Emotional Body: Understanding Back Pain
Understanding Back Pain
Processing the burdens and fears stored in your emotional body.
Joint by joint theory states that beginning at the ground every other joint should be mobile. Our hips mobile(link to last article) making our lumbar vertebrae stable. Stable joints like your elbow have one range of motion but that does not mean that they can’t be effected by tightness in other parts of the body. Our bodies are brilliantly crafted and adaptable in so many ways that when the hips or thoracic spine become too tight the lumbar portion of our spine is often faced with the fallout of being destabilized.
Burdens and Fear
Processing, transmuting, and changing the way you move through life will change how your body moves through everything.
A lot of our issues here are set up in our lifestyle at 5 we head to kindergarten and begin our jobs as students to learn and the years we spend seated are detrimental to our core stability. I know my elementary school didn’t have ergonomic chairs and I venture to bet yours didn’t either. Fortunately rectifying movement inhibitions is always far easier than creating them as intention actions are always more powerful that passive encounters.
The Elusive Nature of Back Pain: A Spiritual and Emotional Perspective
Back pain is one of the most pervasive and perplexing health issues of modern times. It affects millions of people worldwide, yet traditional medical professionals often struggle to identify clear physiological causes, leading to widespread diagnoses of idiopathic (or unexplained) back pain. This difficulty in pinpointing a structural cause underscores the deeper truth: back pain is not merely a mechanical issue. Rather, it serves as a profound example of how unprocessed emotions and unresolved trauma manifest physically in the body. The works of pioneering physicians like Dr. John Sarno, along with influential texts such as Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine and Ideokinesis, provide compelling insights into the mind-body connection, demonstrating that back pain is often a psychosomatic condition rooted in suppressed emotional distress.
Back Pain and the Mind-Body Connection
Traditional medical models view back pain primarily through a biomechanical lens, attributing it to factors like herniated discs, spinal degeneration, or muscle strain. However, the frequent failure of medical interventions—including surgery and pain medications—to provide lasting relief suggests that physical abnormalities alone cannot account for chronic back pain.
Dr. John Sarno, a pioneering physician in the field of mind-body medicine, proposed that many cases of back pain stem from psychological repression rather than structural damage. In his groundbreaking work, Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection, Sarno introduced the concept of Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS), a condition in which repressed emotions—particularly rage, anxiety, and guilt—trigger chronic muscle tension, reducing oxygen flow to tissues and resulting in pain. Sarno’s work aligns with the growing body of research in psychosomatic medicine, suggesting that many individuals experiencing chronic pain are unconsciously using their symptoms as a defense mechanism to avoid confronting deep-seated emotional pain.
Trauma and the Somatic Experience
Peter Levine’s Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma expands on this idea by exploring how unprocessed trauma is stored in the body. Levine argues that when the nervous system is unable to discharge the energy from traumatic experiences, the body retains it, leading to chronic pain, tension, and dysfunction. This is particularly relevant to back pain, as the spine serves as both a literal and symbolic support system for the body. When individuals experience emotional burdens—whether from unresolved childhood trauma, suppressed anger, or chronic stress—the back often bears the weight, leading to tension and pain.
In many cases, individuals suffering from idiopathic back pain have histories of significant emotional stress, yet they may not consciously associate their physical symptoms with psychological distress. As Levine’s work highlights, trauma disrupts the body's ability to self-regulate, keeping individuals locked in a cycle of chronic muscular contraction and nervous system dysregulation.
Why Back Pain is an Elusive Problem for Traditional Medicine
One of the key reasons back pain remains a frustrating and often unsolvable condition for traditional medical professionals is that Western medicine tends to compartmentalize the body and mind. The biomedical model, which dominates modern healthcare, seeks tangible, physical explanations for ailments, relying heavily on imaging techniques like MRIs and X-rays. Yet studies show that structural abnormalities in the spine do not always correlate with pain. Many individuals with bulging discs or spinal degeneration experience no discomfort, while others with no discernible abnormalities suffer from severe pain.
This paradox challenges the reductionist approach of conventional medicine, which often dismisses psychological and emotional factors in favor of pharmacological or surgical solutions. However, when treatments like spinal fusion surgeries or opioid prescriptions fail to provide lasting relief, patients are left feeling hopeless, reinforcing the cycle of pain and emotional distress.
Scholarly research in parapsychology and psychosomatic medicine supports the notion that pain can be influenced by subconscious beliefs and past experiences. Studies indicate that individuals with chronic pain often have higher levels of suppressed emotions and unresolved trauma compared to those without pain. In this sense, back pain functions as a somatic metaphor, symbolizing the burdens and emotional weights an individual carries.
The Symbolic and Spiritual Meaning of Back Pain
From a spiritual perspective, the spine represents the core of personal strength and stability. Many ancient healing traditions, including Chinese medicine and Ayurveda, emphasize the role of energy flow in maintaining health. Blockages in the body's energy channels (such as the chakras or meridians) are believed to contribute to physical ailments. In this framework, back pain can be seen as an energetic imbalance resulting from unresolved emotions and psychological conflicts.
Each region of the back is associated with different emotional themes:
Lower back pain is often linked to financial worries, survival fears, or unresolved childhood trauma. It corresponds with the root chakra, which governs security and stability.
Middle back pain may signify feelings of guilt, repressed grief, or emotional wounds from the past.
Upper back pain and shoulder tension often reflect feelings of carrying too much responsibility, emotional suppression, or a lack of support in life.
By addressing these emotional and energetic imbalances through practices such as mindfulness, somatic therapy, yoga, and breathwork, individuals can often achieve significant pain relief without medical intervention.
Ideokinesis and the Power of Visualization
The concept of Ideokinesis, a movement therapy method developed by Mabel Elsworth Todd, emphasizes the role of mental imagery in improving physical function. Ideokinesis suggests that habitual thought patterns influence muscle tension and posture, reinforcing the idea that back pain can stem from unconscious psychological conditioning. By using visualization techniques to release tension and retrain movement patterns, individuals can create profound shifts in their physical well-being.
This approach aligns with neuroplasticity research, which shows that the brain has the ability to rewire itself based on thought patterns and mental focus. Chronic pain sufferers often develop maladaptive neural pathways that reinforce pain perception. By consciously altering these pathways through movement re-education and guided imagery, pain levels can diminish significantly.
Healing Back Pain Through Emotional Awareness
For those suffering from chronic back pain, a holistic approach that incorporates emotional processing, body awareness, and trauma release can be transformative. Some effective modalities include:
Somatic Experiencing (SE): Helps individuals release stored trauma through body-based techniques, restoring nervous system balance.
Journaling and Expressive Writing: Dr. Sarno encouraged patients to explore repressed emotions through writing, helping them uncover psychological conflicts contributing to pain.
Yoga and Breathwork: These practices facilitate emotional release, promote relaxation, and improve spinal mobility.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT): CBT can help individuals reframe negative thought patterns that perpetuate pain cycles.
Energy Healing Practices: Modalities like Reiki, acupuncture, and Qi Gong can help restore energetic balance, alleviating pain at a subtle level.
Conclusion
Back pain remains one of the most enigmatic and persistent medical conditions because it is not merely a physical issue but a deeply psychological and spiritual one. The inability of conventional medicine to fully resolve idiopathic back pain reveals a fundamental limitation in the biomedical model: the failure to acknowledge the profound connection between mind and body. As the works of Dr. John Sarno, Peter Levine, and Mabel Elsworth Todd suggest, chronic back pain often serves as a physical manifestation of unresolved emotions, suppressed trauma, and psychological stress.
By shifting our perspective and embracing a more integrative approach to healing—one that includes emotional awareness, movement re-education, and trauma processing—we can begin to unravel the complex web of pain and reclaim a more balanced, pain-free existence. In doing so, back pain becomes not just a symptom to be treated but a gateway to deeper self-awareness and healing.
Megan Sherlock is a wellness professional passionate about somatic movement and holistic healing. She combines her expertise in fitness, yoga, and nutrition with the transformative power of energy work to help clients reconnect with their bodies and emotions. Megan holds certifications in NASM CPT, RYT 200, CGFI, CNC, BCS, CF1, ViPR, TriggerPoint SMR, Usui Reiki Master, and PN1.