What I notice right before someone starts crying on the table

If you’ve ever thought you were the only one who got a massage and ended up crying during it—you’re so not.

And you might even be surprised to find that I often feel it coming before you do.

Not because I’m trying to make it happen, not because I’m psychic or somehow know exactly what you’re feeling…

It’s simply because the body tells the story first.

One of the first things I pay attention to during a massage is your breathing.

Someone who has been chatting with me, holding conversation, or taking short, shallow breaths will suddenly take a very deep breath.

Or, it will switch. Someone who is deeply breathing will hold back the emotion coming up and start shortening their breaths in anticipation.

But at some point within the massage, your body might hit a good level of co-regulation (where two nervous systems essentially support the other in chilling tf out) and you might experience a physical shift where you can finally let go of something you’ve been holding on to for quite some time.

Breath is one of the quickest ways to see what’s happening emotionally. We often unconsciously hold our breath while holding stress, grief, anger, or overwhelm.

This is why when I give emotional release sessions, we focus so deeply on the breath. The breath alone can create space for things to shift inside you.

Essentially, when the breath finally starts moving, emotions can finally follow.

The other thing that often surprises people, is a question I get asked frequently:

“Can you feel the tension in my body?”

The answer is yes. You’re not making up what you’re feeling.

The other thing I can feel is the emotional tension.

You know when you’re around someone enough, that you start to memorize the little faces they make, and the little quirks they have?

Imagine that, but a massage therapist who has 11 years of hands-on experience with the body. There are a lot of patterns that are shared by people that we experience in the tissues.

So the energetic shift from one part of your body to the next I can sense. The way your shoulders are by your ears but your legs feel loose. Or when you’re basically a walking wall of cement—all of these I’ve seen time and time again and typically correlate with certain repressed emotions.

It’s important to remember that our bodies don’t hold tension because they’re broken.
They hold tension because, at some point, it felt safer to hold on than to feel.

And yes, I can feel when you do that.

This one is harder to explain, but the room itself feels like it starts to shift.

Like when you walk into a room and you can just tell something is off, or you can tell within a couple minutes whether the party you’re attending has the right “vibe” or not.

The room feels inviting.
Like it’s opening up a door for you to experience yourself in a way you haven’t let yourself before.

The nervous systems in the room begin moving from a place of survival to a place of safety.

And when we’ve spent years pushing through, staying busy, staying productive, and staying “fine”…

Safety can feel very emotional.

Because the body finally has enough space to process everything it never had time to feel.

So if you’ve asked yourself if it’s weird or abnormal to cry on a table, I would actually throw in the perspective that maybe something is finally going right.

That the body no longer has to work so hard, for so little safety. That you’re reconnecting with yourself. That you’re finally able to feel the grief, exhaustion, or overwhelm you’ve been stuffing down.

And that on this table, with my hands on your back helping to ease the tension you’re carrying, that you finally feel like you’re not carrying it all alone.

Even if you never get a clear reason, I always invite my clients to let the body put some of what they’re carrying down. To take that break.

It’s a privilege within my line of work to hold that space for you when it comes up.

Because—and I will die on this hill—healing isn’t always about fixing something.

Most of the time, it’s permission.

If you’re looking for this kind of permission, but intentional towards emotional release, I do offer in-person and online sessions for this specific purpose.

Learn more about online emotional release here.

Learn more about in-person emotional release here.

As always, so much love.

Tor