When Do Bodyworkers Address Trauma, Anxiety, Fear, Worry, and Inner Judgment?

( Hint: It's every session)

There is no separation between your emotional state and your physical tissues. As anxiety, fear, worry, and inner-judgment course through your nervous system, your body reacts. Women store tension in various soft tissue structures — fascia, muscles, organs, and various areas of the body—the jaw, the neck, the colon, the pelvic floor.

Most physical complaints are multi-causal. A woman with functional anxiety can work out often, take care of her family, slay a busy work life, and develop neck pain. Could her fresh pain be—in part—from carrying her child around? Yes. But what else set her up for that specific injury? To heal and prevent future injury, you must look deeper. What created the environment that allowed pain and inflammation to thrive?

Unfortunately, a culture obsessed with body image and quick fixes trains us to only look at the surface. We assume we just need to “fix” the neck or shoulder, and because of this cultural misinformation, most women don’t get the chance to address the underlying cause of tissue weakness or inflammation.

As a manual massage therapist, I do very specific healing, targeted work that restores soft tissue vitality.

The mechanical loading of soft tissue changes the region’s biochemistry and facilities slide and glide—microcirculation—between structures. Physical medicine restores biomechanics and is as physically important as eating healthy or your daily workout routine.

But as an Eastern medicine practitioner, I don’t stop there. Having trained in Eastern medicine (clinical Ayurveda) I recognize the emotional impact on physical tissues, and I’m trained to address it. Each session with a woman is different because each session addresses her unique needs, and I am working within each woman’s comfort level. Some women immediately want to talk, release, and cry, and with other women, it takes time, effort, trust, and reflection after the treatment.

With some women I use breathing techniques, others positive affirmations and healing lifestyle goals. But the one thing I don’t do is just push on tissue. Experts agree that just pushing on pelvic floor tissue will not get you long-term results. Your pelvic floor will tighten up again. Or after treatment, your jaw and your neck will still be vulnerable. Another structure will wait for its turn to express your nervous system’s hidden emotional pain. Addressing the cause of stored tension is essential for long-term health.

The women I work with suffer from physical pain, yes, but they also suffer from body-image issues, shallow breathing, digestion issues, inner judgment, worry, stress, anxiety, and past trauma.

Some people who work with pain may not realize they are dealing with more than physical tissue. We live in a quick-fix, sports and competition driven, injection-fueled world and are often afraid of slowing down and addressing emotional health concerns. And many types of massage—in a culture that has already dismissed the practice as “not medical”—may not include ques to go beyond the physical.

So when do manual therapists deal with stress, anxiety, and trauma? The answer is everyday. Whether they know it. It is inside the tissues that they are working on; it is the underlying cause of the headache or “frozen shoulder.” Emotional pain or stress of any kind, and certainly a chronically upregulated nervous system, is the underlying condition that connects most women’s health concerns.

To heal, find a therapist with whom you connect, who has the tools that produce meaningful change, and learn to implement healing lifestyle techniques at home.

Your wise female body can heal and is guiding the way.

Peace & love,

Tara

*Author Tara Lee Clasen is a manual massage therapist specializing in women's health and pain conditions related to the pelvic floor, neck, jaw & shoulder. She also trained in clinical Ayurveda and has authored a book on Ayurveda called The Elemental Woman.

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