How Your Nervous System Keeps the Cycle of Tension and Pain Alive
- Brainz Magazine
- 7 hours ago
- 12 min read
Suzette Obiana-Martina, a seasoned Cesar Exercise Therapist, combines over 15 years of expertise with a unique, supportive approach to empower people in managing and preventing physical complaints. Her passion is teaching self-reliance through precise, therapeutic movement for lasting wellness.
Your nervous system does more than react to stress; it remembers and holds onto it. Discover why chronic stress keeps your body stuck in tension and how awareness, movement, and support can help you break free.
You know the feeling. Tight shoulders that never seem to loosen. A racing mind that doesn't slow down, even at night. A body that feels heavy, tense, or restless even when you're not "doing" anything.
This isn't just bad luck or getting older. It's your nervous system on autopilot.
When stress becomes chronic, your body doesn't simply bounce back after the pressure is gone. It adapts. It learns to live in a state of high alert, holding tension in your muscles, disrupting your breathing, and creating an underlying sense of unease.
At first, this adaptation is helpful. It keeps you going during demanding times.
But when survival mode becomes your default mode, the very system designed to protect you begins to work against you.
Over time, chronic stress becomes a silent architect of discomfort.
Tension turns into pain. Restlessness becomes insomnia. And a subtle disconnect from your body evolves into deep fatigue and emotional numbness.
The good news?
Your nervous system is adaptable, which means you can teach it to feel safe again.
In this article, we’ll explore:
Why your body gets stuck in stress mode
How does this impact your muscles, movement, and mind
The steps you can take to release tension and build a new, healthier relationship with your nervous system
Your body doesn't want to stay in survival mode. It’s waiting for permission and guidance to return to ease.
Living in survival mode: When stress becomes your body’s default setting
Stress, in its natural form, is not the enemy.
Your nervous system is brilliantly designed to handle short-term challenges. When danger arises, whether it’s a tight deadline, a loud noise, or an emotional confrontation, your body’s sympathetic nervous system takes charge.
You enter fight or flight mode:
Your heart rate speeds up.
Your muscles tighten, preparing for action.
Your breath becomes rapid and shallow.
Your senses sharpen to detect threats.
This response exists to keep you safe. It’s short-term, powerful, and meant to resolve quickly, after which your parasympathetic nervous system should help you return to calm, digest, and repair. But what happens when the threat isn’t clear, or doesn’t go away?
In today’s world, the threats we face are rarely life-threatening, but they are constant:
Deadlines and emails
Financial worries
Relationship conflicts
Global news and uncertainty
Unprocessed emotional pain
Because these stressors linger, your nervous system may get stuck in a survival loop. But not everyone fights or flees. Sometimes, when the system becomes overwhelmed, it takes another protective route: freeze.
Freeze mode is often misunderstood. It’s not calm, it’s shut down.
When fighting or fleeing seems impossible or exhausting, your body may:
Slow down the movement
Numb sensations and emotions
Lower your energy levels
Create feelings of disconnection or helplessness
You may still go through daily motions, but inside you feel flat, foggy, or detached.
Your mind goes blank.
Your body feels heavy.
You are there, but not fully present.
This is a survival strategy, one that keeps you from experiencing the full weight of stress in the moment. But if freeze becomes your default mode, it carries a heavy cost:
Disconnection from your body
Reduced proprioceptive awareness
Chronic tension (because muscles brace without release)
Emotional numbness and fatigue
In short, you’re stuck in tension, yet too shut down to release it.
From alert to stuck: The new normal that isn’t normal
Whether you are locked in fight, flight, or freeze, the outcome is the same:
Your nervous system forgets how to fully relax and reset.
This becomes your body's "new normal."You start to believe that tight muscles, poor sleep, shallow breathing, and emotional flatness are just “part of life.”
But they are not normal, they are signals. Your body is asking you to pay attention.
The good news?
What is learned can also be unlearned.
With awareness, gentle movement, touch, and breath, you can guide your system back to safety, back to balance, back to you.
When survival becomes a habit: The hidden cost of staying on guard
The human body is designed to handle stress in short bursts.
But it is not designed to live in stress all the time.
When survival mode becomes your daily baseline when your nervous system gets stuck in fight, flight, or freeze the effects begin to ripple through every layer of your health.
Not immediately. Not loudly. But steadily, subtly, and deeply.
You may not notice it at first. You still show up. You still get things done. But the signs are there, whispering in the background:
Cognitive and emotional costs
Difficulty concentrating or making decisions
Memory lapses or brain fog
Increased anxiety or irritability
Emotional numbness or detachment
Feeling overwhelmed or easily triggered
Your mind becomes more reactive and less reflective.
Small problems feel bigger.
Rest feels unnatural or even uncomfortable.
Physical and muscular costs
Chronic muscle tension (especially in the neck, shoulders, jaw, and lower back)
Reduced mobility and flexibility
Frequent headaches or migraines
Restlessness and difficulty relaxing, even when tired
Increased sensitivity to pain
Muscles that stay braced eventually forget how to release. What was once temporary tension becomes your default posture.
Sleep and recovery costs
Difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep
Shallow, restless sleep that doesn't restore
Waking up still tired or with a heavy body
Low energy and frequent crashes during the day
Without deep rest, your body cannot repair, recharge, or regulate properly. Sleep is no longer restorative it becomes yet another survival task.
Systemic and long-term costs
Digestive issues and gut discomfort
Weakened immune response and frequent illness
Hormonal imbalances and disrupted cycles
Increased risk of chronic conditions (heart disease, diabetes, etc.)
When the body spends too much time prioritizing survival, it diverts energy away from growth, healing, and repair.
Living on alert is not living fully
What begins as protection slowly turns into limitation. You move less freely. You feel less deeply. You experience less joy, curiosity, and connection.
And because this happens slowly, many people don’t connect the dots.
They believe:
“This is just part of getting older.”
“This is what being busy feels like.”
“This is normal for me.”
But being constantly on guard is not normal, and it’s not inevitable.
Your body remembers how to feel safe. Your nervous system can relearn how to downshift.
You can move from tension to ease, not all at once, but step by step.
In the next chapter, we’ll explore exactly how you can begin that shift, using movement, breath, and touch to guide your nervous system back to balance.
From tension to pain: Why the body speaks when the mind ignores
Your body is incredibly patient. It whispers before it shouts. It gives signals before it sends symptoms.
But when you live in survival mode long enough, something shifts. What starts as subtle tension becomes habitual holding. What starts as restlessness becomes chronic fatigue. And what starts as minor discomfort eventually becomes pain.
How chronic tension turns into chronic pain
When your nervous system is stuck on high alert, your muscles don’t get a chance to fully relax.
Even when you sleep, they remain partially braced. Day after day, week after week, this low-level tension builds up.
Here’s what happens next:
Reduced blood flow: Tense muscles receive less oxygen and nutrients, which can lead to soreness and stiffness.
Restricted movement: Tight muscles pull on joints and connective tissue, creating imbalances and limited mobility.
Overuse and fatigue: Muscles that never fully release become overworked and more prone to injury.
Heightened pain sensitivity: A dysregulated nervous system amplifies pain signals, making normal sensations feel uncomfortable or even painful.
Before you know it, that occasional neck tightness becomes a daily headache. That restless night’s sleep becomes months of insomnia. That achy back becomes a chronic, limiting issue.
The mind-body disconnect
One of the biggest reasons pain becomes chronic is disconnection.
When you're stuck in survival mode, you stop paying attention to your body’s subtle messages. You override fatigue with caffeine. You ignore stiffness with distraction. You push through discomfort because "there’s no time."
In doing so, you teach your brain that these signals are not important. Your brain, in turn, stops filtering them properly. It may even amplify them to finally get your attention.
Pain, in this sense, is not always about damage; it’s often about demanding awareness.
It’s your body’s way of saying: "You haven’t been listening. So now, I’m going to make it impossible to ignore me."
The good news: Pain is not the end of the story
While this may sound heavy, there is incredible hope in this understanding.
If pain is your body trying to communicate, then the solution isn’t simply to silence it with medication or avoidance. The solution is to listen, gently and curiously.
By reconnecting with your body through movement, breath, touch, and therapeutic guidance, you can begin to unwind tension, re-establish healthy patterns, and teach your nervous system that it is safe to let go.
Pain may have become your body’s loudest voice. But with the right approach, you can teach it to speak more softly again.
Breaking the cycle: How awareness and movement can reset your system
When your body has been stuck in survival mode for months or even years, the idea of simply "relaxing" feels foreign, sometimes even impossible. You may sit still, but your muscles remain tense. You may lie down, but your mind keeps racing. You may long for rest, but your body resists letting go.
That’s because release and ease are skills, not automatic states, especially after chronic stress.
They need to be relearned and practiced, step by step.
The good news?
Your body and nervous system are highly adaptable. With the right approach and guidance, they can remember how to shift gears from guarded and tense to open and free.
At PRO Wellness and Therapy Center, we can offer you:
1. Coaching: Reconnecting to yourself through awareness and breath
The first step to breaking the stress-pain cycle is often the hardest: slowing down and listening.
In my coaching sessions, I guide clients through this process. Together, we:
Explore how tension shows up in their body
Practice gentle awareness exercises to reconnect to physical sensations
Learn how to breathe more deeply and consciously to activate the parasympathetic system
Create space for feeling without judgment or rushing
Coaching is not about pushing harder; it’s about creating room to be with yourself, to understand your patterns, and to start shifting them.
2. Therapy in nature: Moving and sensing in a healing environment
Sometimes, stillness feels overwhelming. That’s why therapy in nature, taking our sessions outdoors, is so powerful.
In nature, surrounded by calm and open space, clients learn to:
Walk mindfully and reconnect with natural movement
Breathe with the rhythm of the environment
Feel supported by the earth and the elements around them
Shift out of mental loops and back into sensory experience
Being outdoors encourages spontaneous relaxation and helps regulate the nervous system in a gentle, organic way.
3. The Curaçao Escape: A full body experience of letting go
For those ready to dive deeper, The Curaçao Escape offers a luxurious and transformative journey.
This full-body treatment is designed to:
Melt away layers of stored tension through therapeutic massage
Use aromatherapy, music, warmth, and rest to invite the nervous system into deep relaxation
Create a safe space where clients can stop "doing" and fully receive
Many clients report feeling not only physically relaxed but also emotionally reset and reconnected after this unique experience.
4. Float therapy: Learning to release, trust, and feel
One of the most profound ways to teach the body to let go is through water. But not just any water, the sea itself, with its natural rhythm and soothing embrace.
In Float Therapy, clients are gently guided as they float on their back, supported by the sea water and my therapeutic presence.
At first, letting go is not easy:
The body feels tense, unsure how to trust the water
The breath becomes shallow and restricted
The mind resists surrender
But through sensitive guidance, something shifts:
The client learns to soften, to breathe, and to allow
The sea water becomes a mirror showing how tension melts away when trust and awareness deepen
Breath slows, muscles release, and a profound sense of ease emerges
This is not just relaxation. This is re-patterning at the nervous system level.
By feeling, truly feeling the difference between tension and release, clients begin to embody a new way of being.
The path forward: From survival to sovereignty
Breaking the stress cycle is not about forcing yourself into stillness. It’s about meeting your body where it is, and gently guiding it back to safety and presence.
Through coaching, movement in nature, deep bodywork, and therapeutic floating, every step becomes a lesson in listening, trusting, and reconnecting.
Your body is ready to shift. All it needs is the right invitation.
Calm is a skill: Practical steps to rebalance and restore
When your nervous system has been stuck on "high alert" for too long, relaxation doesn't just happen. It needs to be relearned gently, patiently, and with practice.
Think of calm as a skill. Just like strength or flexibility, it improves with repetition and awareness. Here’s how you can begin cultivating this skill right now:
1. Slow down on purpose
Slowing down is the first act of self-care. Try this simple practice:
Take a daily "pause moment."
Sit comfortably, place your hands on your belly, and take 2 x 5 slow breaths.
Feel your belly rise and fall with each breath, creating space and softness.
This simple act tells your nervous system: it is safe to let go.
2. Breathe into calm
Your breath is the remote control of your nervous system.
When you slow your exhale, you activate the parasympathetic ("rest and digest") response.
Try this pattern daily:
Inhale slowly for 4 counts
Exhale slowly for 5- 6 counts
Repeat for 3 x 5, 3 x per day
With each exhale, allow tension to melt and thoughts to soften.
3. Move mindfully every day
Stillness can feel stuck. Movement helps release.
Go for a gentle walk, paying attention to each step
Try slow stretches, noticing how your muscles lengthen and relax
Use rocking, swaying, or light bouncing to help discharge built-up tension
Movement isn’t about intensity; it’s about awareness and flow.
4. Connect with nature
Nature offers instant regulation. When possible:
Take your breaks outdoors, even for 5 minutes
Breathe fresh air and observe natural sounds and sights
Feel your feet on the ground, reconnecting with your body's relationship to the earth
The natural world reminds your body how to return to balance.
5. Seek support when you need guidance
You don’t have to do this alone. Some tension patterns are so ingrained that they need skilled hands and a caring presence to release.
This is where therapeutic support becomes essential:
Coaching sessions help you understand and change automatic patterns
Therapy in nature reconnects you with your body in a healing environment
The Curaçao Escape invites deep release through massage, warmth, and sensory care
Float therapy offers profound lessons in letting go and trusting your body again
By combining self-practice with guided support, you give your nervous system the best chance to fully shift into ease and resilience.
Consistency over intensity
Remember, healing doesn’t come from doing everything perfectly. It comes from choosing, day after day, to return to yourself. With each small act of awareness and kindness, your nervous system learns:
"I am safe. I don’t have to hold so tightly. I can trust, release, and be."
That’s how calm becomes not just something you experience but something you embody.
Call to action: Your nervous system is ready, are you?
If you’re reading this, your body is already asking for change. Not a drastic change. Not quick fixes. But deep, sustainable reconnection.
Let’s begin, together.
Book a coaching session to explore your patterns, reconnect with your body, and learn powerful tools to shift out of survival mode.
Join me for a therapy in nature session, and experience how movement and breath come alive when supported by the natural world.
Treat yourself to the curaçao escape, a full-body journey designed to melt tension, invite deep rest, and awaken your sense of inner safety.
Discover the profound release of float therapy, where water teaches your body the art of surrender and trust.
Your healing journey doesn’t start when everything is perfect. It starts when you decide: I am ready to feel differently.
Contact me directly to get started or ask any questions:
WhatsApp / Mobile: +5999 522 3225 or +5999 515 6576
Phone: +5999 788 0023
Instagram: @prowellnessandtherapycenter
Facebook: Pro Wellness Therapy BV
Follow me for daily inspiration, tips, and tools to stay connected and grounded.
Share this article with someone who needs to hear: You are allowed to feel at ease again.
You are not meant to live in overdrive. You are designed to live with freedom, softness, and flow. It’s time to listen. It’s time to trust. It’s time to come home to your body.
Read more from Suzette Obiana - Martina
Suzette Obiana - Martina, Cesar Exercise Therapist
Suzette Obiana-Martina, a licensed Cesar Exercise Therapist with over 15 years of experience, empowers patients to modify daily habits that contribute to their physical complaints. She provides quality time and tailored solutions to improve their personal and professional lives. Her mission is to make people self-reliant, equipping them to manage their own well-being. With extensive training in corporate exercise therapy, foot therapy, coronary diseases, psychology, and psychosomatics, Suzette connects deeply with her patients. By fostering positive encouragement, Suzette helps patients achieve more than they ever thought possible.
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American Heart Association. Spend Time in Nature to Reduce Stress and Anxiety.Retrieved from https://www.heart.org
Massage Therapy Journal. The Science of Stress.Retrieved from https://www.amtamassage.org
American Psychological Association. Nurtured by Nature: Psychological Benefits of Natural Environments.Retrieved from https://www.apa.org
Harvard Health Publishing. A 20-minute nature break relieves stress.Retrieved from https://www.health.harvard.edu
American Psychological Association. Stress effects on the body.Retrieved from https://www.apa.org
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Delp, M. D., & Rooney, W. B. (2012). Chronic Stress Induces a Hyporeactivity of the Autonomic Nervous System in Response to Acute Mental Stressor and Impairs Cognitive Performance in Business Executives.Published in PLOS One. https://journals.plos.org/plosone
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Published in PMC. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/
