Shoulder Tension and Emotions: A Somatic Bodywork Perspective
I just finished a Pantarei somatic bodywork workshop focused entirely on the shoulders, and I wanted to share some of my thoughts on this part of the body.
The knots in my own shoulders have felt like an impenetrable force for as long as I can remember, at least since I was fourteen, when I left home for boarding school. I've come to think of them less as a problem to fix and more as something that has been faithfully doing a job.
When I work with people on the massage table and make contact with the tension held here, people very often have a visceral image arise of armor. The shoulder girdle is implicated in how the body learns to suppress feeling, particularly around breath. When we brace against something emotionally, the breath shortens, and the muscles of the upper back participate in this holding, pulling inward and upward in a way that restricts the full expansion the lungs need to complete an exhale.
I've noticed two patterns that tend to show up. Elevated, braced shoulders that relate to hypervigilance and the body perpetually preparing for an impact that may have already come and gone. And hunched shoulders that tend toward self-enclosure, a withdrawing inward. Both are protective, just in different ways, and in doing their protective work, both restrict the breath and the capacity to fully feel what is there.
My theory is that the shoulders protect, carry responsibility, and maintain a vigilance that keeps us functioning. But in that same tightness, they can keep us at a distance from what lives underneath, the emotions that were never quite safe enough to feel, the grief, vulnerability, or pain the armor was built to contain.
In somatic sessions, rather than pushing against that holding, I try to guide my clients to meet it with curiosity and gratitude. And when the shoulders are met with presence rather than being forced to loosen, the nervous system can start to register that it's safe enough to let go a little. The breath gets more room to flow, and underneath the armor, something that had no space to be felt might finally begin to move. For some people that has been grief, and in meeting that grief, people find themselves more in contact with a heart that has been protected for a long time.
If you want to bring some of this awareness into your own body, you can start simply. Pause for a moment and notice your shoulders. Are they braced and elevated? Or do they tend to round forward and inward? Just noticing without trying to change anything is already a form of contact. You might place a hand gently on one shoulder and let it rest there, not to fix anything, just to acknowledge and thank it for working so hard.
If you recognize tension in your own shoulders and you're curious to explore what they've been carrying, you can book a session with me here.
