Intrinsic and Extrinsic Muscles

Focusing on a single muscle leans you away from thinking about the whole body. And there's a bigger problem: there's a strong likelihood of focusing on the wrong muscle. The one that hurts may be compensating for something more interesting. It is often the big brawny extrinsic muscles that take the limelight, when the more interesting support might come from the small, delicate, mysterious intrinsic muscles. The intrinsic muscles, like the fascia, develop very early in the embryo. They are the ones that work within a particular system – in the hand, along the spine, inside the eye. By contrast, the extrinsic muscles are the big levered ones that connect different parts – the neck and the first rib, the chest and the arm, the torso and the leg, the hand and the lower arm – in order to lift, bend, hold up or do other Big Work that gets lots of attention. In a Body Wisdom movement class, part of the magic depends on accessing the intrinsic muscles while inviting the extrinsic ones to melt into the background for a little while. It is the intrinsic muscles that might provide something like a basic blueprint, that are best at reorganizing, that are smarter at finding easier options. If the extrinsic muscles can just give the intrinsic muscles 'a moment,' then the intrinsic muscles provide better support for the whole system.