The constant feeling of tension and being on guard, even when there’s no immediate threat, isn’t a sign of something wrong with you. It’s your body’s conditioned response to past experiences of struggle and perceived danger. Your nervous system has learned to operate from a baseline of protection, anticipating hardship and bracing for impact as a default.

Why does my body stay on guard?

Your body is a loyal protector. If you’ve pushed through exhaustion, numbed loneliness, criticized yourself, or performed compliance instead of asserting your needs, that accumulated weight gets stored as tension. Your nervous system adapted to a state of struggle, creating a physiological orientation of constant bracing and silent tensing. This means your body is largely stuck in the past, believing that danger is your default. It’s operating on an old intelligence, even if your conscious mind has moved on, because it never received the update that the past pains and traumas are over and you are safe now.

How do I help my body feel safe enough to relax?

My own decades of chronic conditions, like fibromyalgia, resolved in months once I understood that my body was communicating, not malfunctioning, and learned to relate with it lovingly. The work isn’t to force your body to relax, which can paradoxically create more stress. It’s about helping your body believe that ease is not unsafe. Nervous system regulation is the foundation: it requires meeting your body directly through breath, touch, stillness, and movement to unwind the stored tension. This communicates to your body at the deepest level that the danger has passed, allowing those protective bracing patterns to gracefully retire and your system to truly relax.

I dive into this further in an episode of my podcast, The Simple Source, called “Why Your Body Stays Tense Even When You Try to Self-Regulate,” and in my course, Unbraced: The Somatic Release.