What if the way we hold it all together isn't strength, but vigilance disguised as strength?
What if the lifted chest, the tight stomach, the clenched hips, isn't power at all?
I didn't understand this before. How could good posture be weakness? How could holding yourself upright be distrust of your body?
But in experimenting with letting go, really letting go, and softening into movement, I've started to feel the difference.
There is tension. And then there is tone. There is gripping. And then there is support. There is bracing. And then there is trust.
For so long, I unconsciously believed that holding my stomach in, standing tall, tightening my core when I walked, that this was strength.
But muscles aren't designed to brace all day. At rest, they should be responsive. Alive. Relaxed, yet ready. Toned, not tense.
That subtle fear of letting your belly hang out. The unconscious engagement when you stand. The constant low-grade tightening so you don't look soft.
It's exhausting. And it's not neutral.
What is that always-on bracing doing to your nervous system? And in turn, what is your nervous system doing to your body?
It becomes a loop. A body that doesn't feel safe, bracing to protect itself. A nervous system that reads constant bracing as danger.
I think of the work of Esther Gokhale and the images she shares of indigenous communities with naturally upright posture. Their bodies look strong but soft. Lifted but not rigid. There's no hardness. No strain. No gripping.
That's midline trust.
Lately I've been practicing softening in everyday life. Letting my belly exist. Finding ease in my steps. Releasing the unconscious tightening in my thighs and hips. And noticing where I still grip. My legs. My pelvis. The rounding through my upper back and neck, years of hunching at a computer. Fascia adapting to protection.
So how do you undo years of habit? Years of unconscious bracing? Years of protective tone? How do you trust your body to hold you without forcing it?
For a while, when I stopped sucking in my stomach and just let everything be, it looked average. Lumpy. Uneven. Puffy.
And that was confronting.
But something started to shift. Especially since beginning block therapy, I've felt changes in pressure and tone through my abdomen. It hasn't always been comfortable. Sometimes tender. Sometimes painful.
But my belly doesn't feel like it's collapsing outward anymore. It feels like it's reorganising. Not from gripping. From integration.
What I've learned so far: breath is the beginning. Before body work, long slow exhales. Let the nervous system downshift. During body work, complete conscious exhales. Let tension drain. Afterwards, gentle breathing again. Integration. Safety.
The exhale is what tells your body: you are safe now.
Warm showers. Nourishing food. Warmth and comfort. Slowing down enough to feel.
Undoing protective tone isn't mechanical. It's relational. It's teaching your body that it no longer has to brace to survive. That softness won't mean collapse. That your midline can hold you.
And something else has been quietly unfolding. When I soften my own protective tone, when I stop bracing my stomach, gripping my hips, holding my breath, the atmosphere of our home shifts. Not dramatically. Just softer. Deeper sleep. Fewer sharp edges. Less restlessness.
It's made me wonder how much of what we call holding it all together is actually a mother bracing her own body. And how different things feel when that brace becomes trust instead.