Restrictive Muscle Patterns: How They Are Formed and How to Release Them

The gamma motor system is the most often neglected and least understood features of all movement and motor control. For one thing, its operations are largely unconscious; and for another, the complexity of its activity defies normal, tidy explanations of cause and effect.

It is what guides our intentions into coherent action. Its operations account for spontaneous movement, for well-honed repetitive skills, and for dysfunctional patterns that frustrate our development and create discomforts of many kinds.

A grasp of its functions is essential to understanding how movement takes place, and how lasting patterns are formed.

• What makes up the gamma motor system?   It combines the interactive elements of ordinary muscle cells, tiny muscle spindles, tendon organs, the brain stem and spinal cord, and the millions of reflex arcs that ultimately stimulate muscular contraction and lengthening.
• Why is it so little known?   While much has been written about each of these elements, very little has coherently described their stupendously complex interactions that produce movement, skills or blocks. Countless variables are at play between the conscious mind and unconscious actions, between intention and actual performance. All of this activity cannot be illustrated or understood in terms of the computational flow charts we are often shown in textbooks. It is a kaleidoscopic gestalt that is perpetually changing, body-wide and in nanosecond shifts.
• What does it have to do with injuries and healing?  More often than not it is habituated and resistant patterns in our muscles—“stuck” or “blocked” areas that set the stage for injury. When we force our way through them in the attempt to achieve a desired movement or asana, the connective tissue that surrounds them is in danger of strains, sprains, rips and painful inflammation. The unconscious elements of a stuck pattern must be patiently and mindfully coaxed into great length, more range of motion, and more ease in performance.