Biofeedback: Healing Muscle Tension and Pain

The human body has approximately 640 skeletal muscles, all of which help for staying active and adapting to ongoing challenges and the physics of living on earth. However, chronic muscle tension and disharmony is a very common problem in daily living, and can contribute to ongoing pain and stress. Gravity itself makes maintaining a healthy and relaxed posture a never-ending work-in-progress.

Regardless, the human body has self-correcting biofeedback intelligence, an inner self-awareness that can enable physical recovery and refinement as well as correct action. Athletes use this for fine-tuning in sports. Much of what the body accomplishes daily happens unconsciously through conditioning of over-learned movements and actions. Good self-awareness and cooperation with the body’s feedback systems can result in enhanced muscle coordination and ease of movement, and better posture and efficiency of bodily care. In contrast, over-learned bad physical habits left unsolved or out of awareness can lead to chronic health problems that affect quality of life.

Muscle tension can result directly from mental stress, and muscle tension can cause the mind itself to become tense and uptight. Muscle tension can also be caused by improper use of body mechanics causing maladaptive stress on the system.

Muscle tension in any location can feel tightened and shortened, in spasm, restless and fatigued, knotted, and produce tender points. Tensions and insults to muscle tissue can occur throughout the head and body, and refer pain to other locations. Chronic muscle tension can obstruct natural blood flow and energy, and place overbearing stress on joints, tendons and ligaments. This can impinge on nerve and blood flow, causing feelings of numbness in distant body locations. Ongoing muscle tension can cause or exacerbate headaches, back pain, neck and shoulder pain, TMJ (jaw pain) and bruxism (teeth clenching), joint pain and arthritis, anxiety and restlessness, fatigue and insomnia, among numerous other conditions, as the whole human system is affected by its parts.

Often, medical or trauma-related pain may be difficult to alleviate. However, there is much that can be done to correct or improve existing muscle tension conditions that lead to pain and stress. Here are five strategies to consider.