Quotes from Clair Davies

It helps to know that trigger points form in specific places, where the motor nerve comes into the muscle to tell the muscle to do its job. This location is not always tender. It hurts only when a trigger point is present, and then only when pressed on. So, when practicing self-applied trigger point massage, you don't have to go by what your fingers palpate—feel for the place that hurts.

The only way to reliably verify whether a specific trigger point is causing a specific pain is to deactivate the trigger point and see if the pain remains.

Here are some examples of long, over-stretched muscles at odds with short, tight muscles: rhomboids versus pectoralis major infraspinatus and teres minor versus subscapularis and pectoralis major superficial spinal muscles versus abdominal muscles hamstrings versus the rectus femoris triceps versus the biceps supinator versus pronator teres

There's almost always a calmer and ultimately more efficient way to do something if you just stop and think about it.

Muscles that are especially vulnerable should be treated before you play as well as afterward.

Travell and Simons link tinnitus (ringing in the ears) to trigger points in the sternocleidomastoid, masseter, and lateral pterygoid muscles. They quote studies showing that trigger point injection with procaine can completely relieve the condition. The key muscle may be the lateral pterygoid, which is very well hidden by the jawbone. Massage to the muscle is not difficult, though.

holding your book over your head while you lie down will all cause low-level constant contraction of several muscle groups.

Travell and Simons describe a trigger point as simply a small contracture knot in muscle tissue

The difficulty in treating trigger points is that they typically send pain to some other site.

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.