Ever notice that on a stressful day your stomach hurts and your shoulders hunch up making your neck tense? That's the impact of tension you are unconsciously creating in the front body. Ever have a busy, productive day and notice that by the end of it your low back is sore? Same idea, except now the unconscious work is happening in your back body.

Over time, these unconscious habits in how we use our bodies leave us less connected and aware on the inside, leaving us with patterns of muscle tension that seem outside of our control. Thomas Hanna called this Sensory Motor Amnesia (SMA) a literal forgetting of how to both fully use and fully release the muscles in an area of the body. These patterns can then lead to pain and to other types of discomfort such as issues with digestion, breathing or anxiety, etc, or mean we work extra hard to do things that used to seem easy, or can't move as freely as we used to.

While each of us is unique, 3 main patterns of tension show up in the physical body:

• In the front, as we protect ourselves

• In the back, as we take action, and

• In the sides, as we recover and compensate

This tension is controlled by our brains, but is often so unconscious that it feels like it is beyond our power to change. The good news is that these patterns can be changed, by re-educating our brains and reconnecting deeply to our bodies from the inside!