In the last blog, I wrote about the importance of breath in Pilates (and all exercise) to keep your body healthy and safe, as well as for overall health and mobility. In the blog before that, I talked about how feeling muscle tightness could be a sign of weakness and a need to strengthen, not stretch. So how are these related? Read on, my friend!
Pain and tightness aren’t just about weakness or poor posture; they can also result from our brain/body trying to protect us from perceived weaknesses. Debra shared a CNN article with me about how strength training can help alleviate chronic pain. The author, Dana Santas, writes:
Chronic aches and pains usually result from your nervous system perceiving an area of instability in your body. It responds by creating protective tension and heightening sensitivity. If you don’t take measures to address the source of your pain and calm your nervous system, you end up stuck in a sore state of limited mobility.
In a related article, Santas shares:
Your nervous system constantly monitors your body for potential threats — not just external dangers, but internal instabilities and areas of weakness or injury. When your body detects a risk to physical function, it responds by creating protective tension to limit movement in vulnerable areas.
This protective response can be triggered by various factors: poor posture or movement patterns that create misalignment, chronic stress that keeps your body in a heightened state of alert, joint instability that makes your nervous system feel unsafe, or past injuries that never fully healed. Unlike simple mechanical muscle tightness from overuse, protective tension is your body’s attempt to generate stability where it perceives a lack.
Protective tension, or guarding, is your body’s way of telling you something. That something could be that an area is weak and needs more strengthening. It could also be due to stress or a previous trauma. Our nervous system is very smart, and it has a long memory. If you fell off your bike as a kid and hurt your tailbone, but it was never addressed, your body may still be holding tension there. Or rather, you held tension there, and your body adapted to it, creating maladaptive movement patterns or fascial tissue restrictions that persist. What started as an initially helpful safeguard can evolve into chronic tension that limits movement and creates pain. The body really does keep the score.
My PT, who practices myofascial release in addition to traditional physical therapy bodywork, shared this post about chronic pain from the perspective of a myofascial trigger point (or what we might call a knot):
I was never meant to be permanent. I began as a moment, a response, a slight tightening when holding felt safer than releasing. At first, it was subtle, just a brief pause in the tissue’s rhythm. But the body asked me to stay. So I did. I shortened my fibers, thickened my layers, and held the chemistry still. I became a place where the river slowed and gathered its weight.
The body learned to move around me. Fascia stiffened along familiar lines, rerouting tension and sensation elsewhere. Pain drifted outward, tracing old pathways through the shoulder, jaw, back, or breath. I wasn’t creating chaos. I was containing it. I held pressure because something inside wasn’t ready to let go.
See the full post here: Facebook or Instagram
Strengthening, especially the core, can help with pain, including chronic pain, by helping an overactive nervous system become less reactive, and research supports this. One study showed that resistance training built strength, reduced discomfort, and improved mobility in people with knee and hip osteoarthritis. Another study showed that regular exercise can reduce pain sensitivity. Over time, your brain recognizes that movement is safe in your stronger, more stable body.
How do you know if what you’re feeling is mechanical tightness or protective tension? Santas says that there are four main signs, which you can read about in that related article. The one I want to focus on is painful stiffness that “varies dramatically in intensity based on stress levels, sleep quality or emotional state [which] suggests protective guarding. Basic mechanical tightness happens in direct correlation with physical activity, abating within a few days. In contrast, protective tension is more chronic and fluctuates with the overall state of your nervous system.”
The nervous and musculoskeletal systems work in tandem to create movement. If we have dysfunction in one system, it may manifest in the other. As Carol Davis, DPT, EdD, MS, FAPTA says, “The whole body is interrelated: the mind is in every cell of the body.” Therefore, respiratory dysfunction in the nervous system may present as a musculoskeletal problem. It’s all about our body’s sense of safety, physically and emotionally, but how do we tell our brains and bodies that we’re safe? It can start with your breath.
Using your breath is a powerful way to bridge your mechanical body and your nervous system. Breathwork can talk to our nervous system in ways we can’t will our brains to. We can’t order our bodies to relax or our nervous systems to calm down, but intentional breathing can, with the added benefit of keeping our breathing patterns healthy. We can relieve protective tension or guarding in the body by activating the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system through meditation, biofeedback, and diaphragmatic breathing.
The state of your breathing can be a reflection of the state of your nervous system. While the sympathetic nervous system prepares the body for action by triggering the “fight or flight” response, the parasympathetic system does the opposite. It calms the body, slows down the heart rate, stimulates digestion, and relaxes. This system is responsible for homeostasis, or the body’s internal balance, and is key to recovery and restoration. When the body is in a state of stress or anxiety, the sympathetic nervous system is activated, causing the breath to become shallow and rapid (shoulders raising instead of chest & abdomen expanding), as the body prepares for the “fight or flight” response. On the other hand, when the body is relaxed and at rest, the parasympathetic nervous system is activated, causing the breath to become slow and deep, as the body’s “rest and digest” response kicks in.
Calming the nervous system is something we talk about regularly at Pilates in Holland, since our bodies function best when they feel safe. It’s part of why we end every class with a hook-up, but you can do a hook-up anytime, anywhere! Mandy shared about box breathing in this 2022 blog about the nervous system. In 2023, during the busy holiday season, I created a “holiday hug” to share with anyone who had an overflowing threat bucket.
Here are a couple more breath-specific tools to help regulate your nervous system:
- Alternate nostril breathing, or “Nadi Shodhana” in Sanskrit, can help lower stress levels and improve your focus. You alternate the nostril you breathe in and out of, breathing on one side at a time.
- To start, exhale through your mouth, making a “whooshing” sound.
- Bring your right hand up to your nose, with your index finger hovering over your left nostril and your thumb hovering over your right nostril.
- Use your thumb to block your right nostril. Inhale through your left nostril.
- Use your index finger to block your left nostril. At this point, both nostrils should be held closed.
- With both nostrils blocked, hold your breath for a beat or two.
- Release your thumb to unblock your right nostril and exhale.
- Pause at the bottom of your exhale. Then, keeping your left nostril closed, inhale through your right nostril.
- Use your thumb to block off your right nostril. With both nostrils held closed, hold your breath again for a beat or two.
- Release your index finger to unblock your left nostril and exhale.
(In summary, that’s in through your left, out through your right; in through your right, out through your left, switching sides after the inhale. Whenever a nostril isn’t in use for an inhale or an exhale, it should be held shut with your finger or thumb.)
2. Pursed-lip breathing is an easy and effective way to slow your breathing, making each breath more effective. It also helps you get more oxygen.
- Inhale slowly through your nose for two seconds with your mouth closed. You don’t need to take a deep breath; a normal breath is OK.
- Purse (pucker) your lips as though you’re going to whistle.
- Exhale slowly and gently through your pursed lips for four or more seconds. It may be helpful to count to yourself.
Check out more breathing techniques from Johns Hopkins.
So, when someone suggests you “take a breath” or “just breathe” when you’re upset, they’re really not being dismissive. Though it may not seem obvious at first, using your breath is one of the easiest ways to calm your nervous system, and thus your chronic aches and pains. Plus, it’s fast and free.
Be well,
