Your Body Is Not a Problem to Solve This Year

Samantha Davis, LMT, CNMT
Jan 1
4 min read

What if January could feel more like regulation instead of resolution? More like leaning into Winter's call to resting and nurturing, instead of piling on sometimes rigid rules and routines after a busy holiday season.

Within my practice, I use techniques to intentionally tend to the nervous system of each client, because targeting tension, pain, or stress without first letting the nervous system feel safety can be a source of continuing imbalance, dysregulation, and stress in the body and mind.

Frost-covered branches in soft focus with sunlight creating a warm glow. Blue and gold tones dominate. Text reads "Louisville Prenatal Massage."

Your Body Is Not Broken

This January, I’m inviting you (and reminding myself) to speak to and about your body with kindness and love. This is no small ask when you’re facing challenges like chronic pain, illness, or navigating the profound changes your body makes during pregnancy and postpartum. It can feel even harder this time of year, when the pressure to look and feel your “best” ramps up. Everywhere you turn, there’s a sale on athletic gear, workout programs, gym memberships, nutritional supplements, and diet fads. The message is constant, and the noise is loud.

When your body is uncomfortable, in pain, or not functioning the way you hoped, it’s easy to slip into language that frames it as a problem to solve, or worse, something that has failed you. But pain, tension, fatigue, and swelling are not signs that your body is broken. They are communication.

As your massage therapist, I do want you to feel the best you can. And that starts not with fixing or forcing change, but with listening. Listening to what your body is saying in this season, exactly as it is. That listening often begins with honesty: “I’m feeling really tired in my body.” Or, “My pain was improving, and then life X,Y,Z, happened, and now I’m discouraged because things feel worse.”

There is no failure in these statements. There is awareness. And awareness creates space for support. When we stop treating discomfort as something to override or push through, we can respond with care that meets the body where it is rather than where we think it should be.

Why ‘Fixing’ the Body Often Creates More Tension

When we talk about listening to the body and responding with kindness, it naturally raises the question of what happens when the goal becomes to fix what we’re feeling. While the intention is often good; relief, comfort, improvement, the mindset of fixing can quietly become counterproductive.

“Fixing” tends to create a rigid outcome the body is expected to meet. When that outcome isn’t realistic, or doesn’t happen on the timeline we hope for, it can reinforce feelings of failure, frustration, or even shame. The nervous system responds to this pressure with a stress response. And when that stress response becomes chronic, discomfort, pain, headaches, and fatigue often intensify rather than improve.

This shows up in everyday life, too. Many people recognize the pattern of pushing past their body’s requests for rest: making it through a demanding season at work, staying on top of family and social responsibilities - only to experience a pain flare, illness, or tension headache once they finally slow down. The body wasn’t failing; it was communicating all along.

When we override those signals repeatedly, the body learns that it isn’t safe to soften. Muscles stay guarded. Fascia holds tension. The nervous system remains on high alert. In that state, even well intentioned care can feel like too much.

Supportive Care Helps the Body Do What It Already Knows How to Do

In my work, I apply this understanding by first meeting clients exactly where they are physically, emotionally, and energetically. That begins with body-neutral or body-positive language that reflects respect for the work the body is already doing. This might sound like: “Your body is working incredibly hard to grow a healthy baby; it makes sense that you’re feeling X, Y, Z,” or “It sounds like this has been a stressful week. How is that showing up in your body right now?”

From there, I use specific massage techniques designed to invite the nervous system into a state of rest and digest - a felt sense of safety. This is the state where healing, adaptation, and release are possible. Rather than forcing change, the work becomes an invitation.

Just as we can learn not to push through pain or tension when our own bodies are asking for a pause, the same principle applies in hands-on care. If I were to approach a chronically tender muscle or restricted fascia with the goal of “fixing” it, the nervous system would likely respond with more guarding. The tissue would become less pliable under my touch, instead of softening. Pushing through that resistance doesn’t create relief, it reinforces the very patterns we’re trying to unwind.

Supportive care allows the body to soften on its own terms. It doesn’t correct or coerce; it creates the conditions for the body to do what it already knows how to do.