Emotional tension — better known as stress, anxiety, worry, and fear — actually BECOMES muscle tension.
Most of us agree with this statement, to varying degrees.
We have a general sense that our bodies and minds are connected. We know or have heard that meditation helps calm our blood pressure. We all understand to some degree that chronic stress isn’t good for us and that it causes physical symptoms that aren’t pleasant.
We try a myriad of therapies and practices to alleviate the muscle tension at the area of the tight muscles.
Massage helps us feel better for about 3 days. I know this because I’m a massage therapist and I love helping people feel relaxed and restored.
Physical therapists give exercises to redistribute the responsibility of the overworking muscle. I know this can help, depending on your practitioner, but for how long?
We do yoga and stretch out our muscles and feel good.
But have you noticed how the tension comes back if you miss your regular practice schedule?
All of these therapies are amazing and all of them help us feel better … temporarily.
“But addressing chronic muscle tension via the muscles is like trying to clean a dirt spot off your face by wiping the mirror. ”
What if we were to address the muscle tension at the root cause of the tension? What if we could change our habitual muscle tension patterns for good?
In order to make lasting change in muscle tension or pain, you have to go to the source of the problem.
I propose that working with the nervous system directly is working with the root of chronically tight muscles.
The brain and nervous system are where the instructions to tense and contract the your muscles originate, and that’s where they can be turned off.
Here’s an example of how mental tension — in this case, extreme worry and anxiety — might play out in your body.
Let’s say you went through a pandemic.
You spent over a year worrying about your health, your family’s health, your job, your kids’ school and social situation, your family’s mental well being. You felt isolated because you weren’t seeing friends and you lost your usual way of managing your stress.
When you left the house, you were on high alert — scanning the grocery store for who was nearby, did they have a mask on, are they too close to you? When you brought groceries home you felt worried because you didn’t know if you were washing them well enough….and this went on for awhile.
Your nervous system was in survival mode pretty consistently for 6-12 months.
When you’re stressed for a period of time, you practice certain familiar muscular contraction patterns throughout your body.
Nerve cells continue to wire in a certain predictable stress pattern called neural pathways. The stressful feeling happens and then its corresponding habitual muscle contraction happens. Over and over and over again.
This means that if your habitually take on stress by clenching your jaw or grinding your teeth, you end up worsening your jaw tension, TMJ symptoms, and headaches.
If your tendency is to round your shoulders, then you practice your habit and create more neck and shoulder tension or pain.
If you tend to contract your belly, you probably also are not taking full deep breaths because your abdomen is contracted, your diaphragm is not moving freely, and your shoulders are rounded forwards. It’s a predictable stress muscular pattern.
We can’t control or change these patterns by forcing ourselves to have “better posture.” These become habits of contraction that happen unconsciously each time we feel anxious or stressed.
The way to unwind these patterns for good is through your nervous system — the same way they were formed in the first place.
To conclude, it’s no secret that our physical bodies are directly affected by chronic stress that we experience emotionally and mentally. We can find temporary relief by working directly with the muscles involved, but relief only lasts for a short time. To find long term relief, we have to unwind the habitual unconscious muscle contraction patterns through the same path tension was created in the first place — through our nervous system.
Here’s a free audio lesson that will help calm your stress and relax your muscles overall. Simply lie on your back on the floor or your bed and eliminate any distractions for 15 minutes. You’ll find that by doing these small, slow, gentle movements as instructed, you’ll feel mentally AND physically relaxed and calm.