Big Girl Panties Diaries - Entry #95: Pain with a Purpose: Why Change Feels Like a Deep Tissue Massage
I decided it was time for a deep tissue massage. Lately I’ve been struggling with neck and shoulder pain, the kind that tells you your body has been keeping score on all the stress you’re pretending not to carry.
This wasn’t the spa music and cucumber water kind of massage. This was the grit-your-teeth, breathe-through-it kind of session. Every press into a knot made me want to tap out. But I didn’t. I stayed with it. Because I knew what was coming.
The release.
Thanks to all my binding in hot yoga, I was well trained to just find space to breathe through it. I literally forced myself to breathe into the pain. In yoga, we learn to meet the bind with breath instead of resistance. The same skill carried me through the massage—and it carries me through change.
Because here’s the thing—real change feels a lot like a deep tissue massage.
It isn’t soft and soothing. It’s pressure on the places we’ve been carrying tension for too long. It’s uncomfortable conversations, hard decisions, and the relentless push to keep going even when you’d rather run back to the old way of doing things.
In organizations, leaders are a lot like massage therapists. Apply too little pressure, and the knots stay. Push too hard, and people tense up. The art is knowing when to lean in and when to let up. And just like in the body, one knot in the system can throw the whole team out of alignment—sometimes all it takes is working through one tough spot to unlock flow everywhere else.
At the end of my session, my shoulders felt a little lighter, my neck freer. And I was reminded: sometimes you have to go through the pain to get to the freedom.
Big Girl Panties Diaries Rule: Pressure creates release. Discomfort makes room for growth.
Turns out, freedom isn’t painless. It’s breath, grit, and the guts to stay on the table.
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