Trapezius (Hood Muscle)

Place your hand on your shoulder, where the muscle runs like a broad band from the neck across the shoulder blade. If you press there, you know immediately how things stand with you. Is it soft, supple, only mildly reactive? Or is it like a board — hard, tough, painful at every touch? The hood muscle — in anatomy, the trapezius — is one of the most honest muscles in your body. It reveals what you have not put into words for days.

Medically, it is a large, flat muscle that lies like a hood over the back of the head, neck, and upper shoulders. It draws the shoulders upward, it rotates the shoulder blade, it stabilises the head. It is the muscle that tenses when you are startled. The muscle that goes hard when you pull yourself together. The muscle that raises the shoulders when you are under pressure — and leaves them up there, for hours, days, sometimes years.