This post introduces 3 ways your body has tension: the body’s central pathway, the lower center of the body, and the physical signals in our body.
By Valerie Briggs
A tight hip can change how the spine moves. A stiff upper back can hurt your neck movement. Emotional stress furrows your brow, clenches your jaw, makes your heartbeat faster.
You know your body is all connected but understanding how the spine affects full body movement is valuable for longevity, pain-free/pain-minimal living, and maintaining physical activity levels.
The Spine holds it all together as your body’s central pathway.
The spine is the body’s support system. It protects the spinal cord, supports your trunk, and houses the nerves that communicate sensation all the way to your toes. It allows you to bend, twist, walk, reach, feel temperatures, and sends pain signals to your brain.
Chronic stress often shows up in stiff muscles. Look in the mirror. Stop reading and go look. Is one shoulder higher than the other? Do you have a deeper frown line on one half of your face? Are both sides of your neck symmetrical or is one collar bone higher than the other?
Stiff muscles may need help to relax, whether it’s intentional stretching, adequate sleep and nutrition, taking meds at night, or going to a massage or body work appointment.
When the muscles don’t relax, they pull and push on the nerves, and may cause pain, stooped posture, and changes in the way you stand, walk, reach, and function. This is why chronic stress is often discussed in the medical world. Cumulative stress when studied with allostatic load, has been associated with cardiovascular disease and increased mortality risk. A 2022 systematic review and meta-analysis found that higher dynamic load was associated with a 22% higher risk of all-cause mortality and a 31% higher risk of cardiovascular mortality (Parker et al., 2022).
The Middle of Your Body, Where Left Meets Right
The spine sits in the middle of the body, and the energy pathway that runs along the midline and upward toward the head is an ancient energetic map referred to as the Governing Meridian, or Du Mai. Traditionally, the Governing Vessel is understood as the back body midline (Marshall, 2020). I use posture and expression as broader exploration of associated movement, activity, and experience of the modern body.
Everything is not related to fascia, or connective tissue. The muscles, nerves, blood vessels, and organs are all connected by fascia, however there is a much larger connection that often gets overlooked. A 2025 anatomical paper proposed fascia as a body-wide connective tissue system, while a 2026 critical appraisal argued that calling the fascia an anatomical system overreaches accepted terminology (Stecco et al., 2025, Sharkey, 2026).
The missing component that I theorize lies within our body’s connectedness and how the muscles, nerves, bones, and all parts connect to our energetic purpose, our intentional free will, and soul’s spark. These are different from anatomical structures.
2. We Lose Integration From Right Body to Left Body
One of the most interesting facts about the brain and the body is that the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, and vice versa.
Much of the body’s motor and sensory organization is contralateral: the left brain has a major role in controlling and processing information from the right side of the body, and the same for the right brain (Pauwels & Gooijers, 2023). Body imbalances between right and left are not uncommon, and they happen for a few reasons.
Brain disruption: from neurotransmitters, to synapses, the brain is complex and communicates across the midline constantly. There are potentially over 86 billion neurons in a single brain, and these neurons form huge networks of synapses that allow information to move within and between the brain. The gut has its own extensive signal network, with the vast majority of the body’s serotonin produced in the gastrointestinal tract (Najjar et al., 2023).
Humans often favor the R side of their body, collecting as many as 85-90% of people worldwide. We commonly overuse one side of the body, and our dominant side is usually the strongest in grip strength, leg strength, and coordination (Foley et al., 2025). These stronger muscles may pull the body to one side or the other, causing one side of the body to favor because it is dominant. Ever notice how you prefer to only cross one leg? Or always lean to the one side of the chair? This is the body favoring one side. Preference does not automatically cause postural imbalance, but repeated habits, pain, occupation, injury, and movement patterns can contribute to meaningful right-left differences.
Our bodies are smart in development, starting from infanthood, with basic development patterns regulating the right and left sides of our bodies and brains. We learn to roll to both sides; we learn to crawl using alternating right and left arms and legs.
Many yoga postures require both sides of the body to coordinate, sometimes symmetrically and sometimes through opposite arm and leg or rotational patterns. Bilateral movement itself depends on communication of the right and left brain hemispheres (Bajaj et al., 2025; Pauwels & Gooijers, 2023).
Hara is a Japanese word for abdomen or belly, and culturally it carries a deeper meaning. It is used to describe a person’s inner center, steadiness, resolve, and internal state. Hara is distinguished from a body part to a figurative mental or spiritual state (Hasada, 2002; Nagai & Hiraga, 2011.)
Hara, Heart, Soul, and Emotion: The Lower Center of The Body
Hara is related to emotional heart-mind (kokoro) with deeper grounding, instinct, resolve, and inner steadiness (Hasada, 2002).
In the framework I am exploring, the heart gives us language for feeling and emotional meaning and the Hara, or abdomen center gives us language for becoming grounded and anchored to our right and left sides. Looking at Japanese culture creates an interesting bridge to the modern study of how we notice and interpret sensations.
Interoception is the ability to notice signals coming from inside your body, on both right/left sides, and down the middle of the Governing Meridian.
Practice this awareness: place your thumb and first finger together on both hands, and extend all the other fingers, similar to the “ok” sign. Focus all of your mental attention to the sensation of the fingertips touching in the R hand. Notice and describe any sensations you feel: dull, sharp, warm, pressure, skin, vibration, etc.
Now shift your attention to the sensation in you L hand fingertips. Notice any changes from R hand to L hand.
This position in your hand is a sacred hand gesture, known as the Gyan mudra, traditionally associated with knowledge, wisdom, and meditative attention (Kumar et al., 2002).
By performing the practice of awareness above, you’ve begun to develop your somatic awareness of how an experience is felt in the body.
3. Physical Signals in Your Body: How Restrictions Cause Compensation
Somatic awareness is simply how you feel sensations in your body. For example, a clenched jaw or teeth grinding due to worry, anxiety, pressure, or something else, and it is this something else that somatic practices seek to define. Why is your jaw clenched, and why does it happen?
Interoception senses and interprets signals such as hunger, heartbeat, breathing, tightness, tension, fatigue, temperature, pain, restlessness, instability, and so much more. By exploring these sensations in a structured format, such as an occupational therapy visit, you notice how your body is whispering to you before it starts to shout that something is out of balance.
The Occupational Therapy Practice Framework specifically recognizes interoception as a body function involving awareness of internal bodily changes, while AOTA places sensory processing and self-regulation within the role of OT supporting participation in everyday life (American Occupational Therapy Association [AOTA], 2020).
A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis found that mind body therapies were associated with improvements in several measures of interoceptive awareness in adults with chronic pain, alongside reductions in pain intensity and interference. The authors caution more rigorous research is still needed, but the findings support the idea that learning to notice and interpret internal sensations may be a meaningful part of body based self-regulation (Gnall et al., 2024).
By exploring how these sensations are felt in the body, with the knowledge of how the Hara and physical symptoms are connected, you may feel gripping tension before the pain starts, or a tight area of one side of your body before the fatigue collapses the posture.
An exploration of body regions and how they compensate against imbalance.
The hips: tight rotation when pointing toes in or out to the sides, difficulty shifting weight, hitting your heels together when you walk, back pain that gets better with sitting, and holding your breath.
The shoulders: one shoulder higher than the other, difficultly reaching up into a cabinet, pain in the upper back or shoulder.
The neck: difficulty looking over the shoulder when walking or driving, holding head forward or down, stiffness and pain when turning head, and inability to relax the shoulders.
These observations are useful clues, but they are not specific diagnoses. The patterns matter more than each symptom. Each of these areas are connected to the midline of the body, the governing meridian, the spine, and the ribcage. If you experience anything described in this article, a skilled assessment may help you figure out the pieces to the puzzle.
In closing, the midline connection of the spine, governing vessel, and left/right balance helps to map out the body axis. The Hara centers our attention, presence, and intention. Interoception and somatic awareness allows us to notice the center and midline sensations and synthesize another way to explore personal wellness.
Visit www.kcsunflower.com to explore ways to work with this concept.
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References
American Occupational Therapy Association. (2020). Occupational therapy practice framework: Domain and process (4th ed.). American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 74(Suppl. 2). https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.2020.74S2001.
Bajaj, P., Nagendra, L., Bajaj, A., Samuel, M., & Chandran, M. (2025). Effect of yoga on balance, falls, and bone metabolism: A systematic review of randomized controlled trials in healthy individuals. Osteoporosis International, 36(2), 193–224. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00198-024-07307-x
Foley, R. C. A., Callaghan, D. H., Forman, G. N., Graham, J. D., Holmes, M. W. R., & La Delfa, N. J. (2025). A comprehensive scoping review and meta-analysis of upper limb strength asymmetry. Scientific Reports, 15, 4636. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-87413-w
Gnall, K. E., Sinnott, S. M., Laumann, L. E., Park, C. L., David, A., & Emrich, M. (2024). Changes in interoception in mind-body therapies for chronic pain: A systematic review and meta-analysis. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 31(6), 833–847. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12529-023-10249-z
Hasada, R. (2002). ‘Body part’ terms and emotion in Japanese. Pragmatics & Cognition, 10(1–2), 107–128. https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.10.1-2.06has.
Kumar, S. N., Venu, A., & Jaya, M. H. (2022). Effect of yoga mudras in improving the health of users: A precautionary measure practice in daily life for resisting the deadly COVID-19 disease. In Lessons from COVID-19 (pp. 41–59). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-99878-9.00001-7
Marshall, A. C. (2020). Traditional Chinese medicine and clinical pharmacology. In F. J. Hock & M. R. Gralinski (Eds.), Drug discovery and evaluation: Methods in clinical pharmacology (pp. 455–482). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68864-0_60
Nagai, T., & Hiraga, M. K. (2011). The case of hara ‘belly’ and koshi ‘lower back’ in Japanese: Inner and outer body parts. In Embodiment via body parts. John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.31.11nag.
Parker, H. W., Abreu, A. M., Sullivan, M. C., & Vadiveloo, M. K. (2022). Allostatic load and mortality: A systematic review and meta-analysis. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 63(1), 131–140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2022.02.003
Pauwels, L., & Gooijers, J. (2023). The role of the corpus callosum (micro)structure in bimanual coordination: A literature review update. Journal of Motor Behavior, 55(5), 525–537. https://doi.org/10.1080/00222895.2023.2221985
Sharkey, J. (2026). Fascia is not a system: A critical appraisal of terminological drift in anatomical literature. Clinical Anatomy. https://doi.org/10.1002/ca.70175.
Stecco, A., Theise, N. D., Stecco, C., et al. (2025). Towards a comprehensive definition of the human fascial system. Journal of Anatomy, 246(6), 1084–1098. https://doi.org/10.1111/joa.14212.