Why Do We Sometimes Cry During a Bodywork Session?

It is not uncommon for folks to feel into their emotions and cry during a bodywork session. Some of you have asked me why this happens, so the question has been sitting with me for a while. Insight and understanding have trickled in over the past few months.

A good place to start is with defense physiology. Defense physiology refers to the bodily changes and responses that occur when we perceive physical, environmental, or psychological threats.

Most of us are moving through life with some amount of defense physiology in place, especially if we have lived on this planet for several decades. Our bodies have responded to a fairly long list of events and situations they have deemed threatening. These experiences might include physical or emotional trauma, injuries, or prolonged periods of stress.

I remember a teacher of mine saying, “The body was not designed to be healthy, it was designed to survive.” I understand this statement to mean that survival is our strongest instinct. Health—physical, mental, and emotional—comes later on the priority list. Because, well, does it matter how healthy we are if we are dead?

Defense physiology manifests in our bodies as patterns of muscular tension, shallow breathing, hypervigilance, elevated blood pressure and heart rate, to name a few. Ideally, defense physiology turns on when it is needed and turns off when it is not. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work that simply. Many of us are running defense physiology quietly in the background while under the impression that it has been turned off.

Bodywork—especially the style that I offer (a blend of zero balancing, myofascial release, and craniosacral)—helps the body soften its defensive patterns. The body settles into the table, breathing slows and deepens, the mind quiets, the digestive system gurgles, muscles relax, and connective tissues soften. The nervous system has more capacity to regulate itself, and the body can function with less resistance.

Defense physiology can also defend us against ourselves—specifically, our own feelings.

The word emotion comes from the Latin emovere, meaning “to move out.” Emotions are somatic, meaning they are experienced in the body, and they are meant to move. There are times in our lives when we simply do not have the time, the space, or the capacity to fully experience and process what we are feeling. Those emotions remain unfinished. They have not yet “moved out.”

On the table, when our defense physiology begins to soften, sometimes those long-held emotions begin to move.

This movement may look different for different people. A memory may arise, with or without emotion attached to it. A single tear may stream down the face. Or there may be more noticeable physical expressions such as trembling, shaking, or full-on sobbing.

Of course, every person’s experience is different, and tears during bodywork do not always carry a deeper meaning. Sometimes they simply reflect a nervous system that has settled enough for emotion to be felt.

With the sword of our defense physiology put down, so to speak, our priorities shift. Without the immediate need to ensure our survival, we can move toward health and healing. Resources have been reallocated from funding war to funding well-being. (An interesting analogy could be drawn here, but that’s a subject for a different kind of blog.) The body, in all its innate wisdom, knows what to do with this windfall of resources, and it gets to work right away.

People often talk about needing to “let things go.” A friend of mine gave me a bumper sticker a few years ago that reads, “Let That Shit Go.” But what does that really mean? Maybe we are not meant to let go of every part of our past. Our grief may be inseparable from our love. Our memories are woven into who we are.

Perhaps what we are really letting go of is our defense physiology. We can let our guards down, let our nervous systems rest, let ourselves breathe again—maybe even cry again—while still honoring the memories that are part of this sacred and mysterious human experience.

So, if you find yourself on my table—or the table of another healing practitioner—and you notice yourself bracing against tears, it’s okay to soften, settle, and let them flow. Your body may be doing exactly what it has been waiting for the opportunity to do. Sometimes healing begins not by forcing something to happen, but by finally allowing something that has been waiting to happen all along.