The 📝Trigger Point Therapy Glossary collects the terms used when 📝Trigger Point Therapy appears in a Somatic Realignment Therapy session note or home-care plan, defined in plain language for clients.
Glossary
A
- 📝Active Trigger Point — a point that aches on its own and reproduces a familiar discomfort when pressed.
B
- 📝Breathe Into It — the cue to exhale slowly while pressure is held, so the muscle can let go instead of guarding.
C
- 📝Central Trigger Point — a point in the belly of a muscle, near where its nerve enters.
I
- 📝Ischemic Compression — 📝sustained pressure held on a point until the tenderness eases, named for briefly reducing local blood flow.
J
- 📝Jump Sign — the involuntary flinch or pull-away when a 📝tender point is pressed.
K
- 📝Key Trigger Point — a point whose release also quiets satellite points elsewhere.
L
- 📝Latent Trigger Point — a point that is quiet until pressed but still shortens the muscle and limits range.
- 📝Local Twitch Response — a quick flicker of the 📝taut band when the point is pressed or flicked.
N
- 📝Nodule — the small, pea-like knot felt inside a taut band.
P
- 📝Palpation — feeling the tissue with the fingers to find bands and points.
- 📝Perpetuating Factor — a habit, posture, or load that keeps re-forming the same point, such as a phone held to one shoulder.
- 📝Pressure Release — graded, gentler pressure held on a point until it softens, a lighter form of 📝ischemic compression.
R
- 📝Referral Pattern — the characteristic map of where a point sends sensation, often far from the point itself.
- 📝Release — the tenderness fading and the band softening under sustained pressure.
S
- 📝Satellite Trigger Point — a point that develops inside the referral zone of another point.
- 📝Self-Release Tool — a lacrosse ball, peanut, or pressure cane used to hold pressure on a point at home.
- 📝Stretch After Release — lengthening the muscle right after a point quiets so the band does not re-form.
T
- 📝Taut Band — the rope-like strand of tight fibers in which a 📝trigger point sits.
- 📝Tender Point — a spot that hurts when pressed but does not refer sensation elsewhere, which distinguishes it from a trigger point.
- 📝Tolerance — the pressure that is intense but still breathable, usually about a 6 or 7 out of 10, above which the body guards.
- 📝Travell and Simons — the physicians whose referral maps underlie modern trigger point work.
- 📝Trigger Point — a hyperirritable spot in a taut band that can refer sensation to another region.