nuanced intervention is required. There are many techniques that build on compression. We can replace fixed pressure with slow, deep strokes in the direction of the muscle fiber, as if re-lengthening this segment. We can work the trigger point back and forth across the direction of the muscle fibers. We can combine pressure on the trigger point with engagement of the affected muscle or antagonistic muscles. We can combine manual work on trigger points with topical herbs and/or internal herbs and nutrients that improve circulation and reduce inflammation. We can utilize release points on the same acupuncture meridian as where the trigger point occurs - or complementary points on other parts of the body. And more.
If all of this sounds interesting and relevant to you, I encourage you to do a little research. It might well be the end of a problem you thought had no solution. And if you need more guidance, check out my online course, Live Pain Free, where I go deeper into trigger points and much, much more to help people get out of pain of all kinds.
While I said I believe trigger points are the cause of most of our physical pain, I think it’s worth mentioning there are usually even deeper causes, such as stress and withheld emotions, poor body mechanics, dehydration, and an inflammatory diet. Holistically addressing these issues will lead to a more complete resolution of the condition. Always look at the big picture.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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One of the most basic ways to grow the spiritual dimension of your life is to consciously invite Spirit into whatever you’re doing. It’s like there’s a friend who’s been hanging out in the background while you eat and work and exercise, and you’re saying, “Oh, I forgot you were there. Would you like to join me?”
Doing so doesn’t require any particular spiritual or religious orientation. Even if you’re an atheist, you can probably still conceive of a Highest Self – an aspect of you that, in a way, is more You than any of the various personalities, thought patterns, or styles you’ve had throughout your life. It’s a stable, enduring, virtuous witness to everything you’ve been and done.
Our ability to sense this presence, whatever we choose to call it, waxes and wanes. Same with the degree to which we let it guide us. As these factors increase (more awareness and willingness to be guided), we experience a corresponding increase in trust, an expanded perspective, and less overwhelm. The feeling of being small and helpless in a big scary world diminishes.
If you haven’t done this much (or at all) it can feel at first like you’re hanging out with an imaginary friend. Is this real? Are they still in the room? It’s especially common if this is a dimension you’ve barely tuned in to. You’re used to giving most of your attention to relatively tangible and superficial planes of existence – media and culture, your possessions, your body, your thoughts and emotions. Over time the sense of opening to something bigger and subtler becomes more palpable. Simply remembering and intending to invite this Consciousness into more of your experiences makes a difference.
To get started, you could just try quieting your mind for a moment and saying hello. Hello, Source. Hello, Highest Self. Hello, Divine Light. Then be still and see if you notice anything. I believe we are that Source experiencing itself as a human being. There is no true separation, only the veil of the mind (which can be quite obscure). Your Highest Self wants to be perceived and known and consciously channeled.
Here are some other possible invitations:
Come on this hike with me. Help me notice what I usually miss.
Show me what I need to see for my healing and evolution.
Let me stay present and accepting through this event.
Let’s experience the act of eating delicious food together.
Let me see this through the eyes of my Highest Self / Spirit / God / Unconditional Love / Awareness.
But it’s not just the pleasant things that are worth inviting Spirit into. . .
I let you into my fear so that you may share it, illuminate it, transform it.
Come into my pain; please be with me in this suffering.
I invite you into my grief, as this, too, is part of the human experience.
Enter this crazy situation with me, Highest Self, and give me perspective.
Join me, Divine Light, in my depression, and hold me.
These painful states inevitably change when we open them to the spiritual dimension. It’s the simplest thing to do, yet sometimes the hardest to remember. This message is for me as much as it is for you.
Be well,
Peter
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Gratitude is the understanding that many millions of things come together and live together and mesh together and breathe together in order for us to take even one more breath of air, that the underlying gift of life and incarnation as a living, participating human being is a privilege; that we are miraculously, part of something, rather than nothing. – David Whyte
Coincidentally, I encountered this quote shortly after hearing a lecture on happiness in which the speaker asserted that when we truly recognize our privilege, we readily feel enthusiastic and grateful about whatever we’re engaged in, work included.
It’s easy to forget to be grateful though, just as it’s natural to expect life to continue in roughly the way it always has, with ample clean air, water, food, electricity, safety, and everything else that supports us. Sometimes it’s not until we experience contrast that we recognize our privilege.
Having a period of sickness makes us appreciate our health. Smoky air makes us appreciate fresh air – and firefighters and rain. Traveling in an area with mediocre food options makes us appreciate farmers’ markets and well-stocked grocery stores. All of our adversity, including even our day-to-day micro-adversities, can become prompts to recognize what’s still working and good in our life. You can even try making a rule for yourself that every time you complain about something – even just to yourself – you follow it with a statement of gratitude.
When traffic is bad, what’s good? When there’s pain in your back, what parts of your body still work well and feel okay?
Of course, we don’t need to wait for suffering in order to pay attention to our gifts. It’s just that suffering – especially when it’s really painful – has a way of capturing our attention. The key is the paying attention, and we’re in the habit of letting our attention go to whatever’s loudest or most dramatic, like media, interpersonal conflict, and worry.
Sometimes we need to grab our attention and put it on something else. And when I say “sometimes” I mean virtually all the time – choosing intentionally what we’re putting our attention on. Might I recommend a good place to put it: on the total experience that is happening right here, right now. Your breath and the air entering and exiting your lungs. What it feels like in your body. What you’re currently engaged in. The land you’re sitting on. The beating of your heart. The sun illuminating the world. The soft clothes on your skin. The feeling of the earth’s gravity acting on you.
We want to feel spontaneous gratitude, the exalted kind that comes to us with strong emotion, rather than needing to prompt ourselves to think of something to be grateful for. But the chosen form isn’t any less real. And it has the same benefits of promoting happiness, broadening our perspective, and focusing our energy on good things.
I am grateful for you.
Love,
Peter & Everyone at the Dragontree
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