A man told me the other day that wherever you press on his body, the muscles will be sore. He seemed bewildered. He clearly didn't like feeling that way, but he didnt know what to do about it. He was about 40 years old, and I could sense through his words he was fearing what life might be like in the future if something didn't change.

When I was in my early 20's suffering through my bout of chronic pain, my entire body hurt whenever you push the muscles. I remember feeling sad about that fact too. I couldn't understand why. I was someone who practiced yoga and martial arts. I thought I was quite in touch with my body, but my body was telling me otherwise.

I tried many different ways to "fix" this problem. Most notably trigger point therapy self massage. This involved finding the little painful knots in the muscles and massaging them multiple times a day. This definitely gave relief. But it never lasted. A day or two later, the pain would be back.

At one point I even created a spreadsheet ( yes, that's how far I took it!!! ) so I could hit every one of my trigger points daily. By this stage it was taking me hours of massaging myself each day. But the relief was only temporary. I was frustrated and upset when all of my diligent work was not helping in the slightest.

Maybe you know what this is like, with a body that is more tense than you feel it "should" be? Perhaps there's things you've tried, but nothing has really made any meaningful difference.

I would like to offer some insight into this situation. Because now with much more life experience and some training, I see things differently.

I now know that muscular tension and pain is a product of the nervous system.

That's right. It's a brain thang.

The reason my self-massage wasn't working was because I wasn't addressing the nervous system. I was working on a mechanical level as though the part needed some work.

But I now know this experience is systemic. All of myself is involved in the pain and stiffness that occurs in my parts.

Why is that significant?

Because we're not compartmentalised. We're organic, interconnected beings. And it means the approach to improving the experience of being alive in our bodies needs to be approached holistically too.

Addressing the chronic background pain actually involves a deep look at the way I relate to life itself. The attitude and approach I have to life manifests physically in the body I inhabit. Which I know... it's a little woo if you think about it.

So lets get a little more concrete

Try This To Feel Your Brain in Action

I have got a little exercise for you to do. The purpose is to show you your own nervous system in action. It may also reveal some of your habits and ways of approaching life that you weren't aware of.

Step 1: Sit on a chair with your hands resting on your knees. Sense the distance from your right shoulder to your right ear-lobe. Now the left. Compare the two... which one is a larger distance? Don't look, just feel internally. "I don't know" is also valid.

Step 2: Lift your right shoulder in the direction of your right ear. Then lower it down again to move further away from your ear. Notice... did you attempt to move as far as you can? Try it again, but this time do it slowly and only move through a comfortable range. Keep repeating, but try to make it easier and smoother each time you move. Feel the way your shoulder blade slides over your ribs at the back and your collar bone lifts up at your shoulder end. Do 5 or 6 movements with full attention.

Step 3: Take a brief rest and then begin to move your right shoulder in the forwards / backwards direction. Move with as much ease as you can muster. Notice how your shoulder blade moves differently in this direction. It slides around the side of you and then draws closer to your spine in the middle. Can you still find a way to breathe simply while doing this?

Step 4: Take another brief rest and then do a circular movement which connects all 4 points. Up. Down. Forwards. Backwards. Go slow and with precision! Feel how circular your movement actually is. If you go slow enough you'll notice the circle actually has lumps and straight lines. It may feel jerky in some areas and smooth in others. Your shoulder likely jumps over certain parts of the circle. You don't need to fix it, but just notice the truth of how your shoulder actually moves.

Step 5: Just rest now and begin to sense the distance from your shoulders to your earlobes. It has changed. What is the difference now between the left and the right? Which shoulder feels more comfortable? If you didn't know in the beginning, is it clearer now?

What Has That Got To Do With Pain and Tension?

If you followed along with that exercise you will have experienced a taster of what it's like to move with attention. In the few minutes that you did so, you would have likely experienced an improvement (albeit a small one) in your movement.

You are likely more aware of how your shoulder works in conjunction with your shoulder blade and your collar bone. Perhaps even your ribcage and breathing.

Your shoulder probably sits just the slightest bit more comfortably than it did prior to those movements.

The distance from your shoulder to the earlobe may have grown as your shoulder allowed itself to be held up by your skeletal structure.

If you're sharp, you may feel there's less tension and possibly a change in the quality of movement in your breathing on the right side.

All of that happened while simply doing some basic movements of your shoulder.

There was no stretching, strengthening or massage involved. Yet the function improved.

Working With The Nervous System

This experience is a taster of what it's like to upgrade the nervous systems programming of your shoulder movement.

As you may have noticed, there were areas that felt clunky, jerky, vague and irregular. These are places where our brain doesn't have reliable sensory information about our shoulders and therefore it doesn't have really precise fine-grained control of how to move it easily.

When we pay attention in this way, we give our brains the opportunity to upgrade the movement programming we have. We feed it sensory information and unnecessary tension begins to drop away.

If you extrapolate this further - by doing more in-depth explorations - it begins to undo the systemic background tension and pain that many people carry around in their bodies.

Take This Attitude With You To Improve Your Movement

If you're like 99.9% of people, when I asked you to move your shoulder towards your ear - you moved it as far as you could on the first go.

I'm not going to unpack the full implications of that here, because it's a whole can-o'-worms related to the societal conditioning of "doing well".

But the more relevant point I would like to uncover, is that when you do less, you actually FEEL so much more.

When you go to your limit, you feel your limit. When you do less, you can feel the process of how you got there.

This is a profound difference when it comes to your human setup. Nervous systems are built to thrive with more sensory information. When we don't try so hard, we give our nervous systems what they need. Everything begins to function better when this becomes the normal.

Pain will drop away. Tension will disappear. Movement will become fluid and delicious.

So if you take anything away from this article, let it be this...

Don't try so hard. Feel more.

Where to From Here

What you felt in your shoulder is just the beginning. It’s a tiny doorway into a different relationship with yourself—one where your nervous system is an ally rather than a silent saboteur.

You don’t need to “fix” your body. You need to give it better information.

So play with this. Explore small movements. Notice what changes when you stop pushing and start sensing.

Every time you choose ease over effort, your nervous system rewrites its script.
You’re not just moving differently—you’re relating to life differently.