Experiments to Try When "Thinking" Our Way Out of Stress and Tension Doesn’t Work

I want to invite you to stop for just a second to take a deep breath and do a quick check-in.

Take a moment to observe what sensations you’re noticing in your body right now. Are your shoulders inching up toward your ears, or is your neck feeling tight? Are you clenching your jaw? Maybe your stomach is knotted, or your hands are curled into fists.

I promise there’s a method to my madness in asking you to pause and check in.

We spend so much of our lives living upstairs in our heads where we analyze, plan, and worry. This makes sense considering the length of our to-do lists. But being so busy thinking often leads us to treat our bodies like a taxi designed to get our brains from one obligation to the next.

I’ll be the first to admit that I used to live my whole life strictly from the neck up. That was until my own coach encouraged me to do daily check-ins. Doing so helped me to realize that we often don't notice what’s happening below our neck until we’re totally exhausted and completely burnt out.

But here’s the thing: your body isn’t just along for the ride. It holds the history of your stress, your joy, and every experience in between. While your mind can talk you out of feeling sad or rationalize a stressful week, your body is your most honest friend because it simply doesn't know how to lie.

So, Why Is It So Hard to Listen to Our Bodies?

If you find it difficult to tune into your body, please know that’s not at all uncommon. We live in a world that actively trains us to ignore our physical sensations.

From the time we’re children, we’re told to "shake it off," "stop crying," or practice "mind over matter." As adults, we’re praised for working through lunch, skipping sleep to meet a deadline, and ignoring our fatigue just to push through and tick off all the boxes on our to-do lists.

Over time, we become experts at overriding our own systems. We may even learn to view physical sensations as inconvenient roadblocks rather than helpful messages. Until eventually, we may effectively cut the connection between the head and the body just to survive our daily schedules.

But the body never stops talking. It just gets louder and louder until it can no longer be ignored.

The Science of "The Knot in Your Stomach"

Think of your brain and body as best friends who are in a high-speed group chat called the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). Night and day, they’re chatting back and forth constantly sharing insights with one another.

It turns out that emotions are often physical events first and mental events second. Before you even have time to think "I’m worried," your neck has likely already started tensing up. So, when you feel tightness or an ache, it isn't your body and brain trying to annoy you. They’re trying to alert you to something that needs your attention.

For example, say you experience something stress-producing like a passive-aggressive email. Your brain, often based on experience, thinks it’s a threat to avoid and instantly texts your body to get ready. Your muscles tighten to protect you while your heart pumps faster and your digestion slows down so energy can be sent to your limbs for a quick getaway.

In the wild, you’d use that energy to run away. Once you were safe, your body would naturally shake it off and relax. Stress released and crisis diverted. But in our modern lives, we rarely physically run away from non-physical threats.

The email comes in, the stress chemicals flood our system, and the muscles prepare to sprint. Yet we continue to sit there, blood boiling, and type "Per my last email." Since we aren't physically moving, the energy we’d normally use to run stays stuck in our bodies as tension.

The Hidden Cost of Numbing Out

When we constantly ignore physical cues, we enter a state that psychologists sometimes call "emotional numbing." Let’s be honest, sometimes it’s just easier to stuff emotions down than to deal with what’s causing them.

Here’s the deal though: we can’t often pick and choose the emotions we want to avoid. Our emotions come as a package deal.

So, when you numb your ability to feel stress, anxiety, and fear in your body, you also numb your ability to feel excitement, joy, and deep connection.

By learning to listen to the "unpleasant" sensations, we open up our capacity to feel the good stuff too. At the end of the day, listening to your body isn't just about stress management. It’s about being able to feel all the body cues in a way that’s insightful, so our experiences become more enjoyable.

Where Do You Hold Your Stress and Tension?

Because we’re all different, that tension and stress can show up in a variety of ways. While this is certainly not an exhaustive list, here are a few common examples to help you translate what your body might be trying to tell you:

• The Jaw and Throat: Tension in these areas can be an indicator that we’re holding back our words. If you’re clenching your teeth, you might be holding back something you really want to say to keep the peace. The same is true if you’re feeling a lump in your throat.

• The Shoulders: This is often where we carry our to-do lists and our worries. When we feel like we’re carrying the "weight of the world," our shoulders instinctively hike up and become earrings.

• The Stomach: This is usually the seat of intuition. When something feels a little uncertain or off, the gut creates that familiar knot, pit, or tightness.

• The Hips: We often call the hips the "junk drawer" of emotions. Because the psoas muscle is a primary hip flexor directly connected to our fight-or-flight response, it tends to tighten when we feel threatened or stressed. Stiffness here can often signal that we are holding onto old, unprocessed emotional tension.

• The Hands: Clenched fists are often a sign of suppressed anger or a need for control. It’s essentially the body preparing for a fight that never happens or trying to hold tightly to something we don’t want to lose control of.

  
  

Where in your body does stress and tension like to take up space, and how does it show up?

If it helps, I want to encourage you to do something my own coach encouraged me to do years ago.

Set a calendar reminder for morning, noon, and evening to do a check-in. Ask yourself a question like, "How and what am I feeling right now?" and then, "What was I thinking or doing that created that feeling?" Jot that data down and keep track for about two weeks. The insight is really helpful.

Three Really Effective Ways to Release Stress and Tension

How do we get tension and stress to move, especially when we can’t get up and "run for it"?

It helps to speak the body's language because changing our physiology helps to change our psychology. Here are three simple experiments you can try right now to help.

1. The Squeeze and Release

Since stress causes tense muscles, sometimes the best way to get them to let go is to squeeze them even harder. We’re going to experiment with an abbreviated version of Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR). The reason it works is that it tires out the tense muscle just enough that it has no choice but to relax.

• The Scan: Sit comfortably and close your eyes. Find the one spot in your body that’s calling for a little extra attention.

• The Squeeze: Focus on that spot. On your next inhale, I want you to squeeze that specific area as hard as you can. If it’s your shoulders, scrunch them up, or if it’s your hands, make tight fists. Hold it for a count of five.

• The Drop: Exhale through your mouth with a big sigh and release the muscle completely. Let gravity take over like you just dropped a heavy bag of groceries.

• The Notice: For just five seconds, enjoy the sensation of release. Do you feel a warmth or a little tingling? That’s the feeling of fresh blood flow and the physical sensation of safety. It tells your brain that you’re okay and not in any real danger.

  
  

2. The Shake Out

This little experiment might feel silly at first, but it’s incredibly effective at resetting your nervous system.

Stand up and just start shaking. Shake your hands like you’re trying to get water off them, shake your legs, bounce on your heels, and let your shoulders wiggle. Do this for about 30 seconds to signal to your brain that the "threat" is over and you’re back in a safe place.

3. The Low Hum

The Vagus Nerve is the longest nerve in your body and is helpful for creating calm in stressful situations. One of the fastest ways to stimulate it is through vocal vibration.

Take a deep breath in. On the exhale, keep your lips closed and make a low, deep humming sound. You want to make the sound deep enough that you feel your chest vibrating. Do this three times to create an internal massage for your nervous system which instantly lowers your heart rate.

Your Body is Really on Your Side

It’s easy to get annoyed with our bodies when they ache or tense up, but your body is never trying to be difficult. It’s just waving a flag to get your attention because it wants you to be happy and well.

When we stop ignoring the signals and start listening, we can give our bodies and brains exactly what they need to create a sense of calm and safety.

Remember, those signals are just data trying to alert you to something that needs your attention. Think of it like the dashboard on your car where indicator lights turn on to help you keep things running smoothly.

So, my friends, what’s your body trying to tell you? I’d love to hear so please share in the comment section.

Until next time, here’s to a more relaxed state of being.