If your back feels tight no matter how much you stretch, especially across your ribs and under your arms, it might not just be muscle tension. It might be your body holding onto stress.
Your latissimus dorsi, that big, wing-shaped muscle, wraps around from the bottom of your ribs to your upper arm. It’s a powerhouse, but it’s also one of the first to tighten when life gets stressful.
Here’s what’s fascinating: this muscle connects directly with the Liver and Gallbladder meridians in Traditional Chinese Medicine. These meridians are all about flow — physically, emotionally, and energetically.
When life piles on — deadlines, decisions, emotions — your Liver and Gallbladder meridians can get blocked. Your emotions get stuck, and your “wings” literally clamp in.
So I recorded this, just for you.
Here are 3 ways this video might help you:
✅ Discover how pain can sometimes be your body’s way of holding old stories. Our muscles don’t just tense up; they store memories of how we felt in those moments.
✅ Learn how the Liver and Gallbladder meridians influence your posture, breath, and mood. And your lats? They step in to hold everything together.
✅ See how activating your vagus nerve can ease your tension and release stored emotions. Helping your body can unlearn that holding pattern.
PLUS A simple technique to help you open your “wings” again.
✨ When your back relaxes, your breath deepens, and your energy starts to flow again.
So tune in for this video to help your body release its story and old patterns of pain, so you can move back into flow.
Rather read the transcript?
Here it is…
Hi, friend,
Can I tell you a secret?
Sometimes pain isn’t just pain.
Your joints, your migraines, that tightness through your hips. They might be your body’s way of holding onto old stories.
Hello and welcome. I’m Sarah Gowans. I help busy women, busy people just like you. Ease muscle tension, calm stress, and feel more at home in their bodies.
In this month’s videos, we’re blending the wisdom of Traditional Chinese Medicine with the modern science of stress and the nervous system. Because when your body flows, your life flows too.
Our Body I Like A Library
You know, sometimes pain isn’t just pain. It can be your body’s way of holding onto old stories. We can think of our body like a library. Every stress, every trauma is a book on a shelf. But if the shelf is too full, in the body, those books spill out as pain.
So What Can We Do?
So what can we do?
We listen. Not really what most people would expect me to say, but in TCM, Traditional Chinese Medicine, we say that stuck liver chi, stores emotional stress, like frustration and anger, in our tendons and joints. That’s why pain so often shows up in our knees, ankles, and hips.
While the gallbladder runs right through our body, right up through to the side of our head, which explains why stress and trauma can also trigger headaches and migraines.
Different Language, Same Pattern
Modern science sees the same pattern. Trauma raises stress hormones like cortisol, lowering our vagus nerve activity and keeping our muscles locked tight in tension. This creates a feedback loop where our body feels like it’s stuck in danger even when we’re safe.
No, it’s not all in your head. It’s in your body, and your body is just asking to be heard, as I mentioned before.
A Gentle Technique:
So what do we do? We listen.
Here’s a gentle practice that you can try next time pain shows up in a joint, or as a headache.
- Pause… Don’t fight it.
- Place your hand gently in the area of the pain.
- Take a slow, deep breath and whisper: “I hear you. Thank you for showing me.”
Traditional Wisdom and Modern Science for Pain Relief
This simple act can do two powerful things.
Firstly, it can calm your calm, your nervous system. Your vagus nerve hears that signal for safety and responds. We all have a super highway inside our bodies that helps us release tension and calm our muscles.
It’s called the vagus nerve, and it helps activate your parasympathetic nervous system, the rest and digest part of your nervous system. When it’s stimulated, it helps you relax and calm the tension that’s running through your body, especially through your muscles and joints.
A Journey to Balance
Second. When your liver and gallbladder feel heard, they can return to their strengths. Be in balance and in flow.
Because healing isn’t always about pushing harder. It’s about listening softer. And your body, it’s been waiting for that kindness and compassion.
So the next time pain speaks, take a breath.
Place your hand on the part that’s bothering you and listen.
Your body will thank you.
So thank you for taking this moment for yourself. If this spoke to you, share it with a friend who could use a little more flow themselves this spring. And remember, you don’t have to carry it all on your own.
Breathe, stretch, and give yourself permission to bloom into balance this spring.
So from my heart to your heart,
Namaste.
Sarah xx
At Blossoming Me, we’ve worked with so many people who feel stuck in cycles of pain and frustration. But the key to lasting relief often starts with understanding your body, not just where you hurt, but why.
Book your appointment here:
(Step #1 Location: Turramurra; #2 Type: Remedial Massage / Cranio-Sacral Therapy; select Sarah as practitioner, then #3 select: Initial or Follow Up Treatment)
Interested in further reading?
Spring into Balance: Using TCM to Relieve Stress, Ease Tension, and Find Flow
Unlock Your Creativity, Courage, and Determination: Balancing Your Liver and Gallbladder Meridians
Clearing Your Gallbladder and Liver meridians, for Clarity, Courage, and Confidence
TCM Meridian Channels Made Easy: Unlock Hip Pain Relief
Headaches Holding You Back? Unlock Relief with TCM Insights!
About Blossoming Me
BlossomingMe offers a fully integrated approach to your wellbeing. Located on Sydney’s Upper North Shore. Sarah is our Cranio-sacral and Remedial Massage Therapist and health and lifestyle coach. She can help relieve those problematic knots, tightness and other specific ailments to promote a healthy recovery. These complementary massage therapies can be combined to suit your needs, and include: craniosacral therapy, shiatsu, acupressure, reiki, remedial, swedish, and body-mind-massage.
Our qualified Osteopath, Alexis, offers a drug free, minimally invasive, “hands on” treatment focusing on the musculoskeletal system with its associated muscles, tendons, ligaments, membranes, bones and joints. Alexis takes a functional approach. This means that she focuses on the way a component (body part, tissue or group of tissues) performs its role, as well as the way the body works, performs and integrates as a whole. Our team can support you to improve your posture and therefore your overall health.
ional advice or care. Please seek the advice of a qualified health professional before you make any changes to your health regime, before dealing with new symptoms, and, if something you have read here has raised any questions or concerns regarding your situation.