Your Body Has Been Carrying the Stress Too
September has a way of filling up quickly. Summer winds down, school starts again, work schedules pick up, traffic gets heavier, calendars get fuller, and suddenly the slower pace of a few weeks ago feels pretty far away. The interesting thing about stress is that it doesn't always announce itself as stress. Sometimes it looks like shoulders that seem permanently lifted toward your ears. Sometimes it's a jaw you keep catching yourself clenching, a headache that appears at the end of the workday, or a back that feels exhausted even though you haven't done anything particularly strenuous. As we close out September, this felt like a good time to talk about something we see constantly in the massage room: the physical side of stress, and why your body can still feel tense even after the stressful moment itself has passed.
Stress isn't just happening in your head
When your brain perceives a challenge or threat, your body prepares to respond. The sympathetic branch of your autonomic nervous system becomes more active, helping increase alertness and preparing the body for action. That's extremely useful when you actually need to react quickly. The problem is that modern stress doesn't always give the body a clear beginning and end. A packed workday, financial worries, sitting in traffic, rushing between appointments, family responsibilities, constant notifications, and poor sleep can keep adding small doses of stress without a dramatic moment where your body gets to say, okay, we're finished now, and the muscles participate in that response.
You may unconsciously brace your abdomen, tighten your jaw, raise your shoulders, grip the steering wheel harder, or hold tension through your neck and upper back. Do that occasionally and it isn't particularly remarkable. Repeat it for hours every day, and that tension can start feeling like your body's normal resting position.
Where stress tends to show up
Everyone carries tension differently, but there are a few areas we hear about again and again.
The jaw. Clenching or grinding can leave the muscles around the jaw and temples tired and sore. Some people don't realize they're doing it until they notice themselves clenching during a stressful email, while driving, or lying in bed trying to fall asleep.
The neck and shoulders. When you're concentrating or feeling pressured, the shoulders often creep upward and the muscles around the neck remain active. Add several hours at a computer or looking down at a phone and those tissues are being asked to work even harder.
The upper and lower back. Stress-related muscle guarding combined with long periods of sitting can leave the back feeling stiff, tired, or achy even without an obvious injury.
Your breathing. Stress can also change the way you breathe. Instead of slower breathing that involves the diaphragm, breathing may become quicker and shallower, with more movement happening through the upper chest. That means muscles around the neck and rib cage may become more involved in something they were never meant to dominate all day.
And this can become a loop: you're stressed, so your body tightens. Your body stays uncomfortable, which becomes another source of stress. Then you tense even more.
Your body needs opportunities to come back down
We spend a lot of time talking about how to handle stress mentally, but the physical side deserves attention too.
Research on massage and stress physiology is more nuanced than some wellness claims make it sound. Massage should not be presented as magically "flushing cortisol" out of the body. Large reviews have found that changes in cortisol are inconsistent and often small.
What researchers have repeatedly observed, however, are short-term changes in things like anxiety and heart rate following massage, along with evidence supporting massage as one option for managing certain types of pain.
In other words, you don't need a dramatic hormonal "detox" for an hour spent allowing guarded, overworked muscles to relax to be worthwhile.
And massage isn't the only way to give your body that opportunity.
A few simple habits can help interrupt the cycle:
Unclench your jaw. Let your teeth separate slightly and allow your tongue and jaw to relax.
Drop your shoulders. Every so often, notice where they are. If they've migrated toward your ears, slowly let them fall.
Take a longer exhale. You don't need an elaborate breathing routine. Try inhaling comfortably and allowing the exhale to be slightly slower and longer.
Move after stressful stretches of the day. A short walk, gentle stretching, or even standing and moving your arms can help break up prolonged periods of physical bracing.
Create a transition after work. Before immediately moving from work into errands, chores, or your phone, give yourself even five quiet minutes to walk, stretch, shower, or simply sit without another demand.
Pay attention to recurring tension. If the same area hurts every stressful week, that's information. Look at what you're doing physically during those periods instead of treating each flare-up as completely random.
None of these habits removes the stressful things happening in your life. The goal is simply to stop asking your body to physically brace against them all day long.
Your body needs opportunities to come back down
We spend a lot of time talking about how to handle stress mentally, but the physical side deserves attention too.
Research on massage and stress physiology is more nuanced than some wellness claims make it sound. Massage should not be presented as magically "flushing cortisol" out of the body. Large reviews have found that changes in cortisol are inconsistent and often small.
What researchers have repeatedly observed, however, are short-term changes in things like anxiety and heart rate following massage, along with evidence supporting massage as one option for managing certain types of pain.
In other words, you don't need a dramatic hormonal "detox" for an hour spent allowing guarded, overworked muscles to relax to be worthwhile.
And massage isn't the only way to give your body that opportunity.
A few simple habits can help interrupt the cycle:
Unclench your jaw. Let your teeth separate slightly and allow your tongue and jaw to relax.
Drop your shoulders. Every so often, notice where they are. If they've migrated toward your ears, slowly let them fall.
Take a longer exhale. You don't need an elaborate breathing routine. Try inhaling comfortably and allowing the exhale to be slightly slower and longer.
Move after stressful stretches of the day. A short walk, gentle stretching, or even standing and moving your arms can help break up prolonged periods of physical bracing.
Create a transition after work. Before immediately moving from work into errands, chores, or your phone, give yourself even five quiet minutes to walk, stretch, shower, or simply sit without another demand.
Pay attention to recurring tension. If the same area hurts every stressful week, that's information. Look at what you're doing physically during those periods instead of treating each flare-up as completely random.
None of these habits removes the stressful things happening in your life. The goal is simply to stop asking your body to physically brace against them all day long.
Where Massage Fits in
This is one reason massage can feel so different when you've had a particularly stressful month. Sometimes the person on the table isn't dealing with one dramatic knot or injury. Instead, we're finding a little bit of guarding everywhere: tight upper traps, a stiff neck, tender muscles around the shoulder blades, a back that doesn't want to let go. Massage gives us an opportunity to work with those patterns directly. It also gives you something that's increasingly rare: a period of time when you aren't answering an email, driving somewhere, taking care of someone else, checking a notification, or trying to accomplish the next thing.
Your only job for that hour is to be there. And sometimes that is exactly what an overloaded body needs. As September comes to a close and we head deeper into fall, pay attention to what your body has been telling you. The tight shoulders, clenched jaw, shallow breathing, or nagging back tension may not be random annoyances. They may simply be signs that your body has been working harder than you've realized. You don't have to wait until you're completely burned out or hurting to give it a chance to recover.
References
Moyer, C.A., Seefeldt, L., Mann, E.S., & Jackley, L.M. Does massage therapy reduce cortisol? A comprehensive quantitative review. Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies, 2011.
Moraska, A., Pollini, R.A., Boulanger, K., Brooks, M.Z., & Teitlebaum, L. Physiological adjustments to stress measures following massage therapy: A review of the literature. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2010.
Moyer, C.A., Rounds, J., & Hannum, J.W. A meta-analysis of massage therapy research. Psychological Bulletin, 2004.
Mak, S., et al. Use of Massage Therapy for Pain, 2018–2023: A Systematic Review. JAMA Network Open, 2024.
Price, C.J., et al. A systematic review of manual therapy modalities and anxiety. 2024.
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