12/13/2025
I tell my massage students to create a story about the tension they find in their client. This can help to understand why the tension is presenting itself like it is. While it might be the truth, the client doesn't always remember all the details, so we're just filling in some possibilities. .
This 'story' I'm sharing here is so cute and I think so touching about what's going on with a trigger point and what happens when someone addresses it.
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Confessions of a Myofascial Trigger Point
I was never meant to be permanent. I began as a moment, a response, a slight tightening when holding felt safer than releasing. At first, it was subtle, just a brief pause in the tissue's rhythm. But the body asked me to stay. So I did. I shortened my fibers, thickened my layers, and held the chemistry still. I became a place where the river slowed and gathered its weight.
The body learned to move around me. Fascia stiffened along familiar lines, rerouting tension and sensation elsewhere. Pain drifted outward, tracing old pathways through the shoulder, jaw, back, or breath. I wasn’t creating chaos. I was containing it. I held pressure because something inside wasn’t ready to let go.
Then the hands came, not hurried, not demanding. They rested with warmth and attention, and I felt the first change before I understood it. Compression softened the alarm. The nervous system quieted its vigilance. Hyaluronic layers warmed and began to slide. A gentle current brushed past me as the fascial wave moved through the body, reminding the tissue of motion I thought had been lost.
When the wave reached me, it paused. I was seen. The hands didn’t press me deeper into holding. Instead, they slipped beneath me, lifting me gently toward the bone. The pressure shifted in different directions, changing the shape of everything I had been holding together. My fibers lengthened. Blood returned. Chemistry softened. I felt warmth where there had been tightness and a trembling where there had been certainty.
I tried to stay. Old patterns don’t dissolve easily. But time was offered instead of force. Breath moved. Electrical chatter quieted. The nervous system loosened its grip on the story I had been carrying. Slowly, and with only a little drama on my part, I melted. The dam cracked, and the water I had been holding found its way forward again.
As I released, the river surged outward, carrying the change through the fascial lines that connect the whole body. Where I once stood, there was space, warmth, and movement.
I was never the enemy; I was the pause that kept the body safe until it was ready. And when it was finally met with patience, presence, and understanding of a healer like you, I let go. The river remembered itself, and so did I.
