Ever bump into that unkindly way our body responds when a muscle spasms?

Those muscle spasms can feel hard as a rock and at times painful and annoying when it just stops us in our tracks or leaves us writhing on the floor trying to get to a phone to call someone to help us.

When muscle spasms happen we generally react by pulling away and trying to lengthen the offending signal of the stiff, cramping muscle.

Muscle Spasms at night

Have you ever woken up at night with a painful leg cramp or muscle spasms which get your immediate attention?

Whadya do? Stand on it, eat a banana, use heat, use ice, or take some muscle relaxants. People have even had the pleasure of drinking pickle juice when dealing with muscle spasms.

We have all sorts of remedies yet we are most likely dealing with a brain signal that is easily changed once we know how to easily un-lock the code and reorganize the muscles.

Quiet down the zoo of muscle spasms

What’s a charley horse? Who is your animal?

While the term usually is used for a cramp, muscle spasms happening in the leg have fun names from other cultures.

In Norway, it’s called a thigh hen and in Germany it’s a horse’s kiss. While in southern Italy, a donkey bite and in Guam, a rat of all things.

Makes you wonder what to call a butt cramp, a charlie donkey or just a pain in the a!*?

In other countries, it’s called ice leg, paralyzer, wooden leg, hard one, crutch and wouldn’t you know… cramp in the leg.

When we’ve experienced this varied and colorful sensation, we can feel the alarm bell go off and our muscles seem to be held in the “on” position.

Sometimes the signal can last for a moment, hours or beat intermittently for some time.

In many cases, our muscles have appropriately reacted with was is known as the stretch reflex.

When we pull our hands away from a hot stove, it’s a good thing to have a quick reaction which saves us from a burn.

On the other hand, the switch can be set “on” from a previously contracted muscle which most likely was already being contracted at a rate higher than the resting or neutral rate it can lie in to be used.

Many of us live with high tension levels or compensations of an elevated hip, over arched spine, or the countless others ways we can hold ourself together more than necessary. Our muscles will keep on going to a certain point.

When they are exhausted from our activity or stress thresholds and we push pass the tipping point, we can set off any number of muscle spasms.

When we push on a contracted muscle, the good news is that the stretch reflex reflexively pulls away. You ain’t gotta do a thing about it. The reflex happens.

Your spinal cord will pull the hand away from the hot stove just as you jerk in reaction to being hit with a hammer from the doctor.

When we get a muscle spasm at night from turning over, we’ve bumped into a reflex which comes “on” even though we were in our off mode.

Interesting how a movement, such as when someone merely bends over and reaches, yet throws their back into a full blown grabbing set of muscle spasms.

Or how about someone doing some exercise like abdominal crunches and “poof” there goes the belly into yet another specific train of muscle spasms.

Lock jaw, groin pulls, and runners who pull their hamstring muscles… ‘course some people do that merely from walking a little too fast too… are again signals generated from the spinal cord to protect us.

But what if we over-ride and self-correct the offending signal with our brain’s capacity to change how much muscles can actually output.

To quite down the zoo and terms for muscle spasms, we can use a little animal know to take care of it.

When is the last time you saw a cheetah running 60 mph and set itself off in muscle spasms?

Cheetahs and Muscle SpasmsMaybe they have four legs and can balance more evenly. Why wouldn’t they then have twice as many muscle spasms?

While we believe the right amount of electrolytes and a balanced diet helps the nervous system thrive instead of “pull” one for the team of our muscles. De-hydration too hasn’t shown itself to be too convincing either as the cause of muscle spasms even though we suspect it so.

Healthy vertebrate animals remain limber, agile and flexible on account of the little pandicular maneuvers they do each morning and throughout the day.

The good news is that the process they use has been systematized as somatics exercises which treat muscle spasms and other painful muscular conditions.

To deal with muscle spasms is to use the brain, the one big muscle, to re-set the offending signals.

It’s really quite easy to re-set an over contracting signal unless you have no experience at it… but we all do since most of us pandiculated in our mother’s womb.

It’s like a dusty software file in our brain. All we have to do is re-access it with a little know-how and “poof” the signal of the muscle spasms tunes down.

When we get good at reminding the nervous system how easy it is to reset it, then you can drop all the ice, balms, muscle relaxants and take care of it on the spot.

The brain can reset the resting rates of overly contracted muscles through a simple process which you yourself can replicate in case muscle spasms happens to you.

“Please bring me your muscle spasms.”

You can now access this online class. You’ll learn how to get out of muscle spasms using a little animal know how.

You’ll learn how to apply a simple 3 step method which is a piece of cake to get since we already have the movement software built in. Again, it’s just a matter a accessing it in the brain and getting the brain to release certain chemicals of relaxation.

By using the brain in a precise way, we can relax muscle spasms and calm the muscles down naturally and effectively.

OK, there may be a pucker factor or two to go through but the end will be a painless result, easier movement and the self-knowledge that muscle spasms ain’t no big thing.


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Edward Barrera
Edward Barrera

Founder of Gravity Werks, Hanna Somatic Educator. (H.S.E) Author of Move Like an Animal and The 1 Thing to Do to Relieve Pain, Stiffness, Tension and Stress Ed lived with Fibromyalgia (chronic pain) in his 20’s and 30’s. Now helps people overcome physical pain, reduce muscular stress & tension, and recover quickly from injury using safe, simple, natural (and Pharma free) tools known as somatics exercise. Where the brain changes the neuromuscular system back to comfort so you can confidently do what you want with your body.