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When our brain does not trust that our body can manage movement safely it can employ a strategy called guarding. I wrote about this strategy in my last newsletter because it is such a common source of chronic tightness, particularly as we age. To read about muscle guarding and what causes the brain to choose it, check out that post before reading this one.
If you are experiencing muscle guarding, there is hope. This week I want to outline one of the root causes of muscle guarding, what causes it, and how to address it.
Want to learn more about chronic tightness and how to keep it from creeping up on you as you age? I’ll be covering that and more with a small group in Oaxaca this November. Body & Vibe Over 45 →
Building Our Homunculus
Our brain has to keep track of this body, managing all our sensations and movements and deciding which muscles should be on, and which should be off. Some of this is conscious—I can think about flexing my quad and hey, there it goes—but a lot of it is going on subconsciously according to the brain’s map of the body. This map is the homunculus.
The homunculus—a name for a tiny artificial human—is the brain’s neural image of the body that it uses to make decisions. The sensory homunculus is built using feedback from the sensory nervous system that feeds the brain information on your position and feeling, and then the brain derives the motor homunculus to focus on which muscles to engage for movement.
The map doesn’t exactly look like a normal human body because the brain puts much more emphasis on certain body parts, like the hands and mouth, than others like the shoulder blades or hamstrings.
These wild little dudes show us how the brain maps out the body, and where it puts the majority of its attention. The homunculus is how the brain makes all of its decisions about muscle engagement.
What’s really wild is that the brain makes its decisions about which muscles to use and how to use them based entirely on the homunculus, not the actual body. This means that if the homunculus gets wonky, the brain struggles to make good choices.
When a Good Homunculus Goes Bad
The poor brain is doing its best, there in the dark closet of your skull, to figure out what the hell is going on out there. But there are things that can really mess it up and cause the homunculus to get all blurry or just plain wrong.
One of the most obvious disruptors is traumatic injury. An injury like my knee fiasco (full tear of all four ligaments, meniscus, and multiple tendons) explodes the delicate web of neurons that runs through the muscles, fascia, and bones. Then the brain is using an old map of a bombed-out city, and can’t find its way around anymore. This can lead to symptoms like phantom limb syndrome, where people who have lost limbs still experience pain, cramps, itching, and other sensory feedback when no neurons are there.
But the homunculus can also fall prey to much less extreme damage. Our brain needs movement and sensation to send it little pings and keep the map updated. If we are sedentary or otherwise unstimulated for a long time, the homunculus gets blurry.
The brain really needs to be as connected as possible to the body, using every sensory input available, in order to give useful, optimal outputs to the body for easful, smooth movment.
This is also true if our fascia gets dried out or disorganized, since fascia is so rich in sensory neurons and provides constant feedback to the brain. This is part of why older folks, those of us on the hypermobility spectrum, and folks with chronic dehydration all are prone to homunculus-related problems.
Even our eyes and ears are important in maintaining an accurate homunculus. If your eyesight is blurry or impaired or you have inner ear issues causing even very slight dizziness that can also blur the map since the brain can’t quite jive the input from the eyes and ears with the proprioceptive feedback from the body. If inputs conflict, the brain makes a smudge like a part of google maps that refuses to load.
What are the Consequences of a Wonky Homunculus?
When the brain doesn’t exactly know what’s going on with a part of the body, it gets very concerned. The last thing that brain wants is for you to get injured, since that could certainly lead to death, and then no more brain. So the brain often chooses muscle guarding as the safest choice. If you just tighten everything up then the chances of flailing around and doing damage are less.
While this may be a brilliant short-term strategy, anyone who has experienced muscle guarding 👋👋👋 can tell you it really sucks in the long term. Chronic tightness is uncomfortable and can have a cascading effect on movement patterns where the inability to move freely in one area can cause dysfunction somewhere else. And of course it’s a real bummer for anyone interested in fancy flexibility training.
It is tempting, when an area is tight all the time, to want to stretch it. However stretching is not going to help rebuild the homunculus. It may bring temporary relief, but it will not cause lasting change in muscle tone as long as the brain continues to feel befuddled about its homunculus.
How Do We ReBuild a Blurry Homunculus?
Is a question I’m sure your always wondering about!
There are quite a few tools, but the one that I use and coach the most is controlled, mindful movement. This practice is also known as somatic movement, and is a very large field with many deep, rich rabbit holes of study from Feldenkrais Method to Alexander Technique to Somatic Yoga.
Ultimately any movement practice can be performed with a somatic emphasis, as somatic just means “performed with the conscious intention of focusing on the inner experience rather than the outer result.”
While this sounds quite straightforward, many smart people have dedicated their professional lives to finding ways to help our overworked brains to focus on the body and rebuild that vitally important homunculus.
Part of the problem is that many of us have been taught to view any movement practice as a means towards an end, whether aesthetic or performance-based. This makes the idea of small, delicate, exploratory movements feel pointless, boring, and frustrating. We are looking for the big sensations, but the big sensations don’t feed the brain the quiet neural signals coming from under-appreciated body parts. This is especially true of areas of the body that are already shrimpy in the homunculus, like the aforementioned shoulder blades and hamstrings.
It was very helpful for me to understand exactly why a somatic practice would help me so that I could push through my judgement about tiny, irritating movements and go through the surprisingly strenuous effort of getting my brain to focus on all the tiny little sensations in my body. I can say, it has been extremely helpful, including in this knee-hab process.
Action Items: Somatic Practices for Homunculus Help
Here are some of my favorite somatic practices that I sprinkle into my day:
Morning Circles: Every morning, shortly after waking up (dog walks come first obviously) I spend 10-20 minutes circling through all my joints. I do it slowly, starting small and increasing the range, trying to focus only on what I’m feeling and giving my body a nice good morning pep talk. Here is a video of one version of my morning routine.
Super Slow Warm Up Set: When I am at the gym doing my resistance training I will often use my first set as a somatic exercise. I will do a very light, very slow set of 5-10 reps, coordinating the movement with my breath, and just focusing in on the sensation of the movement. Am I getting the target muscles to work? Is everything tracking smoothly? Do I have my form and range where I want them?
Mindful Flopping: When I’m really in bad shape, like after an long travel day or a stressful situation, I will lay on the floor and spend some time feeling into my body to discover where I have lost connection. Then I will use soft, floppy movements, rocking or dragging, with as little effort as I can put in. I will focus on using less and less effort for the same movement until it feels like a little muscular whisper. Inevitably that brings my body back into focus.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation: This is one of the oldest and most-used somatic techniques for a reason. It is easy to do (just contract the muscles and then try to relax them fully), can be done anywhere at any time, and works well for most people regardless of other movement restrictions.
These are just a few of my favs, but the world of somatic practice is huge and varied and worth exploring. For my fellow sensation-seeking performance-focused over-achievers, remind yourself that the quiet voices are just as important as the loud ones. Think of your little homunculus’s shoulder blades and hamstrings getting all swole!
Further reading:
Why Your Nervous System Makes You Stiff — And How Age Makes It Worse — read this first if you haven't already
Does Getting Older Really Make You Less Flexible? — the physical changes that feed into guarding
How to Warm Up for Flexibility Fitness — What Actually Works — how somatic awareness fits into your warm-up
Strong AND Flexible: Understanding End-Range Strengthening — building the strength your brain needs to trust your body
Want to experience training with me in person?
This November I'm co-teaching a week-long retreat in Oaxaca, Mexico with Kerri Krisinski that focuses on longevity, mobility, training outcomes, and mindset for women and femmes over 45 (trans women are women). Let’s kick those stereotypes about middle-aged women in the teeth!
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Kristina
