The Wisdom of Your Body: Finding Healing, Wholeness, and Connection through Embodied Living

by Hillary L. McBride

it. But guess what happens when we are frustrated or afraid? Our bodies tighten. The organ systems and biochemistry that make our muscles tense are activated, even if we don’t know it is happening. That is our nervous system trying to protect us. If the triggering event is indeed something from which we need to be protected, great. Otherwise, the activation is not so helpful. When our body tightens, the muscles compress around our nerves and cause a lot of pain. It is real pain, not imagined pain. Think of a charley horse or a leg cramp. While it is happening, we know that no major injury has occurred, but it can hurt like hell. No matter how the pain happened, how we choose to respond to it can ramp up, or lessen, the pain. This pattern is a cycle we can get stuck in when we have chronic pain; we will call it the pain cycle. The research on chronic pain5 and stress-related disorders6 (irritable bowel syndrome, insomnia, TMJ, and even some forms of headaches or autoimmune diseases) and the psychophysiology and behavioral aspects of how we respond to our own pain show us a pattern: we get stuck in a cycle of tightness → pain → second arrow (repeat). Figure 3 illustrates this. Something happens (the first arrow), it hurts because our nervous system gets amped up (tightens), and we are in psychological distress. What we do in response contributes to the cycle. we might stop doing things we enjoy, which increases our stress, and then our capacity to move with ease decreases. A...