In my two-plus decades as a licensed massage therapist, working with people with tight and tense muscles who want to feel and function better in their bodies, one thing has remained constant—learning how the human body works has never been one second of boring.
Maybe you scheduled a massage because your muscles felt tight and tense.
At your session, you were led into a dimly lit room, the air infused with calming scents, soft music humming in the background. As you settled onto the table, cocooned in cozy linens, the tension in your body started to unravel with each intentional stroke. You felt your awareness shift—that in-between state where you weren’t quite awake but not fully asleep either.
This kind of experience can be profoundly nurturing and deeply rejuvenating.
And yet, if you’ve been to a massage therapist who focuses on treatment-based work—someone like me—you might have noticed a pattern. Relief comes, but within a day or two, the tightness creeps back in. By the time your next session rolls around, it can feel like you’re back at square one.
You got relief—but not progress.
Why does this happen? What’s missing?
Why Do Tight Muscles Keep Coming Back?
In my years of extensive training and hands-on experience working with the musculoskeletal system, one often overlooked truth has become clear—what we’re really working with isn’t just muscles, but the nervous system.
Sure, we use the skin and soft tissues as our guide, but at the end of the day, those tissues are simply responding to commands designed to keep you safe.
Survival is the prime directive.
So when your traps stay locked up or your hamstrings feel like steel cables, it’s not dysfunction—it’s your brain doing its job, running protection patterns to keep you from perceived danger. You might not love the sensation, but that tightness is part of a brilliant, adaptive strategy designed to keep you moving within the safest range your system allows.
The question isn’t just how to release it—but how to teach your nervous system that it’s safe to let it go.
What If It’s Not Just Tight Muscles?
When working to ease muscular tension and joint pain, it’s essential to consider the autonomic nervous system (ANS).
The ANS governs involuntary bodily functions—heart rate, digestion, breathing, blood pressure—regulating the processes that happen without conscious control. It operates through two primary branches:
- The sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight), which mobilizes the body for action.
- The parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest), which facilitates relaxation and recovery, or in times of prolonged and overwhelming stress, conserves energy (freeze and flop).
As massage therapists, developing strong assessment skills allows us to better understand where a client is within the stress cycle—whether they’re stuck in fight, flight, freeze, flop, or friend mode. This global perspective helps us tailor treatments to support nervous system regulation.
Understanding stress states is about understanding the big picture.
There are also tools we can use to assess how these states manifest in individual muscles, which is critical if the goal is true recovery from injuries, pain, or those frustrating “tweaks” that seem to linger.
By addressing both the nervous system and the musculoskeletal system, we can shift from short-term relief to long-term restoration.
Not Your Typical Massage
When receiving bodywork that is led by the nervous system, no two sessions are ever the same. That’s because we are constantly changing—our systems are always scanning our external and internal environments, adapting and responding in ways designed to keep us safe.
Through this approach, we begin to understand our own “body language”—the unique ways our nervous system communicates with us. This awareness leads to more effective care, not just during scheduled sessions, but in everyday life.
You don’t just receive bodywork—you gain tools and strategies to better care for your body and regulate your nervous system, creating lasting change beyond the table.
This approach—one that shifts away from traditional massage therapy—isn’t for everyone.
These methods are highly active, requiring engagement rather than passive relaxation. And that can be a big adjustment for those who seek massage as a way to disconnect from their body or believe heavy pressure is the only way to get results.
But here’s the interesting part: your preference for certain types of bodywork can actually reveal a lot about your current nervous system state.
For example, some people crave intense pressure as a way to tune out—using sensation as a means of escape. Others seek it out as a way to mobilize and feel something after spending too much time stuck in freeze or flop mode.
Understanding these patterns helps shift the focus from simply chasing relief to building true resilience and regulation within the nervous system, which ultimately leads to feeling and functioning better in the long term, not just temporary relief.
Ready to Work With Your Body?
Your body is always communicating with you. Those tight muscles, that persistent tension—they aren’t just random discomforts; they’re signals from your nervous system, doing exactly what it believes is necessary to keep you safe.
By shifting the focus from just relief to true regulation, you can move beyond the cycle of temporary fixes and start making lasting changes in how you feel and function. This work isn’t about forcing your body into submission—it’s about learning to work with it, so it can finally feel safe enough to let go of those old tension patterns.
If you’re ready to explore a nervous system-led approach to bodywork—one that helps you move better, feel better, and function at your best—let’s connect.
Book a session today and take the first step toward long-term relief and restoration.
