Trigger points are knots, or hypersensitive areas, in the body's soft tissues, usually found in muscles, but also in tendons and ligaments. They are called triggers because they can refer pain away from themselves to surrounding areas. They can lie dormant for years and decades and only flare up or become reactivated when the area is stressed physically or the person is stressed emotionally.

A trigger point is a knot that the therapist (or the client even) can often actually feel through their skin. It may be so tiny that it is not felt also. The larger the knot, the more likely it can be palpated. It is an electrical, chemical and physical condition, meaning: cells (physical) are stacked up, or piled up, in an unusual manner (they are not operating in their usual way), and they are held there in a knot, or pile, because of an energetic blockage (electrical) in the body's natural flow of energy (or chi), and because certain chemicals are being released and utilized (for instance lactic acid), that are a response to some overuse, misuse or trauma to the tissue.

The method that I studied is Travell and Simons. Travell charted out the most likely places you could find trigger points on the human body. 80% of trigger points are identical to accupuncture points. Meaning that 6000 years ago a certain health care system was invented in the far east (accupuncture) and it is repeated again in the present in the far west. Eastern and Western medicine meet in trigger points.

Trigger points can be released. Not only does this provide instant pain relief, but specific trigger point therapy can be applied in such a manner as to eradicate them completely - forever and ever - gone. I witnessed this myself in massage school, having had a tight left shoulder for years (a decade at least), one night a fellow student found a trigger point (a large and painful one) along my teres minor (outside edge of shoulder blade). With one treatment, 5 minutes total time, the trigger point was treated, released, and has not returned in 5 years. I call that success!

How do you know if you have a trigger point? You can suspect trigger points in any area that is chronically tense or painful. A therapist skilled in finding them will: 1. know where to look - the most likely locations are charted, 2. she will palpate with her fingers and perhaps feel the knot itself, 3. she will ask you if a spot feels "stingy" - trigger points sting when you press them, 4. a trigger point can cause referred pain in another area, 5. the pain pattern can be reproduced over and over again.

What causes them in the first place? 1. Trauma to the area, such as a blow, a car accident, a fall. 2. Chronic mis-use of a muscle or muscle group. 3. Chronic over-use. 4. Born that way: a misalignment or imbalance, such as one leg longer than the other, causes the muscles on one side to be chronically misused and overused at the same time.

2007 © Lisa Henderson, NC-LMBT #4665. This article not to be copied for commercial use.