Are you tired of feeling like your body is working against you? In today’s episode, Aimee Takaya challenges the common belief that our bodies are simply worn out or broken.
Instead, she presents a revolutionary perspective: what if that nagging back pain or persistent neck tension is actually your body's way of sending you an urgent message?
Prepare to shift your perspective as Aimee unravels the mystery behind chronic tension and pain, offering insights that could transform your relationship with your body and potentially alleviate years of discomfort.
In this podcast episode, Aimee Takaya takes us through:
- Our body's innate intelligence.
- Debunking the "bad body part" myth.
- The mind-body connection.
- The power of proper rest in addressing chronic pain.
- Hanna Somatic Education and its potential benefits.
- How our bodies might be signaling issues with environmental stressors.
- The importance of movement and touch.
- Practical tips for listening to your body.
- Transforming your relationship with your body.
- Teaser for the next episode: "Why it's hard to pause."
And so much more!
LISTEN WHILE READING!
A: Hey there, welcome to the Free Your Soma podcast. My name is Aimee Takaya, and I am your guide in releasing chronic tension, stress, and pain from your body and coming back to your full, free, and alive self.
Have you ever felt like your body is against you? Have you ever felt like despite your best efforts, doing all the right things, you still can't seem to get it right and feel comfortable and safe in your own body?
I'm going to be sharing today about my own experience through that difficult journey and we're going to be busting the myth that your body is broken. Your body is not broken. Your body has been trying to communicate with you. Stay tuned to learn about what your body might be trying to say.
Every day there is a forgetting and every moment there is the possibility of remembering. Remembering who you truly are, awakening to your body, to the inner world, to the experience of being alive. Here is where you find the beauty, the joy and here is where you free your Soma.
A: I'm your host, Aimee Takaya. I'm here to help you move from pain to power, from tension to expansion, and ultimately from fear to love.
A: Hey everybody. How are you feeling? Your body feels tight, sore, painful and all you did was sleep all night. Have you ever been in that position? Waking up in the morning and just getting out of bed and walking around, your back is aching, maybe your neck is hurting, you're thinking you need to get a different pillow, you're thinking maybe I'm just getting old, maybe my body is broken and I did something.
Who knows? Maybe I just bent over to feed the cat, and now I'm having this horrible pain all down the backside of my body. What am I doing wrong, and why is my body or maybe God trying to punish me?
Now, I have been in your shoes. I lived for over seven years with chronic tension and pain in my body as a yoga teacher, which was really frustrating. I was going to use the word like mind bleep, but it's something that has taught me so much about my body and about my limitations, and also about the wisdom that's going on underneath the surface within us all the time.
So you might not realize this, but your body is incredibly intelligent. It's actually doing so much for you on an autonomic, that means unconscious level every day. The way that your body is continuing to breathe, and you don't have to think about breathing, the way that your body breaks down and digests food to the best of its ability.
The way that your immune system protects you from all of the different kinds of microbes and bacteria that you're coming in contact with on a daily basis and not getting sick. It's crazy. We can't measure prevention the same way we can measure recovery from illness, but our body is incredibly smart and doing so much day in and day out to take care of us.
So when I was living with tension and pain in my body, especially as a yoga teacher, who was eating well, who was doing all the right things, at least I thought I was, and still having tension and pain in my body, I felt like I said, like we've kind of exploring on this episode right now, I felt like my body was against me. I felt like God was against me. And it's a really difficult thing to live with because we start feeling like it's our fault. It must be my fault.
I must have done something wrong, and I'm being punished. That's how it feels, right? When we are not able to connect and understand the messages that our body is sending us, right? And pain sucks. And so there's a lot of emotional and mental noise that is around the pain that we're experiencing, right? It's not just enough that we're having pain or tension in our back or our neck, but we have a reaction to that pain and tension.
It feels unjust, especially for me. I was 26 years old, living in pain, and it wasn't until I dedicated myself to understanding my body somatically and I got mentorship from somatic experts that I started to experience that my body and my actual existence could be much, much different than it was.
So let's look at this idea, you know, or actually first, let's just look at some of the words that we use that are common, that I hear a lot from people about their bodies. I have bad knees. I have a bad back, right? You've labeled that part of your body bad, and maybe rightly so. It hasn't been; it doesn't feel like it's been serving you. It feels like it's been getting in your way, right? Or it's been disrupting you. It's been causing you pain.
And so you've labeled it bad. But the thing is, is that your body is always shifting and changing and at any moment, and this is going to be wild for those of you who haven't worked with me before, who don't know this truth. But at any moment, your brain could actually change what's happening in that space in your body, and that tension could go away.
Now maybe, have you ever experienced that the tension or the pain in your neck or your back is stress related? And by stress, you know, I could mean like physical stress, like, you know, maybe you fell down the stairs, or you were in a car accident, right? That's a form of stress. It's stressful to get in a car accident on a bunch of different levels.
It's stressful to fall down the stairs, but also mental and emotional stress, right? Worrying about something. Maybe you noticed that, you know, your body gets really tight, you know, a certain time of year when there's like an anniversary of someone's passing, right? These kind of emotional, mental stresses are also impacting your body on a daily basis.
A: Did you know that your muscles are holding on to thoughts, memories, and feelings? If you have a tight neck or back, you're not just getting old. You're experiencing a buildup of tension from the life you've lived. Most people don't know this, but there is a part of your brain that can reverse and prevent chronic tension. When you relax your muscles, you not only move better and regulate your nervous system, but you also free yourself from the grip the past has over your body. So you can live with freedom, confidence and enjoy your life now. How does that sound? Join me, Aimee Takaya, and discover what my clients are raving about at YouCanFreeYourSoma.com.
A: When you start to recognize that connection, right? Between what I'm mentally and emotionally experiencing and what's happening in my body, I also experience the opposite effect, which is that as you calm, right? And as you lower the stress in your nervous system, right? As you come out of fight or flight, the tension and the pain in your body actually changes, too.
So this is the way in which, you know, your back isn't bad. It's just caught up in a stress pattern, right? And I'm a anesthmatic educator, which most people are not aware of what a anesthmatic educator is. But essentially, I teach you. I teach you the skill of releasing the stress and the tension stored in your muscles. And I teach your body.
I teach your brain how to actually make those changes voluntarily, rather than relying on, like, you know, a rather gross or, you know, gross, meaning like a large global way of relaxing your nervous system. You can actually learn to directly talk to the specific muscles in your back or your neck that are tight and painful and causing that discomfort, right?
What you're saying is making your back bad is essentially tight muscles constricting and pressing on nerves, perhaps, and causing pain. It's muscles pulling all of your spine together so that the vertebra start herniating or bulging, right, and all that pressure that's building up in your body.
It's because of your muscles being maintained in contraction, right? So this is a much more complex way of viewing the short-form term for your back, my bad back, right? It's pointing to the actual things that are going on rather than just labeling it all bad. And, you know, I understand that we have short-form ways of expressing things.
But when we kind of gloss over what's actually happening and just make blanket statements, especially something like bad, right, we limit ourselves and we limit our understanding of what is actually going on. So if you find yourself kind of caught up in making these deterministic statements about your body or about yourself, ask yourself the question, am I limited by this? Am I limited by perceiving that I have a bad back?
And what would it feel like to recognize that maybe there's something going on in my back, that my back is trying to communicate to me about? Or, you know, and for those of you who are familiar with Louise Hayes' work, you can change your life, right? And this idea that, you know, different maladies or physical experiences have, like, a spiritual, mental, emotional undercurrent, right, like a meaning.
What might your bad back be trying to communicate to you, right, your bad back, be trying to communicate to you about how you're living your life, right? What might your body be trying to get your attention about, right? It's an interesting thing because when you start this dialogue, when you start asking that question, and then you start getting the answers, it's a lifelong journey of communication, of learning to communicate with that part of your body.
So, you know, how to go about this, how to go about starting that communication? Well, one, let's let's make a little list of the things that your body could be trying to communicate to you about, right? Number one, you're tired, right? You're simply exhausted.
And maybe, as I'm saying this, you already recognize that. You recognize that your need for rest has not been fully met, maybe for a very long time, right? And I used to think that rest was simply sleeping.
It was like what I did when I closed my eyes at night. And then it became very stressful when I went through periods of time where I was unable to sleep very well, right? Have you ever had that not able to sleep very well and then not sleeping is causing stress and anxiety because you're, you know, laying in bed thinking about how you're going to feel like crap the next morning, right?
When you rest, it doesn't have to actually be sleep. It literally can just be not standing up, not sitting up anymore. That is rest laying your body down on the floor, on the bed, closing your eyes to stop taking in information through your senses, right? Maybe putting on some relaxing music or no music, putting in earplugs.
I love silence. I love it. Not everybody does. I understand there are people who actually relax more when there's noise, but I love silence. And so, putting in some earplugs and just being quiet with myself, doing my somatic movement practice, right? Is a beautiful, beautiful way to get rest. Other forms of rest might simply be putting your feet up.
You know, it doesn't have to be as complex as doing a headstand or doing yoga, right? You could just lay on the couch and elevate your feet, right? That's rest and reducing the amount of stimulation that you're taking in. So, how many times throughout the day do you actually just lay down and put your feet up?
How many times throughout the day do you just go and lay down in your bed for 15 minutes, right? Many people are not getting the rest that their brains and their bodies need. And this is a big part of the pain and discomfort that their body is trying to alert them to, right? Is that the muscles are simply being used too much.
And now, you know, you might be saying, Hey, but I work at a computer desk all day. I live a sedentary lifestyle. I've stopped going to the gym, right? The thing is, sitting upright in a chair, concentrating on something at your desk for five to eight hours, is actually a lot of muscular work. Now you might not think that it is because it doesn't feel like going on a run or walking.
It's a very static kind of muscular work. But just to sit upright in this chair right now, there are muscles along my spine, my perivrotee brals that are maintaining contractions to hold me up. And then if I'm leaning my body forward to look at a computer, then there's additional muscle contraction going on in the front of my chest, in my neck to support the weight of my head. And then, as my body pitches and leans forward, those muscles in my lower back space are working even harder to keep me from falling forward, right?
To keep me upright. So sitting in a chair is actually effort. It's a tug of war kind of effort. And the way you'll notice that the muscles have been doing something is when you get up from sitting in your chair and you're tight, you're tight in your hip flexors, maybe your lower back feels tight as you're walking around. Maybe it's literally hard to stand up straight, right?
You've got that tech neck, and you're leaned forward. It's because your body was contracting and doing muscular effort this whole time as you've been sitting there for five to eight hours. So, you know, one of the biggest mistakes that people make is when they're having a lot of tension and pain in their body, they think it's because they're sedentary and they need to move.
Now they're not wrong. If they move their body, there's a chance that, you know, some muscles will remember to lengthen and relax, and other muscles that weren't contracting will remember to contract. You know, movement is medicine.
Absolutely. But the challenge here is that if you have hypertonic muscles, you have muscles that are extremely tight in your body, and then you get up and you go for a run, where you start going to the gym, you can actually increase your tension and pain and you can actually injure yourself, right? And we know what happens when you injure yourself; you're limited in your ability to move around and do things.
So if you're someone who's listening to this, who has a bad back or a bad neck or bad knees, what you might actually need. is rest. What you might actually need is some kind of active relaxation and rest to get your body back to a baseline tension that is not so high, that is not causing there to be, you know, stress on your ligaments and tendons and nerves, right? Now, of course, my favorite, favorite form of deep rest is Hannah's somatic education. And for those of you who don't know what it is, it is a little-known modality of neuromuscular release.
So you like I said kind of a little bit earlier on this episode, you can get your brain to turn off the tense tight muscles in your body that are causing pain. Now, most people don't know about this. But when I talk to someone who knows about neuroscience, or if I talk to, you know, someone who studied neurophysiology, like a doctor or something, right, I can explain to them how this works. And it makes sense.
And they usually nod their head and go, Oh, yeah, cool. But the thing about this, and pretty much the thing with everything, but especially somatic practices, is that you can't really know what it is until you experience it. Once you've experienced it, you know what it is.
And the thing is, is that it takes experiencing it more than once, it takes a few times of experiencing it to actually get what this is on a sensory motor level, right, on an internal, you know, understanding, belt sense kind of experience in your body.
Because the thing is, is that, you know, we're working with when we're working with your muscular system, we're working with layers and layers of muscular conditioning, and contractions that have been accumulating over time, your bad knee, right? This bad knee, it's just wearing out, right? I hear that from people too.
That's another myth I'd like to bust. It's like, it is wearing out, isn't it? It's wearing out because it's not getting proper rest, right? It's not getting proper nutrition, because the muscles are so contracted all the time.
And they're just slowly, gradually getting tighter and tighter. And the truth is, is that your brain can turn that off, you know, if you took a hot shower or hot bath, ooh, it's a little more relaxed, right? But with Hanosomatic Education, with this modality that I teach, you can specifically turn off the muscles around your knee that are causing that tension.
You can turn off and release the tension at your hip flexors or at your lower back that are part of that pain that shows up in your knees, right? Because it's all connected. And that's another big point here. When you think about your bad back, many people think that their bad back is because they don't have enough core strength, right?
And a personal trainer might tell them to do that, be like, oh, you need to work on your core strength, or maybe they can see in the mirror that their back is like super arched and they have a lot of lordosis and they're like, okay, then I need to strengthen my core. Maybe you can even feel that your stomach muscles have a really hard time engaging, right? Because your back is really tight.
So what most people do, right, and this can be another little myth that I'm going to bust here, what most people do is they do a lot of abdominal exercise. And sometimes that does relieve the tension in their back through a neuro physiological function called reciprocal inhibition, right, for the movement experts out there. When one side of the musculature contracts, the other side is supposed to lengthen, right, and usually does to some degree.
So when you contract your belly, your back gets longer, right? Now the trouble with this or the pitfall, and I'm smiling because I've been through this, I've been through this pitfall so much, is that your back is really tight, right? And maybe even though you don't realize it, your abdominals are actually tight too, but your back is just tight at this time, which is why it's positioned the way it's positioned, which is why, you know, the muscles are harder and causing tension and pressure and pain and spinal misalignments, right?
But let's just say that you've, you know, lived a relatively active life, and you've been sitting at your desk chair, leaning forward, likely your abdominals are contracted to, you're just not sensing and feeling it the way you are, your back, right? And some of your abdominals might be inhibited by the the arch and the contraction in your back.
When you go to the gym, and you do a bunch of sit-ups, and you do a bunch of pull-ups, right, and or whatever it is, your core strengthening exercises, you could now have two tight sides, you could now create even more pressure through the middle of your body. And more than that, you may actually pull your back out and hurt your lower back, doing all those crunches and doing all those planks, because your back is so tight that it can't tighten anymore.
And that's essentially what a cramp is. A cramp or over-stretching is your muscle spasming because it's trying to get you to stop using it; it's trying to get you to stop contracting it, right? So, this takes us back to that first myth. Your body is telling you that it needs rest, okay? Actual rest, lengthening and releasing of those muscles, you know, obviously, like I said, through global things like a bath or a massage, gentle massage, or a shower or laying down on your bed so that you're not holding yourself upright anymore.
One of the other things your body could be communicating to you is that there's something in your environment that is stressful, that maybe this job or this relationship is actually not good for you, right? Not nutritious for you, not healthy for you, not aligned for you, right? And so sometimes our back or our neck or other parts of our body might be trying to let us know that there's something that we are doing or experiencing in our world that is not for us.
And this is a hard one to identify and swallow because it's nuanced and it's not black and white. And sometimes, it's not about what is actually happening but about how you are being or how you are showing up in that interaction. Say, for example, you know, in my relationship with my husband, I, you know, we've had issues before, and then we've worked through them, and then the issue shows up again, right? And when the issue shows up, I get to be different about it than I once was.
I get to, right? Maybe, unless I'm still caught up in that pattern. Now, whatever that pattern was of behavior had a corresponding muscle pattern in my body, right? And that's true of anything that we go through, right? We have thoughts and feelings and our thoughts and feelings, even if it's imperceptible and we can't realize it, has a muscular pattern that goes with that experience.
So if my husband says something that triggers me, you know, and upsets me, there's muscle memory in my body that reminds me of other relationships or other people or other times in my life where I felt, you know, dismissed or something like that, right?
Or I felt undervalued, and that comes with a muscle pattern. And so, you know, as I'm getting upset about whatever's happening or whatever I'm perceiving in my relationship, I might start feeling that somewhere in my body. I might start feeling that in my stomach. I might start getting a stomach ache, or maybe I'm starting to get a headache as I'm thinking about this, and I'm feeling, you know, this frustration in the relationship.
Now, that doesn't mean that I should jump ship and get out of that relationship necessarily, right? Now, obviously, there's some circumstances where maybe that is what you really need to do. But in this circumstance, it's actually telling me what is unhealed in me, what is unprocessed in me, and what's showing up to kind of be worked through and released. So the beautiful thing is, is that, yes, I've done talk therapy. I've done lots of beautiful energy work.
I've been lucky enough to receive incredible coaching from wonderful coaches. But more than that, I have a somatic foundation of actually releasing muscle memory related to this experience, right? So you can, you can actually work totally bottom up and release the muscle memory. And that starts to shift the mental and emotional pattern too.
So say, for example, I'm feeling this tightness in the pit of my stomach, you know, about feeling undervalued, about feeling unseen, unappreciated by my husband in this moment, you know, and instead of lashing out at him and like making it about him, I just recognize like, Oh, yeah, this pain that goes on me, this pain of not feeling loved, right, in the way that I need at this moment, right?
Let me lay down on the floor and do a little bit of somatic movement and release some of that muscle memory, some of that patterning on a physical level that has that feeling going on in my stomach, right, that that that is unpleasant, that is hurting.
And as I start to release that and work through that, I feel better. I'm literally relaxing my body. I may be meeting my body's needs for rest. I'm giving myself something tender and loving. I'm showing my body support. I'm taking a little action in the direction of feeling better, right? And as I stand up and I come back to my husband and the situation, without that same clenching, gnawing feeling, maybe the pain or the sadness or the upset feels different.
Maybe he appears different to me, right? Maybe there's more space for me to have compassion for both of us because I'm not caught up in the pain of the experience in the same way. I'm not being clenched so tightly by the experience in the past, right? So this is another way that your body might be trying to tell you something, tell you that you are holding on to some kind of conditioning that's no longer serving you.
And that pain in your back or your neck or your shoulders is your body trying to get your attention and asking you to find some way to work through that issue that you're carrying, right? Let's look at some other things that your body might be telling you. Your body might be telling you that it needs to move more, right? That there's stagnation and you need, you know, encephalic movement is a way to move more, but maybe your body needs like some fun. Maybe your body needs some like happy fun movement, right?
Which is also another form of love that we can give our bodies. Maybe your body needs some good music and some dancing and some joy, right? Maybe your body is asking for touch, right? That's another one. Maybe your body is feeling touch-starved and needing that feedback, needing that hug, needing that loving attention from somebody, right?
These are all the different needs that our body has that we can tend to overlook and, you know, labeling our back or, you know, our neck or some part of our body, our knees bad, you know, and then thinking of all the times that we injured ourselves and reinforcing this vision that now, you know, our joints are wearing out and we're just getting old and that limiting trajectory of I'm destined for immobility.
I'm destined for surgery. I'm destined for problems because I have bad knees, or my body is broken, right? It's a big deal to start shifting that trajectory to a vision of my body has been trying to get my attention and alert me to something. And I want to start listening to that and I want to start responding to that in a constructive way, right? So the next time that you catch yourself in some of that, right, in some of that bad back, what's wrong?
Why am I being punished? Right? Catch yourself in that story, maybe about your body. I invite you to make a little shift, right? And start asking, what does my body need right now?
What do I need? Right? And you can even go down that little checklist. Do I need more rest than I've been getting? Do I need to eat? Am I thirsty?
Right? Those are other needs when we're dehydrated. That's stressful, and our muscles get tighter, right? Do I need some fun? Have I not been having enough fun in my life? What could I do that would be fun? Maybe I can just turn on a good song and sing in the car, right?
Get some of that vagal nerve stimulation going on by singing. Maybe my body is trying to let me know that there's some kind of belief or muscle memory around an experience in my life that needs to be dealt with more. Maybe I need a good friend to talk to. Maybe I need to go back to therapy for a little bit.
Maybe I want to reach out to Amy, the somatic educator, and see if she can help me work through this on a physical level in my body, right? Maybe your body is asking for that loving attention from somebody else, right? Maybe a massage or letting your partner know that you need some love, that you need some physical contact and touch. Maybe just cuddling with your kids once they're asleep at night if you have kids.
Maybe you need to spend more time with your cat. Any number of physical touch where you can get that oxytocin, right? Where you can get that feedback and help your body feel more nourished and loved, right? Start asking that question, what does my body need? And how can I in this moment, in one small way, start giving my body that? Start letting my body know that I hear what it's been trying to say to me and that I'm going to do something about it. For me, it can be as simple as, you know, when I'm starting to feel a lot of tension or stress rising in my body, right?
Because that still happens. My body is human. I'm human and I still go through stress and difficult experiences, right? But now I have this beautiful tool of being able to release it and being able to communicate with my body, which is what, you know, all of my clients get to develop an experience, and it's such a beautiful process to watch them move from that place of feeling punished and, you know, hated by God and hated by their body and, you know, having this animosity to feeling this sense of, ah, I know how to talk to my body and I know how to give my body what it needs.
And that feels so much better, right? That feels so, so much yummier and more empowering than being stuck and limited, you know, with this broken body. Start asking those questions. Start connecting. It can be as simple as drinking a glass of water, taking a deep breath. If you work with essential oils, bringing down some lavender essential oil and putting that on your neck, taking a shower, right? Putting your feet up for a minute and lying down and taking some deep breaths, and closing your eyes, right?
So these are things that you can do to start listening and start having that conversation, right? And if you need any assistance with that, if you need help, you know, finding experts, finding people who are actually really capable of holding space for you in that way, right? And guiding you through some shift that maybe has been a long time coming, right? If you're finding it's hard to be vulnerable with yourself.
And, you know, I'm going to continue next time, next podcast. I already know the topic because it's very related to this. It's going to be about what gets in the way of us resting, what gets in the way of us slowing down. Why is it so hard to pause? So stay tuned for that next episode coming up of why it's hard to pause. And yeah, let me know what you thought of this episode. Let me know if it was helpful.
You can follow me on Instagram at Aimee Takaya and send me a DM. Let's keep the conversation going. What ways does your body talk to you? And how do you find small ways to respond or take care of yourself? And can you transform that idea of having a bad back or a broken body into something new?
Okay, everyone. Absolutely wonderful to share all of this with you, and we'll talk again soon.
A: Hey there, friends. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I would love to hear your thoughts. Follow me on Instagram at Aimee Takaya, and send me a DM about this episode. I'd like to thank you for being part of this Somatic Revolution. And if you'd like to support the podcast and help more people learn about semantics, consider leaving a review or a rating.
And finally, if you'd like to have the experience of relief in your tight hips or back and learn to understand what your body is really saying to you, visit YouCanFreeYourSoma.com. I can't wait to share with you what is truly possible. Bye for now.
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