Tag: tight muscles

Why your nervous system won’t let you relax (and it’s not your fault)

Posted on March 16, 2026March 16, 2026 by Dr. Daina Patel

You’ve been told to relax.

Maybe by your doctor. Maybe by your massage therapist. Maybe by someone who has never felt the particular frustration of trying to relax a body that refuses to cooperate.

Here’s what I want you to understand: you’re not bad at relaxing. Your nervous system is doing exactly what it was designed to do. It just hasn’t gotten the signal that it’s safe to stop.

What’s actually happening

Your autonomic nervous system runs on a simple logic: threat or safety. When it detects threat — real or perceived — it activates your stress response. Muscles contract, breathing gets shallow, your heart rate increases, your attention narrows. You go on alert.

The problem is that your nervous system can’t always tell the difference between a bear and an overflowing inbox. It doesn’t distinguish between physical danger and chronic financial stress, or between an immediate threat and years of accumulated emotional load. It just responds.

And when the threat signal has been running for long enough — months, years, sometimes decades — your nervous system learns that staying on alert is the default safe position. Not because you’re anxious or broken. Because it adapted to the conditions it was in.

That adaptation shows up in your body as chronic tension. Shoulders that live near your ears. A jaw that’s clenched even when you’re sitting still. A neck that never fully releases. A lower back that braces for impact even when you’re lying in bed.

This is not a character flaw. This is a nervous system that learned to protect you and then never got the memo that things changed.

Why “just relax” doesn’t work

Telling yourself to relax when your nervous system is in threat mode is like telling your immune system to stop fighting an infection. You can want it. You cannot will it.

The nervous system responds to inputs, not intentions. What that means is you can’t think your way out of a threat response. You have to give your body a physical signal that it’s safe.

That’s what the breathing, the humming, the warm shower, the slow gentle movement are doing. They’re not relaxation techniques. They’re inputs — specific, physiological signals that tell your nervous system: the threat has passed. You can let go.

What actually helps

Vagus nerve stimulation is the most direct path. Your vagus nerve is the main pathway of your parasympathetic nervous system — the rest and digest response that’s the opposite of fight or flight. Stimulating it sends a direct signal to your brain that it’s safe to downregulate.

Humming, gargling, cold water on your face, slow exhalation, gentle movement — all of these stimulate the vagus nerve. None of them require equipment, appointments, or significant time. They require consistency.

Predictability and pattern help too. Your nervous system calibrates based on what it can predict. When you have consistent inputs — a morning routine, an evening routine, regular sleep times, regular meals — your nervous system has less to monitor and less to respond to. That predictability is itself a safety signal.

Reducing sensory load matters more than most people realize. If you process sensory input more intensely than average — and a lot of people with chronic tension do — then reducing input is a real intervention. Quieter environments, lower lighting, fewer simultaneous demands on your attention. This isn’t weakness. It’s working with your nervous system instead of against it.

The thing that takes the longest

The hardest part isn’t learning the tools. It’s staying consistent when you can’t immediately feel the results.

Because the nervous system doesn’t update in one session. It updates with repetition. Every time you do a breathing exercise and nothing terrible happens, that’s a data point. Every time you hum before bed and wake up slightly less tense, that’s a data point. Slowly, incrementally, your nervous system learns that safe is possible.

It took time to build the pattern. It takes time to change it.

You’re not behind. You’re just starting.

Ready to start? Download my free nervous system reset guide here.

Disclaimer: This post is for educational purposes only. Please read the Disclaimer here.

How to breathe correctly (and why it matters for your neck pain)

Posted on March 16, 2026March 16, 2026 by Dr. Daina Patel

Most people are breathing incorrectly.

Not badly. Not dangerously. Just in a way that’s quietly keeping their nervous system in a threat state and making their neck and shoulder tension worse.

Here’s how.

The mechanics first

Your diaphragm is the primary muscle of breathing. It’s a dome-shaped muscle that sits at the base of your ribcage. When it contracts, it flattens downward and your belly expands. That’s a proper breath.

When you’re stressed, anxious, in pain, or just habitually tense, your diaphragm stops doing most of the work. Instead, your accessory breathing muscles take over — your scalenes, your SCM, your upper trapezius. These are the muscles in your neck and upper shoulders.

If you’re breathing that way all day, every day, those muscles never get to rest. They are literally working with every single breath you take. That’s why neck tension comes back no matter what you do. You haven’t addressed the breathing pattern driving it.

The neck-breath connection

The scalenes are a group of muscles on the sides of your neck. They run from your cervical vertebrae down to your first and second ribs. One of their jobs is to lift the ribcage during inhalation — a secondary breathing function that becomes primary when you’re a chest breather.

If you’re breathing shallowly through your chest all day, your scalenes are working constantly. Chronically overworked muscles become tight, tender, and eventually they start compressing things. The brachial plexus — the nerve bundle that runs through the scalenes down into your arm — can get compressed. That’s where the arm tingling comes from.

Your upper traps are doing similar work. Lifting your shoulders slightly with every breath, staying chronically activated, contributing to the pattern of shoulder tension that never fully releases.

This is a structural consequence of a neurological pattern. Breathing wrong isn’t just a habit. It’s a symptom of a nervous system running in threat mode — and it causes real physical problems.

How to breathe correctly

Belly breathing, not chest breathing. When you inhale, your belly should expand first. Not your chest, not your shoulders. Your belly out, then your lower ribs expand, then maybe your chest very slightly at the top. When you exhale, the reverse — chest down, ribs in, belly falls.

Test yourself right now. Put one hand on your chest and one hand on your belly. Take a breath. Which hand moves first?

If it’s your chest — you’re a chest breather. Your scalenes and traps are working overtime.

Breathe through your nose, not your mouth. Nasal breathing filters the air, warms it, humidifies it, and produces nitric oxide, which dilates blood vessels and improves oxygen delivery. Mouth breathing bypasses all of this and tends to be shallower and faster, which keeps your nervous system in a slightly more activated state.

Slow it down. A breathing rate of around 5–6 breaths per minute is associated with maximum Heart Rate Variability — a measure of how well your nervous system can regulate itself. Most people breathe 12–20 times per minute. Slowing down your breathing is one of the most direct inputs you can give your nervous system.

Try this: inhale for 5.5 seconds, exhale for 5.5 seconds. That’s roughly 5.5 breaths per minute. Do this for two minutes. Notice what happens in your neck and shoulders.

The double inhale for acute stress. If you’re acutely stressed or your tension is high, try a physiological sigh: a double inhale through the nose (one big breath and then a small sniff to fully expand the lungs) followed by a long, slow exhale through the mouth. Stanford research published in 2023 found this to be the most effective single breathing technique for rapidly shifting your nervous system state. It deflates the small air sacs in the lungs that collapse under stress and signals safety to your brain within seconds.

Why this matters long-term

Correcting your breathing pattern is one of the most underrated interventions for chronic neck tension. Not because breathing is magic, but because the pattern has real mechanical consequences.

Chronically overworked scalenes compress nerves. Chronically activated upper traps pull on your cervical spine. Shallow chest breathing keeps your sympathetic nervous system running. And all of it reinforces the tension pattern that brings you back to the chiropractor, the massage therapist, the physiotherapist — over and over.

You can’t stretch your way out of a breathing problem. You can’t adjust your way out of it either, long term. You have to address the pattern.

Start with five minutes of belly breathing today. Nose in, belly first, slow. That’s it.

Want more tools for your nervous system? Download my free guide here.

Disclaimer: This post is for educational purposes only. Please read the Disclaimer here.

How stretching is actually making your pain worse

Posted on March 16, 2026March 16, 2026 by Dr. Daina Patel

You may have felt an ache or pain and the first instinct you probably had was to stretch, right?

What if I told you that stretching is *probably* not the answer?

That it might actually be making your pain WORSE?

Hear me out for a minute.

What does stretching do for us?

When you feel pain, sure, stretching might temporarily feel good. It should! Stretching relaxes your nervous system and sends a different input so it can be a temporary distraction from the pain. It hits certain receptors in the area you stretch which then sends a signal to your spinal cord to the brain and may even release endorphins or oxytocin to make you feel good.

But as soon as you stop, the pain comes back!

Why tho?!

Because you still haven’t addressed the reason why the pain is there in the first place. By ignoring this, you continue to do (or not do) the thing that’s making you feel pain – whether it’s from poor movement patterns or body biomechanics, lack of movement, repetitive movement, etc.

So the longer you keep stretching and ignoring the reason you have the pain in the first place, the more that pain will continue to bother you. You will become more and more sensitive to pain, meaning you require less of the thing that causes pain for you to actually feel it.

I’ll also let you in on a little secret – your “tight” muscles might not actually be tight at all. They might be weak which makes them feel tight. This is most likely the case with the typical “tight” muscle. I know it doesn’t make much sense but I promise you that stretching a weak muscle will NOT help in this case. You have to strengthen it if it is weak.

I know you didn’t want to hear it but I can’t keep something this important from you.

What to do instead of stretching

If you start adding strengthening exercises into your routine instead of just stretching, you’ll get better faster and have longer lasting pain relief.

If you are already doing an exercise routine, workout, or getting in any movement that naturally incorporates stretching while ALSO simultaneously stregnthening (my fave is yoga for this), then you likely don’t really ever need to stretch.

Mobility exercises feel like stretching but they are actually adding movement into the joint (because movement comes from joints, not from tight muscles. So if you keep stretching to increase range of motion, you will never achieve it. Stretching a muscle doesn’t change it physiologically so you might temporarily feel an improvement but the reason the muscle is tight (aka protecting your joints or protecting you from further injury) has not been addressed so the muscle will just go right back to the same position as before you stretched it.

Adding gentle movement to the restricted joint which makes you feel like you have tightness in your muscles or like you are stiff or have reduced range of motion. This will increase mobility in your body, help you move freely, and feel less tight.

Did you learn something new? Send me a DM on Instagram here. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

P.S….I never stretch, I mobilize.

Read the Disclaimer here.

Can stress cause pain?

Posted on March 16, 2026March 16, 2026 by Dr. Daina Patel

In short, yes.

Keep reading to learn how and what you can do to reduce pain.

The Autonomic Nervous System

To understand the link between stress and pain, we have to talk about the autonomic nervous system. This system regulates our stress response.

There are 2 parts to this system: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.

The Sympathetic Nervous System

(aka the fight/flight/freeze response)

This is our first reaction to a stressful situation. It is extremely helpful when faced with a dangerous situation, like being faced with a bear.

Where this response becomes an issue is when it comes up in day-to-day situations like getting a stressful email, worrying about an upcoming work meeting, scrolling through IG, or wondering whether or not lifting that laundry basket will “throw out” your back again.

What initially happens when you feel stressed is the adrenaline starts rushing. This happens pretty instantly. You may notice this or you may not.

At about 10 minutes after the stressful situation, we start producing the hormone cortisol. Cortisol is important and we need it but when too much is produced or when it is constantly produced, that can lead to more inflammation. Inflammation leads to increased pain sensitivity so we tend to feel more pain.

Back to the question – can stress cause pain?

So YES, if you were wondering – can stress cause pain.

On top of that, when we feel stressed, we also tend to tense up our muscles, increase blood pressure, heart rate, etc. and lead to other long-term problems.

AKA nervous system dysregulation.

Short term this stress response is protective, but we don’t want this happening unless it’s absolutely necessary!

Long-term, this continuous response can lead to persistent pain (where it becomes hard to find pain relief), constant tight and stiff muscles, burnout, constantly feeling tired, and always being in fear of what will happen next AKA feeling anxious.

The Parasympathetic Nervous System

(aka the rest & digest response)

The rest & digest response is where you want to shift your body to when in a sympathetic (fight/flight) response. This is where you feel calm, can lower inflammation, reduce pain, and just feel overall more comfortable in your body.

As the name suggests, this is where our body can rest and digest our food.

In a true rest state, our body can actually heal. This is where you can eliminate toxins causing inflammation, reduce overall inflammation that is leading to pain and pain sensitivity, and actually start the repair process for any injuries.

Feeling stressed while you eat affects your digestive system, causes food to not properly be digested, reduces nutrients absorbed, and causes inflammation, all leading to pain!

How to shift from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic state

There are many things that can help us shift into a restful state. It depends on what you are willing to try and what you enjoy. What works for someone else may not work for you so I encourage you to try different things. The key is to be CONSISTENT regardless of what tools and techniques you use.

Stimulating the vagus nerve is the fastest way to feel a difference and shift from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic state.

*IMPORTANT NOTE: Remember that consistency is key because we are actually rewiring the nerves in your body. Telling them that you are safe. When your nerves are constantly firing and telling your brain there is pain or danger because you are constantly in a flight-or-flight response will take time to unlearn. This is why you want to keep repeating what you do on a daily (or more than once a day) to rewire the brain and have longer-lasting results. Only then will you see that you are less likely to tense up and feel more pain in the body after something stressful. We are working a muscle and it takes time and patience to train it and make lasting changes. So while you may feel temporary relief with these vagus nerve activities, remember to do them even when you are feeling good. Build that resilience. Train your brain.

Breathwork is one of the easiest ways to stimulate the vagus nerve and it doesn’t take very long. You can feel a difference in only a minute. Pair this with meditation (if you want) and get better results. Learn how to do either or both here.

I created a guide that you can download for free right here with some more of my fave ways to relax and it has kept me out of pain for several years!

Signs and symptoms of magnesium deficiency

Posted on September 21, 2019July 10, 2020 by Dr. Daina Patel

So, how do you actually know if you have a magnesium deficiency?

These are some of the signs and symptoms that may be related to magnesium deficiency:

Muscle cramps
Twitching
Charlie horses (intense cramping of the calf muscles)
Tight and stiff muscles
Reduced range of motion
Low bone density (osteoporosis, osteopenia)
Chronic pain

Here’s what you need to know about magnesium deficiency and why it’s so important for your health:

Up to 90% of North Americans may be deficient in this important mineral.
Magnesium is depleted in our soils so it is hard to get from food sources.
Magnesium is used in over 800+ functions in our bodies.
Without magnesium, your muscles cannot relax.
Stress and exercise will deplete magnesium faster.
Alcohol, certain medications, and supplements may reduce magnesium or interfere with absorption
Gut disorders, food sensitivities, or allergies may reduce magnesium absorption

Here are some foods that contain magnesium:

Nuts and seeds (almonds, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, sunflower seeds, cashews, brazil nuts, etc.)
Raw cacao powder
Dark leafy greens such as spinach, kale, swiss chard
Legumes (ie. peas, soy, lentils, etc.)

Source: https://www.dietitians.ca/Downloads/Factsheets/Food-Sources-of-Magnesium.aspx

Here are some other ways that you can get magnesium on top of food since food sources alone may not be enough:

Epsom salts bath
Magnesium oils or lotions
High quality professional supplements from your licensed healthcare practitioner

If you are experiencing some of the signs and symptoms of magnesium deficiency, speak to your healthcare practitioner today to find out what is best for you.

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Never make any changes to your health without speaking to your healthcare practitioner first. Never start a supplement without consulting your healthcare practitioner. There may be interactions with some supplements or medications. Please read the disclaimer.

How Orthotics can help

Posted on April 18, 2018August 5, 2021 by Dr. Daina Patel

Orthotics

There are many different types of orthotics out there. Different materials, different brands, different shapes and sizes. They can be inserted into shoes you already wear and can be interchanged depending on the type.

Orthotic companies offer comfortable options that can be made to fit a variety of different shoes and different activities. When you come in person for an assessment, I can recommend the best type for your needs. I really like the company The Orthotic Group for my patients.

How orthotics are made

They are completely customized to your own feet. There is usually a foam cast taken to get the basic shape of the foot while semi-weight-bearing, as well as a gait scan, which can capture the pressures and gait timing that are difficult to do with just the eyes. The gait scan is done while fully weight-bearing as well as walking.

What can orthotics help with?

The majority of people who need orthotics usually are overpronators or oversupinators, both leading to other issues, such as back, knee, foot, or hip pain. The way they can help these issues is by stabilizing your feet so that you can allow the joints to move as they should. This also allows for better distribution of weight throughout your other joints (back, hips, knees, etc) and also helps absorb some shock with any activities, such as walking, running, or jumping.

Orthotics may help with anything from foot/ankle pain to knee pain, back pain, and in some cases even neck pain and headaches! That just goes to show you how important our feet really are.

How do you know if orthotics are right for you? If you’ve had pain for many years and have tried various treatments, you may benefit from orthotics. If you know that you overpronate or oversupinate when walking, you potentially will need orthotics. It can easily be determined with a full postural assessment during an initial exam. Book one today with me to find out more information or get fitted for your orthotics.

*Disclaimer

I have knots in my muscles. Help!

Posted on September 12, 2017August 5, 2021 by Dr. Daina Patel

Knots in muscles are very common. There are many reasons that these knots form. It could be several things such as overuse, underuse, repetitive trauma, previous injury, not enough exercise, magnesium deficiency, not getting enough exercise, etc.

These knots are called trigger points. They can form in any and every muscle. These trigger points can be present both with or without pain. Sometimes they can refer pain elsewhere. There are certain trigger points that can seem like you have pain going down the back of your thigh, even though it is in your back. Some can feel like headaches behind the eye or the top of the head. There are even some that feel like a sore throat or tooth pain.

When you come in to see a chiropractor, they can determine whether or not trigger points are the source of your headaches, neck pain, back pain, etc. or whether they are caused by something else. If your pain is being caused by trigger points, there are several soft tissue techniques that can be used to treat them.

I am certified in NimmoEd and also use ConnecTx soft tissue techniques to treat my patients. To learn more about the soft tissue treatments and services I provide, click here.

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*Disclaimer

5 Easy Tips to Prevent or Ease Muscle Tightness

Posted on November 22, 2016August 5, 2021 by Dr. Daina Patel

5 easy tips to prevent or ease muscle tightness that anyone can include into their lifestyle.