Finding a Fascial Pattern: Inside and Outside

How do you go about noticing when a muscle is about to engage? Over time, with this method, you will refine your ability to feel muscle engagement from the inside--you have plenty of data receptors that are designed to help you do that, and if you wake up your bored old mind, it will be happy to engage. But along the way, it can be very helpful to feel fascial engagement from the outside, usually with the tips of your fingers. So...

• Choose a relaxed/supported position. Disengage the muscle pattern of concern to the extent you can. Give yourself some time, just breathing normally, and then come back and relax it and its neighbors some more. Repeat this cycle for as long as it feels interesting and pleasurable, but don't turn it into a Big Meditation. Encourage the playful and curious rather than the solemn and serious and move on to the next step before you get bored with this one.

• Find any move that engages the system you are interested in. For the scalenes, I pick tilting my ear towards my shoulder. I do this move several times, small and gentle, using the pads of my fingers and feeling the muscle contract on the side that I'm tilting towards. I feel around until I have as much information as I want. (Eventually I find I like feeling the scalene pop into action with the whole inside curl of my tenderly-touching fingers...)

• And now I take my fingers off and check how well I can track the sensation of engagement interoceptively--from the inside. I like holding my sensing-hand just half an inch away, for some reason. It helps me focus inside. And I do start to map this movement in a way I never had before. I can feel the tug on my clavicle.* Who knew? I can feel something all the way in my shoulder blade... So I now have a sense not only of the scalene itself but of the muscles that move along with it, that I can use for indirect information.

  I'm feeling awe. What intricacy!

*This is a great example because the scalenes don't attach to the clavicle, but rather to the notorious first rib--but my sensation was not wrong! It does tug at the clavicle. So please please please don't let anatomy be your enemy. Don't try to feel the 'correct' thing just try to feel.