Do We Hold Emotions in Our Tissues?
Have you ever had a massage or other form of bodywork and without any warning are suddenly full of emotion? (And not because it’s painful)
As a bodyworker with over 20 years of experience, I’ve witnessed this countless times. A client comes in for what they think is just a session for neck pain or back tension, but as we gently release the muscles and fascia, their body begins to tremble, their breath changes, and tears start to spill out.
And it wasn’t because we were talking about difficult memories or topics that were emotional. Usually we weren’t talking at all. And yet, more was released than just tension.
Ask almost any bodyworker if emotions are stored in the body, and you’ll hear a resounding yes. But what does science say about this? And why does this matter? Is it just a poetic metaphor, or are there real mechanisms at play?
What Science Can Tell Us
Science hasn’t fully mapped out “emotions stored in tissues,” but it has uncovered some powerful connections:
Emotions change the body. When we feel anger, grief, fear, or joy, our autonomic nervous system shifts. Hormones like cortisol flood the system. Muscles tighten or loosen. The immune system ramps up or down. Over time, chronic stress creates what’s called allostatic load — the wear and tear of carrying too much for too long.
Fascia responds to stress. Fascia, the connective tissue wrapping every muscle and organ, isn’t inert. (This is “new” science as I was taught in 2001 that it was inert!) Fascia is richly innervated and sensitive. Research shows it stiffens under chronic tension and adapts to mechanical and emotional load. The world of fascia is FASCINATING! I’ll definitely be diving deeper into this in the future.
Emotions change muscle tone. Studies have shown that when people are exposed to different emotions, their muscle activity changes, even at the level of reflexes. People also report feeling emotions consistently in certain body regions (for example, grief in the chest, fear in the gut).
Trauma leaves patterns. Large studies on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) show that emotional pain in childhood leads to higher rates of illness in adulthood. Trauma doesn’t just affect the mind; it imprints itself on physiology.
Somatic therapies are showing promise. Modalities like Somatic Experiencing and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy have growing evidence for reducing PTSD and chronic pain, not by talking alone, but by helping the body complete defensive responses and return to safety.
Science confirms this much: emotions shape our tissues and physiology through nervous, hormonal, and immune pathways. What it hasn’t yet proven is how those patterns may linger in tissues until the right conditions allow release.
How Therapists and Bodyworkers Explain It
Psychology has long recognized the “somatic marker hypothesis” — the idea that bodily signals influence how we think, decide, and feel. Somatic therapists go a step further, describing trauma as “unfinished survival responses” that live on in posture, breath, and muscle tone.
Yes, the way you carry your body and how your muscles contract could be determined by the emotions or trauma you’re storing in your body. Which makes sense. What happens to your posture when you feel sad? We slump forward, our head hangs forward, we shuffle our feet when we walk. This posture can stay with us even if we’re not actively feeling the emotion. But if it’s still buried in there, it’s impacting the pathways that are telling our body how to move.
From a bodywork perspective, release often comes when tissues soften, circulation returns, and the nervous system shifts into parasympathetic safety. That’s when tears, trembling, or laughter will emerge — not because we just dug into a sore spot, but because the body finally felt safe enough to let go.
Our bodies don’t lie. They remember. And with the right support, they can also let go.
Ancient Wisdom: Maps of Emotions in the Body
Long before neuroscience labs, ancient systems of medicine described the ways emotions live in our tissues.
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM):
Liver – Anger, frustration
Heart – Joy (or overexcitement)
Spleen – Worry, overthinking
Lungs – Grief, sadness
Kidneys – Fear
In TCM, to address any dis-ease in these organs, you want to also look at the emotions. If you’re struggling to keep your lungs healthy, it may be because you have unresolved grief. Or if you have a sluggish liver, it may be because you have unprocessed anger.
A blockage in any of these areas not only affects that specific organ, but can also act as a block and impact the entire rest of the body.
For instance, In his book When The Body Says No, Gabor Maté gives evidence that for many women, breast cancer is related to repressed anger.
TCM actually explains why this would be! The Liver is closely tied to the emotion of anger, and when that anger is suppressed, it’s believed the Liver’s energy — or qi — becomes stagnant. Because the Liver meridian also flows through the chest and into the breasts, this stagnation can show up as problems in breast tissue over time. From this perspective, repressed anger doesn’t just affect mood — it can also create physical blockages that impact health.
Ayurveda:
Ayurveda is the oldest practiced medicine and it also takes into account how emotion impacts the overall body:
Vata imbalance → fear, anxiety, agitation (often felt in the nervous system, joints, and colon)
Pitta imbalance → anger, irritability, intensity (often manifesting in the blood, skin, and digestion)
Kapha imbalance → grief, heaviness, withdrawal (often showing up in the lungs and tissues that retain fluid)
Isn’t it interesting how these two ancient medicines line up with each other?
These maps weren’t meant to be rigid “rules,” but ways of noticing patterns: when an emotion repeats, the body tends to express it in consistent ways.
Science Is Catching Up
As research on fascia, interoception, and psychoneuroimmunology deepens, it becomes clearer that the body and mind are not separate. The pathways are there and science is growing.
I believe ancient systems like TCM and Ayurveda were observing truths that science is only now beginning to validate — that emotions and tissues are intimately linked, and that healing requires us to honor both.
Why This Matters for Healing
If emotions are stored in our tissue, then addressing our physical health means addressing our emotional health.
This was something I was taught years ago in Massage School. I remember one of my teachers telling us that if we had a client who had pain that kept moving—first it was in the low back, then it moved to the mid-back, then it was in the right hip—then it might be stemming from stuck emotions. That’s not always 100% the case, but quite often it is!
Ignoring the body means ignoring a vital piece of emotional health. Talk therapy is powerful, but for many people, healing also needs to include the physical patterns that were left behind.
Bodywork, somatic therapies, and nervous system regulation give us tools to gently unwind those patterns. They remind the body it is safe again.
And in that safety, release becomes possible.
This is why I use techniques like Aroma Freedom Technique and EFT Tapping in my membership. Addressing the pathways we get stuck in has a huge impact on our overall health, not just our mental state. I’ve seen it in myself and I’ve seen it over and over again in my clients.
For more information on my membership, CLICK HERE.
October in Rooted + Rising, we’re learning about the Immune System + Nervous System connection and how to stay healthy this season.
If you want a simple technique to help you release tension in your body, I filmed a great video for you. It’s a simple exercise that calms the nervous system and helps you to find calm.
