Our bodies do not operate efficiently when we are under stress. The resulting tension interferes with our thinking patterns and also our muscular facility. Often muscle and structural pain may derive from mental-emotional stress.

Other physical problems, especially tight muscles in the neck and shoulders, may self-correct or become easier to correct when we release our mental-emotional stress. Emotional stress may be one of the most significant causes of many chronic health challenges?

Shakespeare said, "Things are neither good or bad, it's only our thoughts that make them so." It is how you react to your thoughts that may be the cause our muscle stress.

This can work for any of the emotions we may feel and experience, your hurts, your disappointments, sadness, loneliness, anger to name a few.

What we have discovered is that many of our emotions are stuck in our muscles. Isn't it amazing that when we get angry how our muscles tighten up, or when we make statements like, I feel stressed out or my back is really hurting bad.

We are what we think. What we think can take a toll and create lots of physical problems.

Emotional Backache

A chiropractor friend asked me what I could do for a client of his that was in constant back pain, no matter what he did for her.

She was free of pain after her session with me.

She said her back problem started because of a car accident several months previous.

What we noticed is that there is a continuous dialog (inner communication) often subconscious, within the body. There is a connection between the way we think and our physical being. You have to remember that, because that is very important for reducing stress and pain.

To deal with this inner dialogue, we had her go through different body positions about the accident. We had her sit down in the chair, grab a make believe steering wheel and start driving. Then she looks in her rear view mirror. She sees a car charging down on her and then a bump.

We had her reenact all of this; the body posture and the mind thought that accompanies the incident. (It is important to understand that memory is often triggered by body posture and muscle movement.) Then she opens the door, gets out and turns around. She sees the driver from the other car walking towards her.

Suddenly she screams and says "I am so angry!" and at that moment her back went into painful spasms again.

You can see how the internal communication, how the emotional can affect the muscles. What she really had was an emotional backache.

To get complete relief from the long-term problem the communication link between the mind talk, being so angry, and her muscle condition had to be broken.

And by releasing that communication link we got her mind talk released which in turn released the tension of being angry, and the pain in her back. So now, when she became angry, this anger no longer affected her back.

Here is the technique I used to help her on the emotional level to help her out with her anger that she was holding onto in her back muscles.

Emotional Stress Release Technique. (ESR)

I had her hold her palm of her hand on her forehead with a light touch, as she shared with me all that happened regarding the car accident. Simple but effective.

Do the Stress Release Exercise any time you feel that you are under emotional or mental stress. This may not solve the problem causing the stress, but this will release the stress and tension caused by the problem and give you the energy to deal with the situation constructively. This also takes the negativity out of the thought problem of anger.

When we are under stress, blood goes to the back of our brain, where the past is stored. But when a hand is placed on the forehead, blood moves to the front of the brain. This is where 'new choice' is located.

So, to heal emotional stress, place your palm of your hand on your forehead while thinking about the incident that caused your stress. In this case it was her car accident.

Within a very short period of time (often, just a few minutes) you will be less emotional about the particular incident, and therefore less affected by it.

Remember in many cases the emotions may be stuck in the muscles. If you have a constant muscle pain, you might want to look at what you are telling yourself, your hurts, anger, disappointments to name a few and do the ESR technique.