Muscle cramps: emotional and spiritual meaning

What a muscle cramp is

A muscle cramp is a sudden, involuntary, painful contraction. The muscle locks, often in the calf, the foot or the thigh, and often at night. Most cramps are harmless. They are more common in pregnancy, in older age, after exercise, in the heat, and when fluid or salts are low. Some medicines provoke them. Stretching the muscle usually releases it. A cramp that comes with swelling, heat or breathlessness is a different problem and needs urgent care, because a clot can feel like a cramp at the start.

The emotional reading below asks what is being held. It does not replace a check when the cramp is new, one-sided or accompanied by swelling. The Achilles tendon is the cord that often meets a calf in trouble. Calf pain has its own page.

The emotional meaning of muscle cramps

A cramp of muscular origin means you are holding something you do not want to let go. It is a great inner tension, expressed as a block of energy in the muscle. The muscle itself stands for energy, life and strength. So you "block" life by not letting go of old thoughts, thoughts that change and that transform in a body which is itself evolving. You still have old preconceived principles, and you carry them into the actions of every day.

You are "under tension", asking yourself a thousand and one questions. Your attention sits on certain worries that take so much of your energy that you end up disconnected from the physical body. It matters to check which part of the body the cramps affect, because that part is a clue to what is being held.

A gentler way to hold it

From now, the direction is to let go at the level of the heart, and to open more to the new possibilities that can move you forward. You cannot change the past. You can change your interpretation of events. You become more and more aware of the beauties that are already present. Quiet attention, and any practice that helps a body settle, can help useless tension leave and bring the inner life back into harmony. That is a complement to stretching a cramped muscle, not a substitute for it.

• Ask what you will not release. Holding on is the whole picture of a cramp.
• Name one old principle you are still acting out. The muscle is where it has gone hard.
• Notice the worry that takes you out of the body. A thousand questions are a kind of absence.
• Look at where it cramps. The calf, the hand, the foot: the place is part of the question. The muscles and tendons page is the wider map.
• Change the interpretation, not the past. That is the only lever this reading claims.
• Have a hot, swollen "cramp" seen. A clot is not a metaphor.