Knots of Existence

“When all the knots of the heart are cut, here in this life, the mortal becomes immortal. This much is the teaching.” — Kaṭha Upaniṣad 2.3.15

For researchers

Knots: an open problem, and the measurement that would settle it

People who work with the body find places that hold for years and let go in a breath. Seven mechanisms could explain them. Each is run as a model from its own physiology, to show how its knots would behave; and at the moment one lets go, each would leave a different trace.

Summary

The problem. Bodyworkers and contemplative practitioners report knots: discrete places in the body that hold, sometimes for years, and let go within seconds, under a hand, with a slow breath or to attention, often with a tingle over the spot. Nothing about them has been recorded at the moment of release. At least seven mechanisms could explain them: a vessel held shut where it pierces the fascia, smooth muscle in the latch state, a myofascial trigger point, densified hyaluronan, a sensitised nerve, motor units that latch on, and perception.

How it is approached. Each theory is written as a model in its strongest form, every parameter traced to a quoted line of a paper or marked as a guess, and run from its own physiology through the same scenes: a stressful moment, slow breathing, attention, a resting hand, rolling, an hour of moods, in 32 settings of its uncertain numbers. What its knots would do is read off the runs, not fitted to anyone's reports. That is the field guide, on the Hypotheses page.

What the models show. They part most at the moment of release. Each would leave a different trace: perforators: skin flow floods in; vascular latch: flow rises slowly; trigger points: stiffness falls in the muscle; densification: the layers slide again; nerves: the nerve's firing falls; motor switch: a motor unit falls silent; perception: nothing in the tissue. They part too in what a hand finds, whether a stretch meets a block, where knots sit, whether one lets go under a resting hand or only as it lifts, to a roller or to heat, and whether attention alone frees it (below).

What they suggest. Set against practitioners' reports, the perforator model, with the sleeve of sliding tissue around each vessel, reproduces the most: release with a roller (18 of 19 settings), sparks (19 of 21), stiffness (12 of 19), and larger knots freeing smaller ones but not the reverse. Knots that let go to attention alone point instead to the vascular latch (31 of 32) or the motor switch. Perforators and latches are the same kind of muscle held in two ways, and knots may be more than one thing (below).

What physics already says. A small artery with tone in its wall can hold itself shut, and, held an hour or two, its muscle adapts and the knot sets; a vessel pressed shut cannot reopen until the hand lifts, and releasing a parent vessel frees most of its children. Hyaluronan cannot hold a vessel shut, hardly changes with acidity, and thins only about 2% a degree with warmth; warming cannot release a knot within a breath; the latch saves energy but by itself does not remember; the sympathetic drive reaches a sensitised nerve only after about fourteen seconds.

What would settle it. One recording at the moment a knot lets go, with the few instruments that tell those traces apart, after cheaper questions a hand can ask. The ladder below, and a preprint, a one-page pilot and who could help at the end.

Where the theories part

The same questions put to every model, and its answer, from the runs (● in every setting, ◐ in some, ○ in none, — the account says nothing). Where the answers differ in something a hand or an instrument can tell, that is a test. The first question separates all seven.

What would a recording show at the moment one lets go? step 4

What does a finger find? a hand, then step 2

Where do they sit? step 3

Under a resting hand, when does it let go? step 1

Does attention alone, without touch, let it go? step 1

Is there a spark, and when? step 1

Does a stretch meet a block at the knot? step 1, then step 2

Rolled over, does it let go? step 1

Does heat, as in a hot shower or a sauna, free it? step 1

What would a breath have to do (the least calming that frees the typical knot)? the field guide

Once the stress has gone, can an old knot stay? following knots over weeks

Every answer is a model's, from its own physiology and its sampled numbers; a model shows what a mechanism would do, not that it is what happens. The full portraits, and the films, are in the field guide.

What the models suggest

More than one kind of knot. No model reproduces every report (the reports against the models). A perforator held shut, with its sleeve, accounts for the spark, the release as a hand lifts or a roller passes, stiffness, and larger knots freeing smaller ones; it lets go to attention alone in only 9 of 19 settings, where the latch does in 31 of 32. The simplest reading is that practitioners meet at least two kinds, and a recording should classify each release rather than crown one theory.

Perforators and latches: one muscle, two holds. Both knots are vascular smooth muscle held contracted, and heat reaches both through the same number here. They differ in what holds them. A perforator is held by its wall's mechanics: over a band of tone both open and shut are stable, and once tone falls below the band the vessel opens, with a flood and a spark. The latch is held by information: a prediction that keeps its vessels clamped and the clamp that keeps the region out of awareness, so it lets go when noticed. They need not compete. A held prediction could be the command that keeps a perforator inside its band: such a knot would let go to attention and to a roller alike, and spark as it went. That combination is the next model to build.

Why knots stiffen. Each vessel passes the fascia in a sleeve of sliding tissue that its flow keeps wet; shut, the sleeve dries, its hyaluronan crowds (Cowman 2015), and it can jam, pinning the layers there. Held half an hour more, the knot at the spot blocks a stretch in 12 of 19 settings; where it did not at first, the block comes after about 12 min. When such a knot lets go (its own drive calmed for a minute), its vessel opens after about 9 s; its sleeve slides again within ten minutes in none of 9 settings, and otherwise stays stuck until the layer is sheared (a roller, a moving hand).

Peeling and filling. Some describe the fascia beneath the skin peeling apart along lines, leaving places that feel hollow, and then a filling-in felt as re-stitching. The perforators suggest where to look: they and their sleeves are the stitches that tether the superficial fascia to the deep. If many sleeves free at once and the returning flood fills the gliding plane, the layers could part along the lines between tethers, and close again as the fluid is taken up and the sleeves re-hold. This is not yet modelled: the fascia as a system of its own is on the plan.

The measurement that would settle it

Cheapest first. Each observes what already happens, at the usual pace; each step names the theories it would tell apart.

  1. Noticing, with no instrument. When does a knot let go under a resting hand? As the hand lifts (never under it): perforators; under the hand: vascular latch, trigger points and motor switch; not within a minute (never under it): densification and perception; not within a minute: nerves. Does attention alone, without touch, free it? Sometimes: perforators and perception; often: vascular latch, trigger points and motor switch; no: densification and nerves. Is there a tingle over the spot as it goes (perforators), a twitch (trigger points), or a tingle along a nerve's branches when it is pressed (nerves)? Does the skin slide over it (densification: not)? Does a stretch meet a block there, and does the block go with the knot or stay until the layer is moved (a perforator's sleeve can stay stuck)? Does it come back to the same point each time the stress returns (nerves, whose knots can sit only where a nerve pierces the fascia)?
  2. Ultrasound over a few knots, with colour Doppler and a measure of the layers' sliding: in which layer a bump is (a trigger point's nodule, or a motor switch's band, in muscle); whether a perforator runs beneath (perforators, and nerves, which travel beside one); whether the layers glide over the spot (densification says they do not). The latch and perception predict nothing to see.
  3. A Doppler map against blinded marks: do knots sit on perforators more than chance (perforators, nerves), on the zone where a muscle's nerve enters (trigger points), or wherever stress is held (the latch, densification, the motor switch, perception)?
  4. The recording at release, with a button pressed at each felt release and a pressed sham beside it, since a press changes every place it presses. Laser speckle over the skin (the perforators' flood; the latch's slow rise); surface EMG that picks out single motor units (the motor switch's unit falling silent); elastography (a trigger point's stiffness falling in the muscle); ultrasound of the layers' sliding (densification's layers sliding again). A nerve's knot is silenced by a local anaesthetic at the point, as entrapped nerves of the abdominal wall are (Boelens 2013). Perception predicts that nothing in the tissue changes.

Any measurement with people belongs under the site's moderation guidance (see About). None of this is a practice or a protocol.

What physics allows

Questions that numbers settle before any model runs: what a mechanism cannot do, whatever its settings.

Can hyaluronan hold a vessel shut?

No.

A liquid resists motion, not position. At its most viscous (healthy synovial fluid; Nicholls 2018), in a collar 20 µm thin, its drag is 12 times weaker than the pressure holding the vessel open, and fascia holds tens to hundreds of times less hyaluronan (Fede 2018).

Can acidity thicken hyaluronan?

Not in the body's range.

Its flow hardly changes with pH, except near pH 2.5, where it turns gel-like, and above 12 (Gatej 2005); alone it does not gel (Krause 2001). A layer that jams is more than hyaluronan: crowded with immobility, or bound to proteins in inflammation (Cowman 2015).

Can warmth free a densified layer?

Barely.

Hyaluronan thins gradually with warmth, two- to threefold from 25 to 65 °C (Cowman 2015): about 2% a degree. A resting hand warms the layer beneath the fat by a fraction of that range; it would have to slide the layer instead.

Can warming release a vessel within a breath?

No.

A patch of skin warms with a time constant of at least 44 s even at maximal skin blood flow. Release within a breath needs something faster than heat.

Does the latch remember?

It economises.

Relaxation follows the fall of calcium, not latch-bridge detachment (Rembold 1991): a latch holds cheaply while the drive lasts. In Johnson's account the memory lies elsewhere, in the held prediction that the clamp keeps from updating: the field guide runs that loop as the vascular latch.

Can a pressed vessel let go under the hand?

Not until it lifts.

Pressure outside a shut vessel only helps keep it shut. After 40 s of pressure the vessel reopens 0.6 s after the pressure lifts, and flow returns from near nothing to 0.33 of resting flow while drive stays raised (1.07 when stress eases instead).

Can calm quiet a sensitised nerve within a breath?

Not through the sympathetic drive.

In injured nerves, sympathetic activity changes ectopic firing only after about 14 s, and over tens of seconds (Devor 1994). A single out-breath is over before it arrives.

Can pressing free a nerve's knot?

No: it excites it.

An inflamed nerve's fibres fire when the site is pressed (Dilley 2005), and a hand's 20–80 mmHg is more than slows the blood leaving a nerve, 20–30 mmHg (Rydevik 1981).

The perforators, up close

The first model and the most detailed: a perforator's small artery, with 23 parameters taken from or fitted to measurements and 10 guesses, each marked; it can be played with on its own bench. Two things it shows that the field guide's scenes are too short for: how a knot sets over hours, and how a tree of vessels holds and lets go together.

The switchRadius of a small artery against the tone of its muscle. The open branch falls as tone rises until a fold at tone 0.93, where the vessel snaps shut. A shut vessel stays shut until tone falls below 0.62. Between the two, both states are stable. Resting tone is 0.19.both stable0.00.40.60.81.000.51tone of the wall's muscle →↑ radiusrestshutsreopensopenshut: a knot

0.62–0.93the band of tone, as a share of maximal, over which a small artery is stable both open and shut (rest: 0.19). Above the band it snaps shut; once shut, it stays shut until tone falls below it. Burton 1951 described the instability.

52%of 49,152 plausible parameter sets give the switch; in 6% it holds even at resting tone. Whether it holds at rest turns mostly on two numbers, taken from measurements: how much force the muscle keeps as it shortens (Mulvany 1979, rat small arteries) and the wall's thickness (Schiffrin 1995, human subcutaneous small arteries).

5.4 swhen flow is lowest after a deep gasp, the one timing not fitted: measured 4.6–5.2 s (Mayrovitz 2026). The fitted ones reproduce the gasp's size and recovery and the timing of reactive hyperaemia.

The sleeve: how a knot stiffens

Each perforator crosses the gliding plane in a sleeve of sliding tissue (Guimberteau 2005), kept wet by the flow through it. Shut, the vessel lets its sleeve dry; hyaluronan's viscosity rises as the third or fourth power of its concentration (Cowman 2015), and a material like the gliding layer jams below a critical stress (Coussot 2002). Each vessel passes the fascia in a sleeve of sliding tissue that its flow keeps wet; shut, the sleeve dries, its hyaluronan crowds (Cowman 2015), and it can jam, pinning the layers there. Held half an hour more, the knot at the spot blocks a stretch in 12 of 19 settings; where it did not at first, the block comes after about 12 min. When such a knot lets go (its own drive calmed for a minute), its vessel opens after about 9 s; its sleeve slides again within ten minutes in none of 9 settings, and otherwise stays stuck until the layer is sheared (a roller, a moving hand). The drying and rebuilding times are guesses; the prediction to test is the order: the spark as the vessel opens, the sliding only once the layer is moved.

Time: how a knot sets

The switch alone holds a knot only while tone stays 3.4 times rest. But smooth muscle held at a new length adapts to it: it regains the force it lost there, as its optimal length moves toward the length it is held at (Syyong 2008; Pratusevich 1995; Bednarek 2011). Arterioles held constricted for four hours no longer relax fully when the drive is removed (Martinez-Lemus 2004; Hill 2003); held for days, they remodel inward, and only if their muscle is active (Bakker 2002). In this variant the muscle's optimum follows the length it is held at, 70% of the way (fitted to the 73% of lost force that pulmonary arterial muscle regained), over about 1 h at full activation (bracketed by the arterioles: five minutes leaves no trace, four hours does). It belongs to any vessel held by its own muscle: the perforator's, and the latch's.

1×2×3×4×5×0123456hours →held 1 h at 4× resting tone, then restit lets go when stress endstonereopens below thisshut, then open: flow 0.23× rest, the vessel narrowed1×2×3×4×5×0123456hours →held 3 h at 4× resting tone, then restit outlasts its stress: still shut at resttonereopens below thisafter 1.8 h held, the knot would stay shut even at resting toneset: holds at restshut throughout0×1×2×3×let go: the blood flow it opens toby how long the knot had been held (× resting flow)a new knot: flow returns to rest1.0newheld ½ h, not yet set: it reopens narrowed, to 0.52× resting flow0.5½ hheld 1 h, not yet set: it reopens narrowed, to 0.23× resting flow0.21 hheld 2 h, set: it opens wide, to 2.5× resting flow2.52 hheld 4 h, set: it opens wide, to 2.8× resting flow2.84 hheld 24 h, set: it opens wide, to 2.8× resting flow2.824 hrestheld for →set →← not yet set0 h1 h2 h3 h2×3×4×5×tone that holds the knot, × rest →how long until it setsheld at a steady tone; lower, it lets go at oncehealthy walls: held at 3.5× resting tone, it sets after 1.9 hhealthy walls: held at 3.75× resting tone, it sets after 1.8 hhealthy walls: held at 4× resting tone, it sets after 1.7 hhealthy walls: held at 4.25× resting tone, it sets after 1.6 hhealthy walls: held at 4.5× resting tone, it sets after 1.5 hhealthy walls: held at 4.75× resting tone, it sets after 1.4 hhealthy walls: held at 5× resting tone, it sets after 1.3 hhealthy walls3.4×hypertensive walls: held at 2× resting tone, it sets after 1.6 hhypertensive walls: held at 2.25× resting tone, it sets after 1.4 hhypertensive walls: held at 2.5× resting tone, it sets after 1.3 hhypertensive walls: held at 2.75× resting tone, it sets after 1.2 hhypertensive walls: held at 3× resting tone, it sets after 1.1 hhypertensive walls: held at 3.25× resting tone, it sets after 1.0 hhypertensive walls: held at 3.5× resting tone, it sets after 0.9 hhypertensive walls: held at 3.75× resting tone, it sets after 0.8 hhypertensive walls: held at 4× resting tone, it sets after 0.8 hhypertensive walls: held at 4.25× resting tone, it sets after 0.7 hhypertensive walls: held at 4.5× resting tone, it sets after 0.7 hhypertensive walls: held at 4.75× resting tone, it sets after 0.7 hhypertensive walls: held at 5× resting tone, it sets after 0.6 hhypertensive walls1.8×

A knot can set. Held shut at 4× resting tone, a knot holds at rest after 1.7 h: it outlasts the stress that made it. Held an hour, it lets go when stress ends; held three, it stays. With the walls of hypertension it can be held from 2× rest, and sets there in 1.6 h.

A set knot is harder to release. Fully adapted, it stays shut down to 0.51 of resting tone: calm alone no longer frees it. It needs drive below rest, pressure, or movement.

Old knots let go with a wave; young ones without. A set knot's muscle is weak at open lengths until it re-adapts, so released, the vessel opens to 2.8× resting flow. A new knot's release brings flow back only to rest, and one released before it set reopens narrowed, as the lab's arterioles did after four hours.

Days make it structural. Three days of tone narrow the relaxed lumen by 16% around the same wall (Bakker 2002): that alone brings the hold from 3.4× to 1.8× resting tone.

1.7 hheld shut at 4× resting tone before a knot holds at rest

86%of plausible switches can set; 56% within 4 h held midway up the band (median 2.2 h)

2.8×resting flow when an old knot lets go; a new one's, 1×

512 settings: the adaptation's time and share, and the switch's own ranges, each sampled.

What it does not show. With drive held steady, the model's open vessels creep shut under sustained tone (14 h at 1.5× rest), but arterioles held at 61% of their diameter for four hours kept it, where the model's would have shut within 1.7 h. In an open vessel adaptation seems to make holding cheaper, not narrower, and flow and metabolism push back (VanBavel 2014). A shut vessel has no flow, and the results above do not lean on what is missing. The blind test is the four-hour closure test, below.

Trees: a parent and its children

Perforators branch: a parent vessel feeds children, and they share its pressure. Each vessel here is the same switch, with its own wall; pressures are solved at every step. The worked tree has walls as in hypertension (media 7.5–10% of the lumen) and drive raised to 0.40 of maximal tone; the tree's own numbers are guesses and are sampled below.

the tree1234parentchildren 1→4:thin wall → thicksource 100 mmHgbeds 20 mmHgsurge at the parentparent pressed, then releasedcalmparentparent held from 13 s to 140 schild 1child 1 held from 16 s to 140 schild 2child 2 held from 14 s to 140 schild 3child 3 held from 14 s to 140 schild 4child 4 held from 13 s to 231 sparent lets go at 140.4 schild 1 lets go at 140.6 schild 2 lets go at 140.8 schild 3 lets go at 141.0 schild 4 lets go at 231.8 spressurebelow theparent050100mmHg060120180240seconds →held: a knotlets go

One knot upstream makes a cluster below it. When a local surge shuts the parent, the pressure beneath it collapses and all four children snap shut within seconds.

Release the parent, and the cluster lets go together. The pressure surges back and three children open within a second. The thickest-walled one stays shut while stress stays raised: the next knot in the queue, which goes only when drive falls.

Siblings protect each other. On a shared feed, each closure raises the pressure holding the others open: a surge of stress shut 4 of 8, where alone, at the same pressure, 8 would. Clusters come from the tree's hierarchy, not from neighbours.

The higher the stress, the longer the queue. In the worked tree, the children left held after the parent lets go: 0 at drive 0.34, 1 at drive 0.38, 1 at drive 0.42, 2 at drive 0.46, 2 at drive 0.50, 2 at drive 0.54, 3 at drive 0.58.

97%of plausible trees in which the parent held a knot: a cluster formed beneath it (3.1 of 4 children on average)

91%in which releasing the parent freed most of its cluster within 5 s

33%in which at least one child stayed held after the parent let go

256 trees: source and bed pressures, the parent's resistance, the children's walls and the drive, each sampled across its range.

What we need

  1. The force of a nearly shut small artery

    How much active force a small artery's muscle keeps at the very short lengths of a nearly shut vessel, and how thick its wall is, measured in human skin perforators or subcutaneous small arteries, young and old, with and without hypertension. The model takes them from rat arteries and healthy human walls, and they decide whether a knot can hold at ordinary tone.

  2. The four-hour closure test

    In a pressure myograph, shut a small artery with an agonist for five minutes, or for four hours, then lower the agonist to a resting level. If knots are vessels that set, the first reopens and the second stays shut, and when it is finally released it opens past its resting diameter. It is a day's work for a lab with a myograph, and it tests whether a knot can remember.

  3. How fast skin arterioles relax when sympathetic drive falls

    The time course of dilation after a brief sympathetic burst ends, over hairy skin (the back and neck, where knots are reported). It decides whether a vessel can let go in one breath or needs many. The gasp reflex itself is measured mostly on the fingers.

  4. The loose layer's give

    Whether the gliding layer between the fasciae of the upper back behaves as a material with a critical stress: rheometry of human loose connective tissue at the slow shears of ordinary movement, and how long it takes to rebuild at rest. With ultrasound of the layers' sliding (as measured in the back, Langevin 2011) before and after a knot lets go, it would decide densification.

  5. The sleeve: do the layers stick where a perforator's flow stops?

    Ultrasound of the layers' sliding around a perforator's exit, with colour Doppler, while its flow is briefly reduced and after it returns: whether the layers stop sliding there, and how long they take to slide again, with and without moving the tissue. It would test how the perforator view makes knots stiff.

  6. A sensitised nerve and the sympathetic drive

    Whether a nerve of the skin that is sensitised where it pierces the fascia, but not injured, answers the sympathetic drive as injured nerves do, and how late (Devor 1994); and whether knots sit at such piercings, as the tender points of the abdominal wall do (Weum 2016).

  7. The latch's own constants, and a latched unit's squeeze

    How slowly a latched small artery relaxes once its command falls (the constants of Hai 1988, measured in arteries); and how hard a few latched motor units squeeze a vessel that runs through the muscle beside them, the one number on which the motor switch with its vessel rests.

  8. The recording at release

    A laboratory with ultrasound, single-unit EMG or laser speckle, and a skilled practitioner, to make the recordings above; or the first of them alone.

  9. The proponents' eyes

    Each theory's model checked by those who hold it: the vascular latch, fascial densification, trigger points, peripheral nerve sensitivity, the motor switch and the perceptual account. Variants are welcome; so are objections.

  10. A physiologist or modeller as co-author

    For the preprint, and to keep the models honest.

Everything is open: the code and data; objections and offers as issues.

How it is made

Measured numbers, quoted. Every parameter has a source in the library, the line it comes from quoted, and a confidence (measured, inferred, fitted or guessed); a script checks every quote word for word against the paper. Fitted values are fitted automatically to measured targets.

The models speak first. Each theory runs from its own physiology through the same scenes; what its knots would do is read off the runs. Nothing is fitted to anyone's reports, and a model can show only what a mechanism would do, never that it is what happens.

Written once, run everywhere. Each model is written once in Python; the browser runs its output, or code generated from it, held to the same trajectories by a test. Results are generated, never edited by hand, and each names its run.

Every setting, not one. Each scene runs across the plausible range of every uncertain number. A trait that holds in every setting is structural; one that holds in some says which number decides it, and so what to measure.

field guide run 6f86748a92fc · commit 119f6bd · 32 settings per theory · vessel model run 2026-09-28 · inputs 85d8aaae2e58

the field guidethe planthe seven modelsevery portrait, as a notethe vessel modelthe treehow a knot setsevery parameterfindings notes

The preprint, the pilot, and who could help

preprint · draftKnots: seven mechanisms, what each would do, and a recording that would tell them apartThe models, their predictions, the reports set against them, and the proposed measurement, every number generated from the runs.pilot protocol · one pageRecording a knot as it lets goTwelve participants, laser speckle, single-motor-unit EMG and ultrasound at each felt release, against a pressed sham, with each theory's prediction fixed in advance.

preprint (PDF)pilot (PDF)

Who could help

Groups whose published methods or theories bear directly on this, named from their published work, with the places their latest PubMed records give. None has been approached, and none is involved in or has endorsed this project; they are where a lab, a co-author or a check would most naturally come from.

To record a release

  • Deborah Falla University of Birmingham, Centre of Precision Rehabilitation for Spinal Painhigh-density EMG of the neck and shoulder in pain, down to single motor units of the upper trapezius Dideriksen 2016
  • Dario Farina · Francesco Negro · Aleš Holobar Imperial College London · University of Brescia · University of Maribordecomposing surface EMG into single motor units: whether one falls silent at a release Negro 2016
  • Matthieu Roustit Université Grenoble Alpes, Inserm HP2laser speckle imaging of skin blood flow, and how reproducible it is Roustit 2010
  • Christopher Minson University of Oregonhow skin blood flow is controlled, by heat and by nerves Minson 2001
  • Harvey Mayrovitz Nova Southeastern Universityskin blood flow and the breath: the inspiratory gasp reflex Mayrovitz 2026
  • Siddhartha Sikdar · Jay Shah George Mason University · NIH Clinical Centerultrasound, elastography and microdialysis of trigger points Sikdar 2009 · Shah 2005
  • Helene Langevin NCCIH, National Institutes of Health (on her 2021 paper)ultrasound of the fascial layers sliding: the measure for densification and the sleeve Langevin 2011
  • Robert Schleip · Andreas Brandl Technical University of Munichultrasound and elastography of the back's fascia; fascia's water and stiffness Schleip 2012
  • Carla Stecco · Antonio Stecco University of Padova · NYU Grossman School of Medicinethe fascia's anatomy, its hyaluronan and the loose layer's ultrasound Stecco 2014 · Fede 2018

To check the models: each theory's own experts

  • Steven Segal University of Missourismall-artery networks and the responses conducted along them (perforators) Segal 1989
  • Michel Saint-Cyr Mayo Clinic Arizonathe territories of perforators (perforators) Saint-Cyr 2009
  • Michael Edward Johnson author of vasocomputationthe vascular latch, in its own terms (latch) Johnson 2023
  • Robert Gerwin Johns Hopkins School of Medicinethe trigger point and its energy crisis (trigger points) Gerwin 2004
  • Mary Cowman · Philippe Coussot NYU Tandon School of Engineering · Laboratoire Navier, Parishyaluronan's viscosity; materials that jam and give way (densification, the sleeve) Cowman 2015 · Coussot 2002
  • Andrew Dilley Brighton and Sussex Medical Schoolinflamed nerves' sensitivity to pressure and stretch (nerves) Dilley 2005
  • John Quintner · Milton Cohen · Geoffrey Bove independent, Australia · independent, Australia · Mainethe nerve view of tender points (nerves) Quintner 1994 · Quintner 2015
  • Marc Scheltinga Máxima Medical Centre, the Netherlandscutaneous nerves entrapped at the fascia, and the local anaesthetic test (nerves) Boelens 2013
  • Monica Gorassini · CJ Heckman University of Alberta · Northwestern Universitypersistent inward currents in human motor neurons (the motor switch) Gorassini 1998 · Heckman 2008
  • Clifford Woolf Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical Schoolcentral sensitisation (perception) Woolf 2011

For safety

  • Willoughby Britton · Jared Lindahl Brown Universitythe Varieties of Contemplative Experience: the difficulties deep practice can bring Lindahl 2017

To take part, object, or point to someone missing: issueson the project's repository.