Muscle Contraction Quotes

I only wanted to . . . I mean, just now, when Mr. George interrupted us, there was something very important I wanted to say to you.” “It is about what I told you in the church yesterday? I mean, I can understand that you may think me crazy because I see these beings, but a psychiatrist wouldn’t make any difference.” Gideon frowned. “Just keep quiet for a moment, would you? I have to pluck up all my courage to make you a declaration of love . . . I’ve had absolutely no practice in this kind of thing.” “What?” “Gwyneth,” he said, perfectly seriously, “I’ve fallen in love with you.” My stomach muscles contracted as if I’d had a shock. But it was joy. “Really?” “Yes, really!” In the light of the torch I saw Gideon smile. “I do realize we’ve known each other for less than a week, and at first I thought you were rather . . . childish, and I probably behaved badly to you. But you’re terribly complicated, I never know what you’ll do next, and in some ways you really are terrifyingly . . . er. . . naïve. Sometimes I just want to shake you.” “Okay, I can see you were right about having no practice in making declarations of love,” I agreed. “But then you’re so amusing, and clever, and amazingly sweet,” Gideon went on, as if he hadn’t heard me. “And the worst of it is, you only have to be in the same room and I need to touch you and kiss you . . .” “Yes, that’s really too bad,” I whispered, and my heart turned over as Gideon took the hatpin out of my hair, tossed the feathered monstrosity into the air to fall on the floor, draw me close, and kissed me. About three minutes later, I was leaning against the wall, totally breathless, making an effort to stay upright. “Hey, Gwyneth, try breathing in and out in the normal way,” said Gideon, amused. I gave him a little push. “Stop that! I can’t believe how conceited you are!” “Sorry. It’s just such a . . . a heady feeling to think you’d forget to breathe on my account.

Spectacles, on that strong-featured face…and his hair mussed as if he had been tugging absently on the front locks. All that combined with a plenitude of muscles and masculine virility was astonishingly…erotic. “When did you start wearing those?” Daisy managed to ask. “About a year ago.” He smiled ruefully and removed the spectacles with one hand. “I need them to read. Too many late nights poring over contracts and reports.” “They…they are very becoming.” “Are they?” Continuing to smile, Swift shook his head, as if it had not occurred to him to wonder about his appearance.

I acknowledge to myself that sometimes I am a snail. I move myself by gliding. I contract my muscles and produce a slime of tears. Sometimes you see the tears and sometimes you don't. It is my tears that allow me to glide.

When a child is born its sense-organs are brought in contact with the outer world. The waves of sound, heat and light beat upon its feeble body, its sensitive nerve-fibres quiver, the muscles contract and relax in obedience: a gasp, a breath, and in this act a marvelous little engine, of inconceivable delicacy and complexity of construction, unlike any on earth, is hitched to the wheel-work of the Universe.

Two chemicals called actin and myosin evolved eons ago to allow the muscles in insect wings to contract and relax. Thus, insects learned to fly. When one of those paired molecules are absent, wings will grow but they cannot flap and are therefore useless. Today, the same two proteins are responsible for the beating of the human heart, and when one is absent, the person’s heartbeat is inefficient and weak, ultimately leading to heart failure. Again, science marvels at the way molecules adapt over millions of years, but isn’t there a deeper intent? In our hearts, we feel the impulse to fly, to break free of boundaries. Isn’t that the same impulse nature expressed when insects began to take flight? The prolactin that generates milk in a mother’s breast is unchanged from the prolactin that sends salmon upstream to breed, enabling them to cross from saltwater to fresh.

I miss you with the very edge of my skin. It winces in absence, a giant muscle contracting.

Do you remember the lake?' she said, in an abrupt voice, under the pressure of an emotion which caught her heart, made the muscles of her throat stiff, and contracted her lips in a spasm as she said 'lake.' For she was a child, throwing bread to the ducks, between her parents, and at the same time a grown woman coming to her parents who stood by the lake, holding her life in her arms which, as she neared them grew larger and larger in her arms until it became a whole life, a complete life, which she put down by them and said, 'This is what I have made of it! This!' And what had she made of it? What indeed? sitting there sewing this morning with Peter.

One may see his behaviour as 'signs' of a 'disease'; one may see his behaviour as expressive of his existence. The existential-phenomenological construction is an inference about the way the other is feeling and acting [...] The clinical psychiatrist, wishing to be more 'scientific' or 'objective', may propose to confine himself to the 'objectively' observable behaviour of the patient before him. The simplest reply to this is that it is impossible. To see 'signs' of 'disease' is not to see neutrally. Nor is it neutral to see a smile as contractions of the circumoral muscles.

Muscle Contraction Is Medicine The reason that moving regularly is important is because a body in which muscles are contracting frequently (even at low intensities for short periods) is experiencing totally different physiology than a body where the muscles are worked in only a one- to two-hour exercise block per day (no matter how intense that block). Muscle contraction is miraculous medicine.

Every thought, every act, every effort of the will, every motion of a muscle, uses up a certain amount of what we call nerve force, which is really a form of prana. To move a muscle the brain sends out an impulse over the nerves, and the muscle contracts, and so much prana is expended.

Now, smile-if you still can. This is your zygomatic major muscle. Each contraction pulls your flesh apart the way tiebacks hold open the drapes in your living room window. The way cables pull aside a theater curtain, your every smile is an opening night. A premiere. You unveiling yourself.

Tensing your abs will amplify the intensity of the contraction of any muscle in your body.

Training energy system to effectively resynthesize ATP – as quickly as possible – so that muscle contraction continues without onset of fatigue – forms the basis of most exercise protocols.

You will remember that every psychological or inner state finds some outer representation via the moving centre—that is, it is represented in some particular muscular movements or contractions, etc. You may have noticed that a state of worry is often reflected by a contracted wrinkling of the forehead or a twisting of the hands. States of joy never have this representation. Negative states, states of worry, or fear, or anxiety, or depression, represent themselves in the muscles by contraction, flexion, being bowed down, etc. (and often, also, by weakness in the muscles), whereas opposite emotional states are reflected into the moving centre as expansion, as standing upright, as extension of the limbs, relaxing of tension, and usually by a feeling of strength. To stop worry, people who worry and thereby frown too much or pucker up and corrugate their foreheads, clench their fists, almost cease breathing, etc., should begin here—by relaxing the muscles expressing the emotional state, and freeing the breath. Relaxing in general has behind it, esoterically speaking, the idea of preventing negative states. Negative states are less able to come when a person is in a state of relaxation. That is why it is said so often that it is necessary to practise relaxing every day, by passing the attention over the body and deliberately relaxing all tense muscles.

your heart is nothing but a muscle. It contracts and expands, working just as hard as any other muscle. The difference is, the blood pumping through it pumps through your entire body. That blood holds memories. Things you try to forget but it won’t let you. You have to use those memories, use that blood to fuel you.

Lauren whirled her head around so quickly that the motion hurt her neck. Jared’s hand came up and clamped the hat more firmly over his face. He adjusted his long body to another position, contracting and relaxing muscles that Lauren didn’t know existed. But then, she had never seen a masculine physique like this before. His languid movements were repelling and thrilling at the same time. It was like watching some pagan god who was beautiful even in his decadence.

The most universal expression of all is a smile, which is rather a nice thought. No society has ever been found that doesn’t respond to smiles in the same way. True smiles are brief—between two-thirds of a second and four seconds. That’s why a held smile begins to look menacing. A true smile is the one expression that we cannot fake. As the French anatomist G.-B. Duchenne de Boulogne noticed as long ago as 1862, a genuine, spontaneous smile involves the contraction of the orbicularis oculi muscle in each eye, and we have no independent control over those muscles. You can make your mouth smile, but you can’t make your eyes sparkle with feigned joy.

A hard pain it Munro's spine as it lurched into an awkward curve, arching his back off the surface where he lay. Muscles contracted, jerking and releasing, jerking and releasing. The calm voices grew insistent and frenzied, but in a controlled, orchestrated way.

One by one, she undid the metal buttons. The last one proved difficult, but with a determined tug, it released. His stomach muscles contracted as she reached inside to gently pull out his erection. She had at first thought to remove his trousers, but the sight of him sprawled decadently in the chair, legs spread, the placket open and draping his upper thigh, magnificent c*ck standing at attention . . . No, the trousers would stay exactly where they were.

He entered her slowly, determined to keep a tight hold on the lust pounding in his veins. She wrapped her legs higher, took him deeper and deeper. Her hands dug into the muscles of his rear, urging, telling him what she wanted and what he needed were the same. He obeyed and thrust harder, driving into her not with anger but with a desperate raw need. He felt her climax, her body arching, tightening and contracting around him as she cried out against his neck. He shuddered with the intensity of the explosion that wracked his body and spirit and wrung a deep cry from him. “Katherine.” I was afraid. I missed you. I love you.

Magnesium deficiency contributes to abnormal heart rhythms, possibly because magnesium is responsible for maintaining normal potassium and sodium concentrations inside heart muscle cells. A balance of potassium, sodium, calcium, and magnesium allows for normal heart muscle contraction and maintains normal heartbeat.

...Another part of the ritual was to ascend with closed eyes. 'Step, step, step,' came my mother's voice as she led me up - and sure enough, the surface of the next tread would receive the blind child's confident foot; all one had to do was lift it a little higher than usual, so as to avoid stubbing one's toe against the riser. This slow, somewhat somnambulistic ascension in self-engendered darkness held obvious delights. The keenest of them was not knowing when the last step would come. At the top of the stairs, one's foot would be automatically lifted to the deceptive call of 'Step,' and then, with a momentary sense of exquisite panic, with a wild contraction of muscles, would sink into the phantasm of a step, padded, as it were, with the infinitely elastic stuff of its own nonexistence.

Suddenly the whole body writhed spasmodically and rolled over. His face... He has no face... The man's nose had completely burned away leaving only two holes in his head. The mouth had melted together, the lips sealed with the exception of a small opening in one corner. One eye had melted down over what had been his cheek, but the other... the other was wide open. Where the rest of the face should have been there were only pieces of cartilage and bone sticking out between irregular shreds of flesh and slivers of fabric. The naked, glistening muscles contracted and relaxed, contorting as if the head had been replaced by a mass of freshly killed and butchered eels... The skin over the collarbone on one side was gone and a piece of the bone stuck out, glowing white like a piece of chalk in a meat stew.

A pack of coyotes set up a sudden racket near the house, yipping and howling, so close by they sounded like they had us surrounded. When a hunting pack corners a rabbit they go into a blood frenzy, making human-sounding screams. The baby sighed and stirred in his crib. At seven months, he was just the size of a big jackrabbit--the same amount of meat. The back of my scalp and neck prickled. It's an involuntary muscle contraction that causes that, setting the hair follicles on edge; if we had manes they would bristle like a growling dog's. We're animals. We're born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts.

Nor do we experience the mechanisms that convert our desires into movements. When I wished to begin hiking up the mountain again, I would simply set off, without thinking about the individual muscle contractions that each step required. When a wasp flies, it is probably not aware of its every wing beat. It may simply will itself through space.

The main goal of Bellydance for birth within the framework of actual labour is to fully allow the labouring woman to help nature by moving with and not against the contractions she welcomes. Instead of tensing her muscles and mind with fear and apprehension toward pain, she accepts and surrenders actively, consciously and as best she can to each contractile wave she experiences.

For example, if I promise you one thousand dollars to turn to this page, you will probably choose to do so, and you will succeed. If, however, I promise you one thousand dollars to contract the pupil of your eye, using only willpower, you may choose to do it, but that won’t matter. You are helpless to contract your pupil. Page turning is under your voluntary control; the muscles that change your pupillary size are not.

Was it possible that he she'd entered his dream now? If so, she couldn't help but wonder what they were doing in there. His fingers flexed, squeezing her backside backside "Clio," he groaned. Something good it would seem. With a low moan, he snaked his arm around her waist, and a small contraction of his muscles drew her close. "Clio." "Yes, Rafe?" Green eyes snapped open. "Clio?" In a heartbeat, he was on the far side of the bed--as close as he could get to the edge of the mattress without falling off.

At parties, people no longer showed off their new gadgets, jewelry, or hairstyles, but prosthetic cochleas that improved the sense of balance, artificial muscles with augmented contraction characteristics, prosthetic limbs that obeyed mental directions, or updated firmware that enhanced sensory organs. SBT developed a revolutionary substance for mediating between the biological and the electronic worlds. Extracted from the gladii of squids, this modified chitosan complex could convert the biological ion flow that carried brain signals into electric currents that could be deciphered by machines, thereby seamlessly forming a feedback loop between the nervous system and the prosthesis. The invention had expanded the definition of the boundary of the body beyond imagination.

In addition to tinnitus and hearing loss, the human body responds to noise with stress actions, triggering short-, medium-, and long-term symptoms that include increased blood pressure, accelerated heart rate, contraction of muscles, hardening of arteries, indigestion, and insomnia.

the purpose of the breathing technique we do before many meditations is to pull the mind out of the body by liberating potential energy (stored as emotions) in the lower three energy centers. As we inhale and contract those intrinsic muscles, follow our breath from the perineum all the way up our spine to the top of our head, and then hold our breath and squeeze those muscles more, we’re increasing intrathecal pressure. As I mentioned earlier in the book, this is the internal pressure created when you push up against your insides—for example, when you hold your breath and lift something heavy.

He has so little energy in his body that he can only walk to the bathroom on the other side of the hallway twice a day. After a few meters he is worn out, much worse than after the marathons he used to run. He was a triathlete, he earned a brown belt in judo, became Dutch champion in hockey, until he contracted pneumonia in 2005 and never recovered. Ever since, he has a headache, vertigo, and insomnia, but worst of all the fatigue: after minimal effort his muscles would lose all their strength and take days to recover. Only after a few years did he get a diagnosis: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS).

And how those cries affect me! Until now, no matter how much I’ve cared for a person, with the exception of Mother in her dying hours, and despite how dreadful this sounds, I’ve found it easier to bear their suffering than my own. Not so with Charlotte. My shoulders, back, arms, and neck ache from holding her; my nipples are scabbed and sometimes bleeding; yet the most worn-out, painful part of me is my heart. It stretches so wide when she’s contented that I believe its fibers are tearing. When she suffers, it shrinks and throbs and hardens into a knot. Never before have I even thought of my heart as the muscle it is. Never has mine seemed to expand and contract in concert with my feelings. It hurts continually now from responding to the inconstant creature that is Charlotte.

Send it and end it, kid.” Court would fire, sending a boat-tail round across fields and lakes, over cabins and farms, and, more often than not, much more often than not, he’d hit his target, thereby ending the “threat.” He’d send it, and he’d end it. He thought back to those days, the fundamentals of the craft, and he fought again to remain calm. He forced himself not to feel any emotion at all. Any increase in heart rate, fluctuation in breathing, new sweating on his skin that could cause reflex muscle contractions. Anything different with his body at the moment he fired would affect his shot. It could send the round out of the barrel one hundredth of an inch from where he wanted the muzzle positioned for firing, but translated out across 1.81 miles, the round would end up several feet off target.

At the moment, my reputation for honesty and integrity has been destroyed. If your friends would rather withdraw from the venture, I’ll understand.” “They’ve already withdrawn,” Jordan admitted reluctantly. “I’m staying with you.” “It’s just as well they have,” Ian replied, reaching for the contracts and beginning to scratch out the names of the other parties. “In the end, there’ll be greater profit for us both.” “Ian,” Jordan said in a low, deliberate voice, “you are tempting me to take a swing at you, just to see if you’ll wince when I hit you. I’ve taken about all I can of your indifference to everything that’s happening.” Ian glanced up from his documents, and Jordan saw it then-the muscle clamping in Ian’s jaw, the merest automatic reaction to fury or torment, and he felt a mixture of relief and embarrassment. “I regret that remark more than I can say,” he apologized quietly. “And if it’s any consolation, I know firsthand how it feels to believe your wife has betrayed you.” “I don’t need consolation,” Ian clipped. “I need time.” “To get over it,” Jordan agreed. “Time,” Ian drawled coolly, “to go over these documents.” As Jordan walked down the hall toward the front door he wasn’t certain if he’d only imagined that miniscule sign of emotion.

Parents recognize this as the “sugar high,” but it’s actually the negative feedback system of energy balance at work. The cookie stimulated insulin release, which drove energy into fat tissue, which released leptin, which reached the hypothalamus, which activated the sympathetic nervous system, which led to increased energy expenditure, including involuntary contraction of muscles, aka fidgeting—all to maintain energy neutrality.

(1) Stand erect. (2) Inhale a Complete Breath, and retain same. (3) Extend the arms straight in front of you, letting them be somewhat limp and relaxed, with only sufficient nerve force to hold them out. (4) Slowly draw the hands back toward the shoulders, gradually contracting the muscles and putting force into them, so that when they reach the shoulders the fists will be so tightly clenched that a tremulous motion is felt. (5) Then, keeping the muscles tense, push the fists slowly out, and then draw them back rapidly (still tense) several times. (6) Exhale vigorously through the mouth. (7) Practice the Cleansing Breath. The efficiency of this exercise depends greatly upon the speed of the drawing back of the fists, and the tension of the muscles, and, of course, upon the full lungs. This exercise must be tried to be appreciated. It is without equal as a "bracer," as our Western friends put it.

He [Wilhelm Reich] challenged the puritanical ideas about sexuality in our culture. In laywoman terms, Reich believed humans store emotions in our muscles. During orgasm, muscles in the body contract, then relax, thus releasing emotions. Reich asserted that all aspects of healthy human psychology are dependent on one's sexual expression. When you cry, laugh or feel free as a bird after coming, it is partly because you just released a bunch of yucky crap that's been building up inside your body for days, months, years, possibly your entire lifetime. ...When women function like the ocean, we live happy, healthy lives. Holding on to stuff that does not serve us in our present situation creates actual, physical blockages within our bodies...which on the individual level, manifest in bitterness, stifled creativity, sexual perversion and unwillingness to trust, love and/or touch. Collectively-when an entire society is sexually repressed-phenomena such as war, rape, racism, greed and wholesale shitty behavior are considered acceptable.

Very well, but - who are you?' again asked Gil Gil, in whom curiosity was beginning to get the better of every other feeling. 'I told you that when I first spoke to you - I am your friend. And bear in mind that you are the only being on the face of the earth to whom I accord the title of friend. I am bound to you by remorse! I am the cause of all your misfortunes.' 'I do not know you,' replied the shoemaker. 'And yet I have entered your house many times! Through me you were left motherless at your birth; I was the cause of the apoplectic stroke that killed Juan Gil; it was I who turned you out of the palace of Rionuevo; I assassinated your old house-mate, and, finally, it was I who placed in your pocket the vial of sulfuric acid.' Gil Gil trembled like a leaf; he felt his hair stand on end, and it seemed to him as if his contracted muscles must burst asunder. 'You are the devil!' he exclaimed, with indescribable terror. 'Child!' responded the black-robed figure in accents of amiable censure, 'what has put that idea into your head? I am something greater and better than the wretched being you have named.' 'Who are you, then?' 'Let us go into the inn and you shall learn.' Gil hastily entered, drew the Unknown before the modest lantern that lighted the apartment, and looked at him with intense curiosity. He was a person about thirty-three years old; tall, handsome, pale, dressed in a long black tunic and a black mantle, and his long locks were covered by a Phrygian cap, also black. He had not the slightest sign of a beard, yet he did not look like a woman. Neither did he look like a man... ("The Friend of Death")

The explanation may be that gene activity in our muscles changes when the muscles don’t contract for long periods of time. In one experiment, researchers at the University of Massachusetts asked a group of healthy young men to walk around using crutches such that the muscles in their left legs never contracted. After only two days of inactivity, the scientists biopsied muscles in both legs. In the left leg, the DNA repair mechanism had been disrupted, insulin response was dropping, oxidative stress was rising, and metabolic activity within individual muscle cells was slowing.

Let the chromosomes be represented by the keyboard of a grand piano-a very grand piano with thousands of keys. Then each key will be a gene. Every cell in the body carries a microscopic but complete keyboard in its nucleus. But each specialised cell is only permitted to sound one chord, according to its specialty-the rest of its genetic keyboard has been inactivated by scotch tape. The fertilised egg, and the first few generations of its daughter cells, had the complete keyboard at their disposal. But succesive generations have, at each 'point of no return', larger and larger areas of it covered by scotch tape. In the end, a muscle cell can only do one thing: contract-strike a single chord. The scotch tape is known in the language of genetics as the 'repressor'. The agent which strikes the key and activates the gene is an 'inducer'. A mutated gene is a key which has gone out of tune. When quite a lot of key have gone quite a lot out of tune, the result, we were asked to believe, was a much improved, wonderful new melody- a reptile transformed into a bird, or a monkey into a man. It seems that at some point the theory must have gone wrong. The point where it went wrong was the atomistic concept of the gene.

– You better go, Jack. He lets out a sigh and approaches. As if he wanted to wrap me in his arms. I can see, in the way his muscles contract, the impulse to care for me. – Elsie, please. You're not… – Yes, I am. – I start to sob. I want him to touch me, but I can't stand his presence. – You always talk about what I want, Jack. You helped me learn how to communicate what I want. So…– I force myself to look him straight in the eye and show him that I'm serious, even though I'm not sure if I am. There's a burning heat in my chest, scalding, painful. – Right now I don’t want to be with you. I need you to give me some space.

I close the loo seat and sit down. I’m not proud of what I do next. But who hasn’t done the wrong thing for the right reasons at least once in their life? I honestly thought this would be the end of something, not the beginning. I carefully peel off the Sellotape and the padded manila envelope flaps open. I just knew Lisa wouldn’t have licked it. She’s as careless with things as she is with people. I breathe in and out, as deep as I can, one hand holding the envelope, the other resting on my diaphragm as it rises to make sure that my abdominal muscles are contracting properly on the inbreath. I know more about breathing than any yoga teacher.

Sanskrit word tapas means “to heat,” and when used in yoga it speaks to the practice of “standing in the fire for the sake of positive change,” says Stephanie Snyder. Literally, this means holding a difficult pose, feeling the burn as muscles tighten and contract, maintaining the mental focus it takes to stay in the pose—and choosing to endure all this in the name of becoming stronger, more agile, unfuckwithable. Applied metaphorically to our Sober Curiosity, it means sitting in whatever WTF we happen to be experiencing as a result of not drinking, watching it pass, and choosing to focus on the positive parts of the experience. These positives

Muscles contract somewhere above the roof of my mouth, pumping venom into her bloodstream. Kelly cries out, a gasp of pain that turns suddenly to moans of euphoria as the carotids rush the narcotic serum directly to her brain. Her knees buckle, and I reach down to steady her — one arm over her breasts, the other around her waist as I hold her tightly to myself. Then the blood begins to flow, seeping out of the wounds I have made, and I put my lips to her skin and drink. There are no words adequate to describe it. My mind explodes with a wash of light and color, swirling and dancing before my eyes. Then the Sharing truly begins, and I can see inside her: images of her memories, her thoughts, her hopes and dreams, the way she remembers her past and how she imagines her future. Her joys; her grief; that which she loves and that she despises, what stirs her fire and chills her bones. And through it all, I feel the touch of her presence, and I know that she sees the same things inside of me. Blood is more than matter, more than plasma and hemoglobin. Blood is life, the river on which the spirit flows. And as Kelly's blood flows into me, it carries her life with it, until my soul entwines with hers. She has given a part of herself to me, and from this day forth we are bound to each other.

Although the body is very intelligent, it cannot tell the difference between an actual situation and a thought. It reacts to every thought as if it were a reality. It doesn’t know it is just a thought. To the body, a worrisome, fearful thought means “I am in danger,” and it responds accordingly, even though you may be lying in a warm and comfortable bed at night. The heart beats faster, muscles contract, breathing becomes rapid. There is a buildup of energy, but since the danger is only a mental fiction, the energy has no outlet. Part of it is fed back to the mind and generates even more anxious thought. The rest of the energy turns toxic and interferes with the harmonious functioning of the body.

When he was emotionally agitated or under stress from the pressure of events, Peter’s face sometimes began to twitch uncontrollably. The disorder, usually troubling only the left side of his face, varied in degree of severity: Sometimes the tremor was no more than a facial tic lasting only a second or two; at other times, there would be a genuine convulsion, beginning with a contraction of the muscles on the left side of his neck, followed by a spasm involving the entire left side of his face and the rolling up of his eyes until only the whites could be seen. At its worst, when violent, disjointed motion of the left arm was also involved, the convulsion ended only when Peter had lost consciousness.

reduction. Professor J. P. Paul, of the University of Strathclyde, tells me that his researches seem to indicate that a more important cause of fracture in old people is the progressive loss of nervous control over the tensions in the muscles. A sudden alarm may cause a muscular contraction which is enough to break off the neck of the femur, for instance, without the patient having experienced any external blow. When this happens the patient naturally falls to the ground -perhaps on top of some obstacle-so that the fracture is blamed, wrongly, on the fall rather than on the muscular spasm. It is said that similar fracture can occur in the hind leg of certain African deer when they are startled by a lion.

Start by locking the muscles of your perineum, engaging the muscles of your lower abdomen and simultaneously contracting the muscles in your upper abdomen. And as you squeeze the muscles in each center—with the intention of pulling all of that stored energy in the lower body into the brain—follow your breath through each of those three centers. As you continue to squeeze those muscles and lock those first three centers down, pull your breath up through your chest (the fourth center), then through your throat (the fifth center), then through your brain (the sixth center). Pull it all the way up to the top of your head, keep your attention there, and hold your breath as you keep squeezing your core muscles.

Mild depression is a gradual and sometimes permanent thing that undermines people the way rust weakens iron. It is too much grief at too slight a cause, pain that takes over from the other emotions and crowds them out. Such depression takes up bodily occupancy in the eyelids and in the muscles that keep the spine erect. It hurts your heart and lungs, making the contraction of involuntary muscles harder than it needs to be. Like physical pain that becomes chronic, it is miserable not so much because it is intolerable in the moment as because it is intolerable to have known it in the moments gone and to look forward only to knowing it in the moments to come. The present tense of mild depression envisages no alleviation because it feels like knowledge.

Developing Inner Strength Through the Quan (Kata) Eliminate external distractions and concentrate only upon intention. Coordinate breathing and synchronize it with the muscular activity. When you extend your arm, exhale and strike but conserve 50% of your air. Be sure never to expel all of your air at one time. When you inhale, your body becomes light. When you exhale, your body becomes rooted. Listen to your breathing and become aware of every part of your body. There must be a constant but pliable muscular contraction in the deltoid, trapezius, latissimus dorsi, serratus, and pectoral muscle groups. To encourage perfect diaphragm breathing, the spine must be parallel to the stomach. Techniques are executed forward and back from where the elbows meet the waist.

Octopuses and their relatives have what Woods Hole researcher Roger Hanlon calls electric skin. For its color palette, the octopus uses three layers of three different types of cells near the skin’s surface—all controlled in different ways. The deepest layer, containing the white leucophores, passively reflects background light. This process appears to involve no muscles or nerves. The middle layer contains the tiny iridophores, each 100 microns across. These also reflect light, including polarized light (which humans can’t see, but a number of octopuses’ predators, including birds, do). The iridophores create an array of glittering greens, blues, golds, and pinks. Some of these little organs seem to be passive, but other iridophores appear to be controlled by the nervous system. They are associated with the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, the first neurotransmitter to be identified in any animal. Acetylcholine helps with contraction of muscles; in humans, it is also important in memory, learning, and REM sleep. In octopuses, more of it “turns on” the greens and blues; less creates pinks and golds. The topmost layer of the octopus’s skin contains chromatophores, tiny sacks of yellow, red, brown, and black pigment, each in an elastic container that can be opened or closed to reveal more or less color. Camouflaging the eye alone—with a variety of patterns including a bar, a bandit’s mask, and a starburst pattern—can involve as many as 5 million chromatophores. Each chromatophore is regulated via an array of nerves and muscles, all under the octopus’s voluntary control.

By the time Dimitrov realised what had happened, it was too late. He had taken aim but Bond had already fired. Three bullets spat their ugly farewells, driving into the Russian’s chest and throat. Bond lay on the ground, sodden, his broken rib pounding. The rain beat down on him. A car drove past, spraying more water over him, but the driver noticed nothing and didn’t stop. Eventually, Bond stood up. He slipped the Walther PPK into his pocket and walked over to the dead Russian who was lying on the tarmac in a pool of rainwater and blood. He was still holding his own gun, a 9x18mm Makarov pistol, a sophisticated but ugly weapon used by the Russian army and police. He had come close to firing a second bullet. His finger was still curled around the trigger, already stiffening as his muscles began to contract. Trigger mortis.

Oxytocin is an amino acid peptide. A hormone. They call it the love chemical. “So?” Kelsey gave him a dead-eyed stare. “So when you’re further along in your pregnancy, more oxytocin receptors will be created in your uterine muscles. When the baby’s big enough, your oxytocin level will rise, triggering labor, and will help your muscles contract so you can give birth.” “Gross,” said Cory. “No,” Jack said. “Miraculous. Without the oxytocin, your muscles wouldn’t be strong enough to push that baby out. But because of that chemical, you are. You’ll be superhero strong.” He smiled right into Kelsey’s eyes. “Then, when you see your baby, that rush of oxytocin will help you bond. That’s why they call it the love drug. And if you breast-feed, more oxytocin gets released, strengthening that bond. The maternal instinct is the strongest instinct in the world. Chemistry is definitely part of that.

So much strain and muscular labor involved in absorbing food. I’m exhausted just watching it. But above all there is speech, incessant speaking, where the inflated edges of the tube are stretched and contracted, knotted and unknotted, ripped open or pressed shut, flued and drummed, hammered and gnawed. Licked. That tube has two ends. To the far end goes all ignominy, and to the fore end all the glory, hymns of praise. Her lips were lovely. The swollen ring at one end of the tube, fastened to rings and riggings of muscle. All these sounds. It’s exhausting. I notice the upper jaw doesn’t move at all, only the lower. You see the skull so clearly I wonder people don’t think of death whenever they witness speech, or speak themselves, feeling that hinge flap up and down, and even back and forth a bit—how can it go back and forth? Is the socket that loose, or is it something else, like a leather hinge, like a book binding?

the muscles in your feet. Then clench your calves, then thighs. Work the contractions up your body until every part of you is tight from the bottom to the top. Clench your stomach, your chest, fingers, biceps, and jaw. Tighten the muscles behind your ears and imagine all of this pressure that you’ve built up going out the top of your head like you were rolling out pizza dough. Whenever I do this I end up making all sorts of grunting noises and squint my face into awkward contortions. It feels like I’m going to pop. But I never have. Once you finally have to breathe, take in a half lungful of air and hold it for about 10 to 15 seconds. This is the recovery breath, and it feels awesome. Now start over from the beginning. Since your lungs start near empty, it won’t be possible to hold your breath as long as with the basic breathing technique. Aim to increase the amount that you hold your breath with each repetition. When I do it I start with

The cold in the warehouse was like nothing I’ve known before or since. I suppose if I’d had any sense I’d have gone out and bought an electric heater, but only four months before I had come from one of the warmest climates in America and I had only the dimmest awareness that such appliances existed. It never occurred to me that half the population of Vermont wasn’t experiencing pretty much what I put myself through every night—bone-cracking cold that made my joints ache, cold so relentless I felt it in my dreams: ice floes, lost expeditions, the lights of search planes swinging over whitecaps as I floundered alone in black Arctic seas. In the morning, when I woke, I was as stiff and sore as if I’d been beaten. I thought it was because I was sleeping on the floor. Only later did I realize that the true cause of this malady was hard, merciless shivering, my muscles contracting as mechanically as if by electric impulse, all night long, every night.

The ghost was not a ghost at all, or so it claimed - it claimed to be a psychic energy baby, birthed in some ethereal dimension, and pulled into the phone by the powerful magnetism of phone signals. It remembered with perfect clarity how it came to be - remembered coalescing from the membranous surface of the world, streaked with reflected light, humming with surface tension under the pressure of emptiness underneath. The Psychic Energy Baby found form among the emanations of people's minds and the susurrus of their voices, it found flesh in the shapes of their lips and eyes made, the surprise of 'o's and the sibilations of 's's; its skin stretched taut like a soap bubble, forged from the wet sound of lips touching; its thoughts were the musky smells and the nerves twined around the transparent water balloons of the muscles like stems of toadflax, searching restlessly for every available crevice, stretching along cold rough surfaces. Its veins, tiny rivers, pumped heartbeats striking in unison, the dry dallying of billions of ventricular contractions. And it spoke, spoke endlessly, it spokes words that tasted of dark air and formic acid. It could speak long before it took it's final shape. And when it happened, when all the sounds and smells and words in the world, when all the thoughts had aligned so that it could become - then it found itself pulled into the wires, surrounded by taut copper and green and red and yellow insulation; twined and quartered among the cables, rent open by millions of voices that shouted and whispered and pleaded and threatened, interspersed with the rasping of breaths and tearing laughter. It traveled through the criss-crossing of the wires so fast that it felt itself being pulled into a needle, head spearing into the future while its feet infinitely receded into the past, until it came into a dark quiet pool of the black rotary phone, where it could reassemble itself and take stock.

Unfortunately, sitting rests the parts of the body that don’t need much of it while working the parts that desperately do. Specifically, it disengages the lower extremities while utilizing the spine. (This is in sharp contrast to squatting, which disengages the spine while utilizing the lower extremities.) Because sitting positions the spine vertically, it provides no rest or relief from the gravitational forces that compress it. Without a periodic therapeutic reprieve through the day, the relentless load overwhelms the entire structure, joints and muscles alike. To maintain an erect seated posture, some muscle groups in the back have to continually contract. Since this requires a great deal of energy, the muscles quickly become fatigued. (That is why slumping is more comfortable: It takes less energy to maintain.) When the muscles tire, you rely on the backrest more and your muscles less. The less you rely on your muscles, the weaker and more dysfunctional they become. The weaker and more dysfunctional they become, the more you rely on the backrest. The more you rely on the backrest, the more you tend to slump. The more you slump, the more pronounced the debilitating C-shaped curvature becomes. This weakens the muscles in your back even further, which causes them to overload the joints they serve. Sitting in chairs affects even the areas seemingly at rest (particularly the hips and knees). Because sitting keeps the joints static for long periods, the muscles that serve them become fixed in a short, tight position. When at last you do get up and move, the muscles impose more stress on these joints, thereby increasing their susceptibility to wear and tear. The prolonged stasis also prevents the joints from being lubricated with nourishing synovial fluid. Once depleted, the hips and knees, like the spine, deteriorate and erode. Is it any wonder that the areas most traumatized by sitting, namely, the lower back, hips, and knees, are also the most arthritic and disabled areas of the body in the world today? The real mystery is why so few people have made the connection between prolonged sitting and the epidemic of chronic pain. In fact, they need only look to their own bodies for an abundance of evidence.

As soon as he was out of sight, Gui pulled the macaron mixture towards him, and took a deep breath. He whipped it back and forth, beads of sweat springing on his forehead as his arm muscles released and contracted. When it was almost ready, he reached up for the shelf where the spices and colors were kept. Carefully, he brought down the bottle of 'creme de violette,' the jar of delicate, dried violets, their petals sparkling with sugar. In tiny drops, he measured the purple liqueur into the mixture. He was acting on impulse, yet at the same time he felt certain, as though his first teacher, Monsieur Careme, was with him, guiding his steps. The scent reached up as he stirred, heady and sweet as a meadow, deep as lingering perfume in a midnight room. Hands shaking, he piped the mixture onto a tray in tiny rounds, enough to make six, one for each day that he and Jeanne would have to make it through before they could be together for the rest of their lives. Maurice was delayed talking to Josef, and by the time he returned, Gui was putting the finishing touches to his creations, filling them with a vanilla cream from the cold room, balancing one, tiny, sugar-frosted violet flower upon each.

A series of surprising experiments by the psychologist Roy Baumeister and his colleagues has shown conclusively that all variants of voluntary effort—cognitive, emotional, or physical—draw at least partly on a shared pool of mental energy. Their experiments involve successive rather than simultaneous tasks. Baumeister’s group has repeatedly found that an effort of will or self-control is tiring; if you have had to force yourself to do something, you are less willing or less able to exert self-control when the next challenge comes around. The phenomenon has been named ego depletion. In a typical demonstration, participants who are instructed to stifle their emotional reaction to an emotionally charged film will later perform poorly on a test of physical stamina—how long they can maintain a strong grip on a dynamometer in spite of increasing discomfort. The emotional effort in the first phase of the experiment reduces the ability to withstand the pain of sustained muscle contraction, and ego-depleted people therefore succumb more quickly to the urge to quit. In another experiment, people are first depleted by a task in which they eat virtuous foods such as radishes and celery while resisting the temptation to indulge in chocolate and rich cookies. Later, these people will give up earlier than normal when faced with a difficult cognitive task. The list of situations and tasks that are now known to deplete self-control is long and varied. All involve conflict and the need to suppress a natural tendency. They include: avoiding the thought of white bears inhibiting the emotional response to a stirring film making a series of choices that involve conflict trying to impress others responding kindly to a partner’s bad behavior interacting with a person of a different race (for prejudiced individuals) The list of indications of depletion is also highly diverse: deviating from one’s diet overspending on impulsive purchases reacting aggressively to provocation persisting less time in a handgrip task performing poorly in cognitive tasks and logical decision making The evidence is persuasive: activities that impose high demands on System 2 require self-control, and the exertion of self-control is depleting and unpleasant. Unlike cognitive load, ego depletion is at least in part a loss of motivation. After exerting self-control in one task, you do not feel like making an effort in another, although you could do it if you really had to.

Now that I know how birth works-now that I've been talked through labor by that quiet-voiced woman-I feel I've finally been told what my task is. It's simple-so simple I'm amazed I didn't know it before. One morning I am going to wake up, and before I sleep again, I will have to tick off a long list of contractions, one by one. And when I get to the last one, I will have my girl. Each one of these will be a job in itself-a minute-long experience that would alarm anyone suddenly struck by it, without warning-but I know the one fact that makes it easy: there is nothing awry. Everything is as it should be. Unlike some pains, these don't signal something going wrong but something going right. This is what I did not realize the first time, when I prayed wildly for these pains to stop. I didn't know then that these pains were actually the answer, and that their every alternative was much, much worse. Now I know what they are, and what they're for, I greet each one with calm cheer: 60 seconds to breathe through, as limp as a sleeping child, so that there is nowhere for this wash of sensation to snag-no tensed muscle it can get caught on. I am a clear glass of water, leaf-smoke blown sideways in the wind; empty space, for a moon to sail through.

I want you to come for me,” he whispered. “Now. I want to feel your muscles contract around my fingers. I want to hear your breathing catch, and I want you to scream.” The erotic image of his words made her shiver, then tense. She opened her eyes and realized that, unlike the previous night in the tent, this time she could see him. All of him. And that he could see her. And that he was looking. Their gazes locked as he continued to touch her. He moved a little faster, pushed a little harder until she felt herself losing control. Then he kissed her, dipping into her mouth, mimicking the actions between her legs. It was just enough to send her over the edge. She felt her eyes flutter closed as her release claimed her. Pleasure rushed through her in waves of contractions. She arched her body toward him, sucked in her breath and maybe even screamed. Fortunately the sound was muffled by Zane’s kiss. He continued to touch her, gentling the contact, slowing, until every last shudder had stilled, and she could think again. “You’re so beautiful,” he told her when she looked at him. “All of you.” She made a leisurely, visual exploration of his muscled chest, his flat belly, his jutting erection. He was a man who worked hard, and it showed. “So are you.

You choose this moment to act like the Abnegation?” His voice fills the room and makes fear prickle in my chest. His anger seems too sudden. Too strange. “All that time you spent insisting that you were too selfish for them, and now, when your life is on the line, you’ve got to be a hero? What’s wrong with you?” “What’s wrong with you? People died. They walked right off the edge of a building! And I can stop it from happening again!” “You’re too important to just…die.” He shakes his head. He won’t even look at me--his eyes keep shifting across my face, to the wall behind me or the ceiling above me, to everything but me. I am too stunned to be angry. “I’m not important. Everyone will do just fine without me,” I say. “Who cares about everyone? What about me?” He lowers his head into his hand, covering his eyes. His fingers are trembling. Then he crosses the room in two long strides and touches his lips to mine. Their gentle pressure erases the past few months, and I am the girl who sat on the rocks next to the chasm, with river spray on her ankles, and kissed him for the first time. I am the girl who grabbed his hand in the hallway just because I wanted to. I pull back, my hand on his chest to keep him away. The problem is, I am also the girl who shot Will and lied about it, and chose between Hector and Marlene, and now a thousand other things besides. And I can’t erase those things. “You would be fine.” I don’t look at him. I stare at his T-shirt between my fingers and the black ink curling around his neck, but I don’t look at his face. “Not at first. But you would move on, and do what you have to.” He wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me against him. “That’s a lie,” he says, before he kisses me again. This is wrong. It’s wrong to forget who I have become, and to let him kiss me when I know what I’m about to do. But I want to. Oh, I want to. I stand on my tiptoes and wrap my arms around him. I press one hand between his shoulder blades and curl the other one around the back of his neck. I can feel his breaths against my palm, his body expanding and contracting, and I know he’s strong, steady, unstoppable. All things I need to be, but I am not, I am not. He walks backward, pulling me with him so I stumble. I stumble right out of my shoes. He sits on the edge of the bed and I stand in front of him, and we’re finally eye to eye. He touches my face, covering my cheeks with his hands, sliding his fingertips down my neck, fitting his fingers to the slight curve of my hips. I can’t stop. I fit my mouth to his, and he tastes like water and smells like fresh air. I drag my hand from his neck to the small of his back, and put it under his shirt. He kisses me harder. I knew he was strong; I didn’t know how strong until I felt it myself, the muscles in his back tightening beneath my fingers. Stop, I tell myself. Suddenly it’s as if we’re in a hurry, his fingertips brushing my side under my shirt, my hands clutching at him, struggling closer but there is no closer. I have never longed for someone this way, or this much. He pulls back just enough to look into my eyes, his eyelids lowered. “Promise me,” he whispers, “that you won’t go. For me. Do this one thing for me.” Could I do that? Could I stay here, fix things with him, let someone else die in my place? Looking up at him, I believe for a moment that I could. And then I see Will. The crease between his eyebrows. The empty, simulation-bound eyes. The slumped body. Do this one thing for me. Tobias’s dark eyes plead with me. But if I don’t go to Erudite, who will? Tobias? It’s the kind of thing he would do. I feel a stab of pain in my chest as I lie to him. “Okay.” “Promise,” he says, frowning. The pain becomes an ache, spreads everywhere--all mixed together, guilt and terror and longing. “I promise.

With a soft, evocative sigh she eased, her body giving, accepting. Instinctively she contracted the muscles of her stretched sheath, felt him there, and shivered. Gritting his teeth against the inevitable effect of that evocative caress, he drew back just a little, then forged in again, filling her even more completely. Her breath left her and she clutched, both with her hands and her body. He eased back again, filled her anew; her breasts swelled as she breathed in, then she followed his rhythm. He set the pace, slow, steady, only gradually increasing as he sensed her response, as desire rose, fresh and urgent, and the fires of passion reclaimed them, and the conflagration built. And it was more, so much more, than the act had ever been. Reaching deeper, further, into some part of him he hadn't known could be touched, the intimate surrender and the possession sank to his bones. Her surrender to him, and his to her; his possession of her, and hers of him. This wasn't any simple joining, the usual trading of pleasure, but one intricate and involved, layered with meaning, coiled and twined with feelings and emotions he'd never before encountered, not in this arena. Not between the woman who lay beneath him, so gladly and wantonly accepting him into her body, and him.

Hence the term “voluntary muscle” is in many ways a figure of speech. I can consciously command a movement, but I cannot consciously command the recruitment of every muscle fiber which must be used, nor the precise order of their contractions and lengthenings which actually produce the desired effect. This is to say that every consciously willed movement is always conditioned by two things: genetically established organization and habitual usage. Our genetic organization is quite plastic, open-ended, filled with potential variations in behavior; on the other hand, habitual usage can become just as limiting as it is convenient, and can become a tyrant to exactly the degree that it becomes practiced, automatic, unconscious. We are free to train ourselves to act differently, but it is very difficult to suddenly act differently than we have been trained. The tendencies in our motor behavior created by genetically determined patterns and by habitual usage do not lie within the muscle cells, nor even in the motor neurons that unite them into motor units. The search for the organizational factors of purposeful muscular control—whether it be action or relaxation—takes us deeper and deeper into the central nervous system, where we find that every muscular response is built up, selected, and colored by the totality of our neural activity, both conscious and unconscious.

PRESCRIPTION 5 Low Back and Trunk   This prescription can be used to treat these symptoms and restrictions: Abdominal pain Compromised breathing Hip extension range of motion Hip pain Low back pain Sciatica Spinal rotation, flexion and extension range of motion   Overview Methods: Contract and relax Pressure wave Smash and floss Tools: Small ball Large ball Small bouncy ball or under-inflated soccer/volleyball Total time:  14 minutes   This prescription is great for treating low back pain and supporting the hardworking muscles of your trunk. We’ve established that poor spinal mechanics and sitting can cause adaptive stiffness and irritation in the discs, ligaments, and muscles around your spine and trunk. And when that happens, low back pain is often the result. Although there are other contributing factors to consider, like previous injuries, arthritis, obesity, and stress, we would argue that one of the leading causes of low back pain and trunk-related problems stems from poor posture, prolonged sitting, and a lack of basic self-maintenance. Having spent the majority of this book outlining a protocol for preventing and resolving the issue from a mechanical standpoint, let’s turn our attention to the maintenance side of things. This prescription targets the muscles that are responsible for keeping your spine braced, as well as the muscles that may get stiff when you move poorly or sit for too long.

As the pumping engines for the circulatory system, ventricles must have a particular ovoid, lemonlike shape for strong, swift ejection of blood. If the end of the left ventricle balloons out, as it does in takotsubo hearts, the firm, healthy contractions are reduced to inefficient spasms—floppy and unpredictable. But what’s remarkable about takotsubo is what causes the bulge. Seeing a loved one die. Being left at the altar or losing your life savings with a bad roll of the dice. Intense, painful emotions in the brain can set off alarming, life-threatening physical changes in the heart. This new diagnosis was proof of the powerful connection between heart and mind. Takotsubo cardiomyopathy confirmed a relationship many doctors had considered more metaphoric than diagnostic. As a clinical cardiologist, I needed to know how to recognize and treat takotsubo cardiomyopathy. But years before pursuing cardiology, I had completed a residency in psychiatry at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. Having also trained as a psychiatrist, I was captivated by this syndrome, which lay at the intersection of my two professional passions. That background put me in a unique position that day at the zoo. I reflexively placed the human phenomenon side by side with the animal one. Emotional trigger … surge of stress hormones … failing heart muscle … possible death. An unexpected “aha!” suddenly hit me. Takotsubo in humans and the heart effects of capture myopathy in animals were almost certainly related—perhaps even the same syndrome with different names.

Most often attention is confused with a kind of muscular effort. If one says to one’s pupils: “Now you must pay attention,” one sees them contracting their brows, holding their breath, stiffening their muscles. If after two minutes they are asked what they have been paying attention to, they cannot reply. They have not been paying attention. They have been contracting their muscles... Attention is an effort, the greatest of all efforts perhaps, but it is a negative effort. Of itself, it does not involve tiredness. When we become tired, attention is scarcely possible any more, unless we have already had a good deal of practice. It is better to stop working altogether, to seek some relaxation, and then a little later to return to the task; we have to press on and loosen up alternately, just as we breathe in and out. Twenty minutes of concentrated, untired attention is infinitely better than three hours of the kind of frowning application which leads us to say with a sense of duty done: “I have worked well!” But, in spite of all appearances, it is also far more difficult. There is something in our soul which has a far more violent repugnance for true attention than the flesh has for bodily fatigue... Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty and ready to be penetrated by the object. It means holding in our minds, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired which we are forced to make use of. Our thought should be in relation to all particular and already formulated thoughts as a man on a mountain who, as he looks forward, sees also below him, without actually looking at them, a great many forests and plains. Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the object which is to penetrate it.

In order to avoid the deafening of conspecifics, some bats employ a jamming avoidance response, rapidly shifting frequencies or flying silent when foraging near conspecifics. Because jamming is a problem facing any active emission sensory system, it is perhaps not surprising (though no less amazing) that similar jamming avoidance responses are deployed by weakly electric fish. The speed of sound is so fast in water that it makes it difficult for echolocating whales to exploit similar Doppler effects. However, the fact that acoustic emissions propagate much farther and faster in the water medium means that there is less attenuation of ultrasound in water, and thus that echolocation can be used for broader-scale 'visual' sweeping of the undersea environment. These constraints and trade-offs must be resolved by all acoustic ISMs, on Earth and beyond. There are equally universal anatomical and metabolic constraints on the evolvability of echolocation that explain why it is 'harder' to evolve than vision. First, as noted earlier, a powerful sound-production capacity, such as the lungs of tetrapods, is required to produce high-frequency emissions capable of supporting high-resolution acoustic imaging. Second, the costs of echolocation are high, which may limit acoustic imaging to organisms with high-metabolisms, such as mammals and birds. The metabolic rates of bats during echolocation, for instance, are up to five times greater than they are at rest. These costs have been offset in bats through the evolutionarily ingenious coupling of sound emission to wing-beat cycle, which functions as a single unit of biomechanical and metabolic efficiency. Sound emission is coupled with the upstroke phase of the wing-beat cycle, coinciding with contraction of abdominal muscles and pressure on the diaphragm. This significantly reduces the price of high-intensity pulse emission, making it nearly costless. It is also why, as any careful crepuscular observer may have noticed, bats spend hardly any time gliding (which is otherwise a more efficient means of flight).

Sweat popped out on his brow. Little by little he advanced. Higher. Deeper. Her flesh yielding beneath his gentle but inevitable penetration. She moaned. "It's not enough. Dammit, it's not enough!" His laugh was triumphant. "Patience, love. Patience." She buried her head against his shoulder. He buried his finger inside her cleft, as far as he could. His thumb slowly circled her velvety pearl, pressed, then circled anew, faster and faster, gaining a tempo he knew would drive her wild. Her hands came up, clenching and unclenching against his chest. He felt the tension strung throughout her body and knew precisely what caused it. Knew precisely how to ease it. "Don't fight it." The words were a low, silken whisper, yet his tone was almost gritty with self-control. "Just let it happen, darling. Just let it happen." She couldn't stop it. He knew that pure sensation burned inside her. She writhed around his finger, her hips seeking, stark and wanton. He knew precisely when the spasms of release seized hold. She cried aloud. Her body contracted around him, again and again. She collapsed against him, spent and satiated, his finger still deep inside her. Aidan, however, was more aroused than he had ever been in his life. Every part of his body, every muscle, every nerve, was taut and on edge, almost to the breaking point. A crimson haze of desire scorched his insides, for though Fionna had gained release, he had not. He could barely think. Powerful arms lifted her, catching her so that she faced him, her bare legs bracketed around his. a long arm swept around her back. "You pleased me, love. And I am glad that I pleased you so much. But the next time we are together like this, it will be a different part of me that will be inside you. The next time it will be this." Reaching between them, he fumbled with his trousers, freeing his rigid erection, curling her fingers around his thick, swollen flesh and sealing it there with the pressure of his own. "And there will be nothing between us, sweet. No barriers of clothing. No barriers of words. Do you understand what I am saying?" Fionna gaped at him, stunned at what he'd said. Stunned at what he was doing. She could feel that rigidly masculine part of him... good heavens, her palm was filled with that rigidly masculine part of him.

Less is more. “A few extremely well-chosen objectives,” Grove wrote, “impart a clear message about what we say ‘yes’ to and what we say ‘no’ to.” A limit of three to five OKRs per cycle leads companies, teams, and individuals to choose what matters most. In general, each objective should be tied to five or fewer key results. (See chapter 4, “Superpower #1: Focus and Commit to Priorities.”) Set goals from the bottom up. To promote engagement, teams and individuals should be encouraged to create roughly half of their own OKRs, in consultation with managers. When all goals are set top-down, motivation is corroded. (See chapter 7, “Superpower #2: Align and Connect for Teamwork.”) No dictating. OKRs are a cooperative social contract to establish priorities and define how progress will be measured. Even after company objectives are closed to debate, their key results continue to be negotiated. Collective agreement is essential to maximum goal achievement. (See chapter 7, “Superpower #2: Align and Connect for Teamwork.”) Stay flexible. If the climate has changed and an objective no longer seems practical or relevant as written, key results can be modified or even discarded mid-cycle. (See chapter 10, “Superpower #3: Track for Accountability.”) Dare to fail. “Output will tend to be greater,” Grove wrote, “when everybody strives for a level of achievement beyond [their] immediate grasp. . . . Such goal-setting is extremely important if what you want is peak performance from yourself and your subordinates.” While certain operational objectives must be met in full, aspirational OKRs should be uncomfortable and possibly unattainable. “Stretched goals,” as Grove called them, push organizations to new heights. (See chapter 12, “Superpower #4: Stretch for Amazing.”) A tool, not a weapon. The OKR system, Grove wrote, “is meant to pace a person—to put a stopwatch in his own hand so he can gauge his own performance. It is not a legal document upon which to base a performance review.” To encourage risk taking and prevent sandbagging, OKRs and bonuses are best kept separate. (See chapter 15, “Continuous Performance Management: OKRs and CFRs.”) Be patient; be resolute. Every process requires trial and error. As Grove told his iOPEC students, Intel “stumbled a lot of times” after adopting OKRs: “We didn’t fully understand the principal purpose of it. And we are kind of doing better with it as time goes on.” An organization may need up to four or five quarterly cycles to fully embrace the system, and even more than that to build mature goal muscle.

Because I like you,” she blurted out, and realized that for once it was true. It was a rather unsettling revelation. “You’re . . . , well, you.” Not just a body on a balcony, not just a pair of lips to blot out boredom, but Alex, Alex who argued with her and watched out for her and woke absurdly early in the mornings to ride with her every day, whether he had the time to do so or not. Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Alex didn’t seem to think so, either. His dark eyes were intent on her face, watching her in that way of his, as though he were learning her from the inside out, peering into every little dark nook and cranny of her soul. There were plenty of those to choose from. Dark nooks were one of Penelope’s specialties. He might have wanted her last night, in the still of the bungalow, with the lingering scent of moonflowers on the breeze, but not in daylight, when he saw her again for what she was, brash, impetuous, with her face gone unfashionably tan and curry stains on her habit. He was undoubtedly mustering the words with which to turn her down politely. Penelope suddenly, very desperately, didn’t want to hear them. She jumped to her feet, leaning over to gather up the empty tins. “Or we can just ride on,” she said brusquely, not looking at him. A lean brown hand closed around her wrist. Penelope regarded it blankly, as though not quite sure what it was doing there, alien against the white lace frill of her sleeve. Slowly, her breath catching somewhere in the vicinity of her corset, she lifted her eyes to Alex’s face. What she saw banished any doubts she might have had. In his eyes blazed a reflection of the desire she felt in her own. Nothing more needed to be said. Without a word, he drew her down beside him on the blanket, the blanket that had seemed so prosaic only moments before, but now presented the prospect of a host of exotic and illicit possibilities. Penelope plunked down hard on her knees, catching at his shoulders for balance as she tilted her head down to kiss him, enjoying the unusual advantage of height. “Are you sure?” he murmured, his teeth tugging at her earlobe, even as his hands moved intimately up and down her torso. In answer, Penelope pushed hard at his shoulders, sending him toppling back onto the blanket, narrowly missing sheer disaster with a fork. She followed him down, bracing herself on her elbows and scattering kisses across his upturned face as he busied himself with the buttons on her riding jacket. The fabric parted, and his hands slid beneath, burning through the linen of her blouse, drawing her down on top of him with drugging kisses that made the noon sky dim to dusk and the rustling of the tree leaves blur in her ears. Penelope wriggled her hands beneath his shirt, feeling the hard edges of muscle beneath, delighting in the way they contracted with each labored breath, with a flick of her tongue against the hollow of his throat and an exploratory expedition taken by her lips along his collarbone.

In physical terms, we know that every human action can be reduced to a series of impersonal events: Genes are transcribed, neurotransmitters bind to their receptors, muscle fibers contract, and John Doe pulls the trigger on his gun. But for our commonsense notions of human agency and morality to hold, it seems that our actions cannot be merely lawful products of our biology, our conditioning, or anything else that might lead others to predict them. Consequently, some scientists and philosophers hope that chance or quantum uncertainty can make room for free will. For instance, the biologist Martin Heisenberg has observed that certain processes in the brain, such as the opening and closing of ion channels and the release of synaptic vesicles, occur at random, and cannot therefore be determined by environmental stimuli. Thus, much of our behavior can be considered truly “self-generated”—and therein, he imagines, lies a basis for human freedom. But how do events of this kind justify the feeling of free will? “Self-generated” in this sense means only that certain events originate in the brain. If my decision to have a second cup of coffee this morning was due to a random release of neurotransmitters, how could the indeterminacy of the initiating event count as the free exercise of my will? Chance occurrences are by definition ones for which I can claim no responsibility. And if certain of my behaviors are truly the result of chance, they should be surprising even to me. How would neurological ambushes of this kind make me free? Imagine what your life would be like if all your actions, intentions, beliefs, and desires were randomly “self-generated” in this way. You would scarcely seem to have a mind at all. You would live as one blown about by an internal wind. Actions, intentions, beliefs, and desires can exist only in a system that is significantly constrained by patterns of behavior and the laws of stimulus-response. The possibility of reasoning with other human beings—or, indeed, of finding their behaviors and utterances comprehensible at all—depends on the assumption that their thoughts and actions will obediently ride the rails of a shared reality. This is true as well when attempting to understand one’s own behavior. In the limit, Heisenberg’s “self-generated” mental events would preclude the existence of any mind at all. The indeterminacy specific to quantum mechanics offers no foothold: If my brain is a quantum computer, the brain of a fly is likely to be a quantum computer, too. Do flies enjoy free will? Quantum effects are unlikely to be biologically salient in any case. They play a role in evolution because cosmic rays and other high-energy particles cause point mutations in DNA (and the behavior of such particles passing through the nucleus of a cell is governed by the laws of quantum mechanics). Evolution, therefore, seems unpredictable in principle.13 But few neuroscientists view the brain as a quantum computer. And even if it were, quantum indeterminacy does nothing to make the concept of free will scientifically intelligible. In the face of any real independence from prior events, every thought and action would seem to merit the statement “I don’t know what came over me.” If determinism is true, the future is set—and this includes all our future states of mind and our subsequent behavior. And to the extent that the law of cause and effect is subject to indeterminism—quantum or otherwise—we can take no credit for what happens. There is no combination of these truths that seems compatible with the popular notion of free will.

Time is a ring, and in the House of Belphegor that ring contracts like a muscle.

The back of my scalp and neck prickled. It’s an involuntary muscle contraction that causes that, setting the hair follicles on edge; if we had manes they would bristle exactly like a growling dog’s. We’re animals. We’re born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts. There’s no sense pretending.

Barn Owls were known for their extremely sensitive hearing. They could contract and expand the muscles of their facial disks to funnel the sound source to their unevenly placed earholes.

the organism is dominated by one sector of the body: the old interior world of the viscera that are located in the abdomen, thorax, and thick of the skin, along with the attendant chemical processes. The contents of feelings that dominate our conscious mind correspond largely to the ongoing actions of viscera, for example, the degree of contraction or relaxation of the smooth muscles that form the walls of tubular organs such as the trachea, bronchi, and gut, as well as countless blood vessels in the skin and visceral cavities. Equally prominent among the contents is the state of the mucosae—think of your throat, dry, moist, or just plain sore, or of your esophagus or stomach when you eat too much or are famished. The typical content of our feelings is governed by the degree to which the operations of the viscera listed above are smooth and uncomplicated or else labored and erratic. To make matters more complex, all of these varied organ states are the result of the action of chemical molecules—circulating in the blood or arising in nerve terminals distributed throughout the viscera—for example, cortisol, serotonin, dopamine, endogenous opioids, oxytocin. Some of these potions and elixirs are so powerful that their results are instantaneous. Last, the degree of tension or relaxation of the voluntary muscles (which, as noted, are part of the newer interior world of the body frame) also contributes to the content of feelings

There are many variable factors which help to determine just how much work a muscle is doing as it is contracting, and information coming only from the muscle spindles can be as confusing as it is helpful with regard to measuring this real work. For instance, a muscle cell is “weaker” when it is stretched out to its full length, because the myosin and actin chains do not overlap very much and therefore have fewer cross-bridges to ratchet; hence contractions at this end of the muscles range do not have as much force behind them as they do when the muscle shortens by about half and the myosin and actin filaments are overlapping deeply and creating many cross-bridges. Or, increasing fatigue can make a muscle feel as though it is working harder and harder, in spite of the fact that it is actually contracting with less and less force. Even changes in my mood can significantly alter my sense of ease or effort during any given contraction. So the Golgis add an indispensable quantum of information to the spindles’ measure of changing muscle lengths: The Golgis assess the exact amount of resistance which is overcome in order to contract a given distance in a given time.

called a motor unit. Whenever a command is sent from the cortex, or a reflex is initiated in the spinal column, which stimulates a particular motor nerve, all of the muscle cells to which the nerve synapses are stimulated, and contract together. These motor units vary widely in the number of muscle cells involved, depending upon the strength or the delicacy that is necessary for the area in which they are found. In the eye, for instance, where very small and precise movements are required, one motor nerve may control only ten to fifteen muscle cells. In the hand, where both precision and strength are needed, each motor nerve serves anywhere from ten to one hundred muscle cells. In the thigh, where added strength is more important than such fine control, a single nerve may synapse with one thousand to two thousand muscle cells. Each of these muscle cells can contract only when it is stimulated by its motor nerve; and any stimulation from a motor nerve obliges all of the muscle cells with which it is connected to contract simultaneously. These are the two basic functional axioms of the motor unit.

But the action of the tendon organ’s synapse onto its corresponding motor neuron is not the same as that of the spindle; it is its complimentary opposite, The action of the anulospiral receptor upon its motor nerve is excitatory: When the spindle is suddenly stretched beyond a pre-determined “normal” resting length—as in the knee jerk reflex test—it excites the alpha motor nerve so that a contraction immediately follows which quickly re-establishes the desired “normal” resting length. 7-14: A Golgi reflex arc. In the spinal cord, its effect upon the alpha motor neurons is the opposite of that of the spindles: The Golgi afferent impulse inhibits the muscle fibers associated with it, and excites antagonists. The two kinds of arcs form complementary reflex devices. The tendon organ, on the other hand, has an inhibitory effect upon its alpha motor nerve: When the tension developed upon a tendon exceeds a pre-set “normal” limit, the Golgi inhibits the motor nerve, reducing its level of stimulatory firing and thus relaxing the tension back down to its “normal” resting value. The simplest and most basic function of this inhibitory reflex arc is to prevent the contractile power of the muscles from damaging the tendons and the bones. Many of our muscles are capable of generating enough pull to rip themselves loose from their own moorings, and even the smaller ones which do not have such brute power are in danger of being torn by the uncontrolled pulling of the larger muscles around them. When the Golgi organ senses, due to the increasing tensional distortion of the tendon’s fibers, that a strain or a tear is imminent, its signal becomes powerful enough to inhibit the alpha motor neurons that are stimulating the contraction. Tension is reduced instantly, and the damage is avoided.

The pathways with axons pointed towards the periphery, and which conduct impulses outward, are called efferent pathways. Their origins can ultimately be traced to the motor cortex, next to the sensory cortex at the top of the brain. Their axons descend the spinal cord and fan out into the body, terminating in synapses with the striated skeletal and cardiac muscles, and the smooth muscles of the vessels, internal organs, and glands. They are alternately termed the motor pathways. Their role is to carry out to the body, from every level in the nervous system, all of the impulses which control the appropriate contraction and lengthening of the entire musculature. Their signals are translated into the various behavioral effects which the mind chooses in response to input.

Trigger point massage works by accomplishing three things: it breaks into the chemical and neurological feedback loop that maintains the muscle contraction; it increases circulation that has been restricted by the contracted tissue; and it directly stretches the trigger point’s knotted muscle fibers.

She paused when her gaze lit on a wall of bookshelves filled with computer games. Above it hung a screen nearly four feet wide with a pair of control sticks mounted beneath it. “All right,” she teased, “now I know what you really do all day.” Some of the darkness faded from his features and the muscles across his shoulders relaxed. “Actually, I do spend part of my day playing games. Right now, I’m giving Inner Dimensions some feedback on a game called King Cobra.” Her eyes lit up. “Can we play it?” He shook his head. “No way. Not today. I promised to show you the country and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.” He opened the office door and waited for her to walk out. Charity glanced wistfully over her shoulder at the gigantic game board. “Okay, but I’m not letting you off the hook. It isn’t like there’s all that much to do up here. One of these nights, we’ll have to play.” Call’s expression changed and the blue of his eyes seemed to glow. “Yeah,” he said, “one of these nights we’ll definitely have to play.” Charity’s stomach contracted. She didn’t think he was talking about computer games.

Since any muscle cell will eventually reach a state of exhaustion—a depletion of available ATP—if it is kept constantly firing and working, one of the primary tasks of neuromuscular coordination is to maintain this overall tension set without exhausting any one cell. This is accomplished by a firing pattern called asynchronous stimulation, which alternates the working tonus contraction from motor unit to motor unit, so that some are always engaged while others are resting.

The contractile portions of the intrafusal fibers are innervated by motor neurons in the same fashion as are the larger skeletal muscle cells. The intrafusal membrane is contacted by a motor end plate, which stimulates the spindle cell into contracting or fixing its length, or ceases stimulation to allow the cell to be lengthened passively. But the motor neurons which control the intrafusals are altogether separate from the ones which control the skeletal muscles. The skeletal motor neurons are larger in diameter, with their own vertical tracts through the length of the spinal cord, and end their paths near the summit of the brain, in the motor cortex. They are called alpha motor neurons. The motor neurons for the intrafusal fibers, in contrast, are smaller in diameter, have their own discrete pathways up the spinal cord, and end in collections of cell bodies, or ganglia, deep within the brain, in the brain stem. These are called the gamma neurons.

The Golgi organs themselves are multi-branched type endings of sensory axons, which are woven among the collagen fibers near the muscle cells, and which are stimulated by the straightening and recoiling of the tendon. As is the case with the muscle spindles, the stimulation of a single tendon organ is highly specific: Each particular organ is most directly affected by the lengthening and contracting of the few alpha muscle fibers which attach to the collagen bundles containing that tendon organ, so that each Golgi is responsive to the activities of only ten to fifteen alpha motor units.

First of all, the tone of my muscle cells must hold my skeleton together so that it neither collapses in upon my organs nor dislocates at its joints. It is tone, just as much as it is connective tissues or bone, that is responsible for my basic structural shape and integrity. Secondly, my muscle tone must superimpose upon its own stability the steady, rhythmical expansion and contraction of respiration. Third, it must support my overall structure in one position or another—lying, sitting standing, and so on. Finally, it must be able to brace and release any part of the body in relation to the whole, and to do this with spontaneity and split-second timing, so that graceful, purposeful action may be added to my stability, my posture, and my rhythmic respiration. It is no wonder we find that such large portions of our nervous systems are so continually engaged in controlling the maintenance and adjustments of this tone. The entire system of spindle cells, with both their contractile parts and their anulospiral receptors, the Golgi tendon organs, the reflex arcs, much of the internuncial circuitry of the spinal column, and most of the oldest portion of our brains—including the reticular formation and the basal ganglia—all work together to orchestrate this complex phenomenon. We have, as it were, a brain within our brain and a muscle system within our muscle system to monitor the constantly shifting values of background tonus, to provide a stable yet flexible framework which we are free to use how we will. Nor is it a wonder that these elements and processes are normally controlled below my level of consciousness—if this were not the case, walking across the room to get a glass of water would require more diversified and minute attention than my conscious awareness could possibly muster. It is the old brain, along with the even more ancient spinal cord, that are given the bulk of this task, because they have had so many more generations in which to grapple with the problems and refine the solutions. Millions upon millions of trials and errors have resulted in genetically constant motor circuits and sensory feedback loops which handle the fundamental life-supporting jobs of muscle tone for me automatically. Firm structure, posture, respiratory rhythms, swallowing, elimination, grasping, withdrawing, tracking with the eyes—all these intact and fully functional activities and more are given to each of us as new-born infants, the legacy of the development of our ancestors.

Thus two different kinds of muscle contractions are possible, each using a different sort of patterning principle to control movements. The motor cortex and the alpha neurons directly cause contractions of the skeletal muscles, contractions which continue as long as the command signals are being sent. The brain stem and the gamma neurons, on the other hand, cause contractions that are mediated through the spindle system, and their commands cease once a predetermined length has been achieved, at which point the stretch reflex arrests further effort. The alpha system organizes its commands in terms of the duration of neural bursts; the gamma system organizes its commands in terms of the starting and stopping lengths of the muscle fibers. In other words, the stimulation patterns which organize the alpha contractions are coded as a function of time—the duration of the bursts coming from the motor cortex. And the patterns which organize the gamma contractions are coded as a function of space, stimulation ceasing when a predetermined length is achieved in the anulospiral gauges.

We now know that a movement may be initiated by either of these two motor systems. The motor cortex can initiate a voluntary movement without being blocked by the stretch reflex, because when I know that I am going to move in a specific way, then the critical “unexpected” quality of stretching muscle lengths is neutralized. The unconscious gamma command centers in my brain stem can mimic a move directed by my conscious mind, lengthening and shortening its intrafusal cells in concert with the alpha cells around them so that the anulospiral sensory element is not stretched or collapsed during the movement. In this instance, the gamma system follows the lead of the alpha, with the anulospiral ending’s reflex arc silenced as long as the two are synchronized—that is, as long as the alpha movements correspond to “expected” limits that are successfully mimicked by gamma movements. A movement may be initiated by the gamma motor system as well. In this case, the command signals are organized in the terminal gamma ganglia in the brain stem (the gamma system’s counterpart for the alpha’s cerebral cortex). These signals are then sent through a complicated path known as the gamma loop: They descend through gamma motor neurons out to the intrafusal fibers. These small spindle cells are not strong enough to move a limb, but they are strong enough to stretch their own anulospiral receptors. This stretch automatically fires the spinal reflex arcs connected with the receptors, and the larger alpha motor cells are immediately stimulated to match the contractions of the gamma fibers. As soon as the desired muscle length has been reached, the commands from the brain stem cease, and the spindles hold their new resting length. When the alpha fibers catch up to this new resting length (a matter of a fraction of a second), the anulospiral element is quieted, and contraction ceases.

The Nerve-Muscle Partnership These sets of motor units constitute the hard wiring of the neuromuscular system, and their connections are fixed in infancy. There will never be any additional muscle or nerve cells, and there will never be any additional synapses from motor nerve to muscle cell. From the time that our motor units are complete, we can make our muscles larger and stronger only by synthesizing more myosin and actin filaments within each muscle cell. And we can increase our motor skills only by learning to utilize the given wiring patterns with greater variety and subtlety. Once this life-long bond is established, the muscle cell becomes extremely dependent upon its nerve, not only to initiate its contractions and lengthenings and to fix its resting lengths, but also to maintain its health as a living cell. Muscle apparently requires the constant play of electrical energy that it receives from its motor nerve just as much as it requires glucose or oxygen; without its neural partner, a muscle cell cannot survive.

When an area of muscle is actively shortening and lengthening, shortening and lengthening, it actually assists its own circulation by pumping fluids through the capillaries and the intercellular spaces. But when it holds a contraction for an extended period of time, the pump becomes a squeeze, and fluid delivery is sharply decreased. This lack of circulation in a local area is called ischemia, a painful and potentially dangerous condition. It is ischemia that makes the feet blue and sensitive when they are cold, and that makes them decay when they are severely frostbitten. It is ischemia that makes the hands cold and painful when their circulation is poor. It is ischemia which creates bedsores when a person has lain so long in one position that the pressure of the bones against the surface of the bed pushes all the blood out of an area. All of these symptoms are the results of blocking the local blood supply, so that the cells do not receive adequate oxygen and nutrients to carry on their work.

The simplest kind of control that is afforded by this feedback loop is the so-called stretch reflex, which is illustrated by the knee-jerk test which most of us have experienced in the doctor’s office. The common tendon of the quadriceps is tapped with a rubber mallet just below the knee-cap, and this tap has the effect of a sharp tug on the muscle fibers of the thigh. This sudden change in length of the thigh muscles is registered by the anulospiral receptors, which in turn stimulate in the spinal cord the motor neurons which power the thigh, causing a brief contraction of the thigh muscles which makes the foot jerk forward in a healthy reflex. This automatic contraction has the effect of keeping the thigh muscles at a constant length regardless of outside forces acting upon it, and makes it possible to maintain erect posture in spite of external disturbances. The components of this arc are like a miniature or primitive nervous system, a microcosm of our nervous system as a whole, a system which “in its simplest form is merely a mechanism by which a muscular movement can be initiated by some change in peri-ipheral sensation.” My spindles and their reflex arcs are tiny neural units that monitor and influence motor events that are so continuous and so numerous that they would totally overwhelm my conscious mind. Even if I could keep track of the changing lengths of every one of my millions of muscle cells, I certainly would have no room left to think about anything else.

ECHOCARDIOGRAM (Echo) This test uses an ultrasound device to create a picture of the entire heart. The test evaluates how well the chambers of the heart are pumping and contracting and measures the size of the four chambers of the heart. It shows if the heart is normal sized or enlarged. It also measures the thickness of the heart muscle, which aids in the detection of high blood pressure. An electrocardiogram allows the doctor to take a look at all four valves of the heart. The heart’s valves can be damaged because of rheumatic fever or may show degenerative changes due to aging. These changes can lead to heart murmurs which cause the heart to work harder to pump the same amount of blood. This is one of the best tests doctors have to evaluate the heart at rest. It reveals the “ejection factor”, which is the amount of blood the heart moves with each beat. This should be 55% or more and underlying heart disease often shows up in a lower ejection factor. People with an ejection factor of 35% to 55% can lead a normal life with the help of medication. Below 35%, there is a risk of sudden death and a defibrillator should be installed surgically. A doctor may perform an echocardiogram to Assess the overall function of your heart Discover the presence of many types of heart disease Follow the progress of heart valve disease over time Evaluate the effectiveness of medical or surgical treatments

Violet suddenly felt something in her as her anger and adrenaline pulsed through her body like a raving lunatic. She felt the rage from before, trying to rise above her control. Her hands began to elongate and her nails grew to razor sharp knives. She tried to hold back the intense metamorphosis, but the more she let go, the better she felt. Millions of coarse hairs sprouted from her skin and covered her in a dense, white fur. Her eyes dilated and contracted with the effort of balancing light. Her face grew into a furry white snout and her limbs grew to immense sizes, filled with muscle. She looked down at herself. She was a beautiful werewolf. A white werewolf! She tried to laugh, but it came out as small barks. She was expecting black fur instead.

In 1992, a forty-six-year-old woman whom I’ll call Hannah underwent a neurological examination at a hospital in Vienna, Austria. The neurologist, Georg Goldenberg, began by asking Hannah to describe his own face. It was an odd question, but Hannah complied. The doctor had short hair and was clean shaven, she said; he wasn’t wearing glasses, and he looked like he had a bit of a tan. Goldenberg next asked Hannah about an object in front of her. It was a notebook, she answered, like the kind schoolchildren use, with a brown cover and some writing in Latin script that she couldn’t quite make out. And where exactly was the book located, the doctor asked her. He was holding it up in his left hand, Hannah replied, at just about eye level. The trouble was this: Goldenberg’s face was concealed behind a screen, the object in front of his patient was a comb, and before asking about its location, he’d hidden it beneath the table in front of him. Hannah was blind. One month earlier, she had suffered a stroke that destroyed virtually her entire visual cortex and left her all but unable to move, owing to loss of muscle coordination and chronic, epilepsy-like contractions, especially on the left side of her body. All that was bad enough. But Hannah was also left with a rarer and stranger problem: she didn’t know that she was blind.

gluteus maximus, the largest muscle in the human body. This enormous muscle is barely active during walking but contracts very forcefully during running to prevent the trunk from toppling forward with every step.46 (You can test this yourself by walking and running while grasping your buttocks: feel how much more intensely the muscle clenches with every step when running.) Apes

Up until a few years ago, I had always thought that magnesium helped treat anxiety for one reason - muscles need magnesium to relax. They use calcium to contract and magnesium to relax, which is why magnesium deficiency is associated with muscle tightness and cramping.

The skin of his torso was smooth and golden, rows of hard silken muscles contracting at her timid touch. His body radiated heat, luring her like a cat to a patch of sunlight.

Frozen or weak structures have problems feeling inner motility or support; their loss of bone integrity leads to feelings of inner fragmentation. Parents who do not hold their children or give enough early containment may force them to rigidify their muscles in order to gain a sense of support. If, as adults, these people try to relax their muscular contractions they will experience anxiety because they lack feelings of inner support from their bones and joints.