Have you ever experienced: 

  • Tight muscles that never seem to relax (no matter how much you stretch them or get massaged)?
  • Unexplainable pain that surfaces in certain body parts (muscles, joints, or entire limbs), even though you didn’t do anything differently that day, or even that week?
  • A cramp or uncontrollable twitch that feels like an “alien invasion” overtaking your conscious control? 

I have. 

A. Once I experienced the inability to prop myself up in bed with my two wrists, because the pain and weakness in my wrists was out of this world. 

(I came to the conclusion that there were old somatic memories in my tissues from a couple of wrist fractures from my youth, and no doubt decades of overuse during my skiing and adventure lifestyle.) 

B. Another time, for close to six months, maybe more, my right hip flexor and iliotibial band were so sore and weak that I couldn’t lift my leg without helping it. 

(I traced this back to this right leg being my landing leg when I figure skated, but also the stronger leg I had to rely on when I endured a series of knee injuries and surgeries on my left leg.)

C. Not too long ago, my lower back was so tight, I couldn’t bend over to wash my face.

(To this day, I still don’t know what this was about! But it was alarming how much pain I was in for about 24 hrs.) 

Eventually, all of these aches and pains went away, but they didn’t resolve through typical stretching, massage, or other biohacks such as red light therapy or sauna: they all resolved with time, and as I tuned into the earlier injuries that I believed would have created these tension patterns (as well as the emotions that were stored up as a result!).

The other thing I did was that I did not focus on them being a problem. Did my mind want to go to them being a problem? Oh yes. That is what the mind and our thoughts do – but it is our job to re-route that thinking. 

Did I notice the pain? Yes, and did my best to talk nicely to my body, trusting it would resolve. 

The other thing is that I didn’t stop moving during these times, but I definitely needed to adapt what I did while these areas were “speaking up!”

I do want to say that in some cases, if something feels like a real injury, or is not changing with time, then in such cases, I would consider seeking medical support (just in case there is an actual structure that needs support, or a nerve is being trapped, etc.). 

For example, just recently I have been in the process of getting some old metal out of my body from an old knee surgery. The reason I knew this was not an old stored up trauma or a chronic overuse pattern resolving from decades ago, was because the pain was localized, it didn’t move, and it started to become inflamed (and it was tough to walk!). 

* * *

In the new traumatology worlds (the work that I have learned, practice, and now teach others) these “out of nowhere” muscle and joint aches and pains can be due to old patterns of activation surfacing up, and/or a chronic overuse pattern wherein the body system was forced to keep going. 

In the three personal examples above, I’m quite certain those were all chronic overuse patterns, coupled in some cases (especially my painful wrists) with actual bone fractures (plus the stored emotions that weren’t likely processed during the actual event). 

The body does keep the score, folks, and the key to knowing how to figure out the best course of action, which in some cases might require no direct action, comes from learning how to deeply listen to your internal body and its senses (that’s interoception, which leads to emotional releases), but also understanding how our old traumas and survival patterns stick around (this would be from getting solid education). 

I released a short video today on my YouTube channel that speaks to this:

This is from a longer video where I share a ‘caught on camera’ (non forced) chronic stress release from my body, namely my legs, back in late 2024. 

Bottom line: chronic muscle pain and tightness is no fun and can be debilitating. 

Getting to the real root of why it is there—and releasing it—is a liberating experience!

To your nervous system health, 

Irene & Team Lyon

PS I’ll be teaching a new online experience called SBSM Foundations June 3 – 25, 2026. If you are a 21 Day Nervous System Tune-Up member, or maybe you have yet to start your nervous system learning (and healing) apprenticeship with me, then I can’t recommend this new offering enough. It’s gonna be a top notch way to get introduced to what it means to become your own medicine.