The Christmas and New Year rush is done. You’ve made it through the intensity of December – the social obligations, the late nights, and the constant activity. Now it’s January with hot and stormy days of summer rolling in, less clothes to wear, more aware of your body, and the perfect time to pay attention to what else your body needs.
Summer does something particular to how we experience our bodies. The heat opens things up – literally and psychologically. We move languidly on hot and sticky days, have less desire to rush and are more inclined to take it easy. This natural letting go that happens in warmer weather can help you notice where your body is probably holding more tension than you realise. Tight shoulders, a clenched jaw, your sore back – accumulated patterns from stress held and stuck in the body.
In this post:
- The gift of summer timing
- How stress lives in your body and why
- The difference between one-off treatments and regular care
- How bodywork supports your ongoing wellbeing
The gift of summer timing
January in Australia traditionally offers a slow start to the new year. Whether you’re lucky enough to have the whole month off or part of it, it is holiday time to enjoy the art of relaxation.
This summer interlude helps us to rest up and deliberate on a reset before we launch ourselves back into the new year of fresh activity and productivity.
This is a great time for bodywork. Your body has just been through the holiday gauntlet – physical exhaustion, emotional labour, disrupted sleep, too much food and drink, and constant low-level stress. All of that is in your body. Your nervous system is still in active mode even though the demands are less.
Summer creates the ideal conditions for your body to receive therapeutic touch. The warmer temperature relaxes muscles that have been braced for months, lessening resistance to let go.
And because it’s January, there’s also less guilt about taking time out for yourself.
Bodywork helps to reset the nervous system and release the accumulated tension of stress.
How stress lives in your body and why
Stress is still stored in the body even when the stressful situation ends. Your body remembers the emotions, sensations, thoughts and the triggers of those aroused stressful moments. These are like default settings and tend to show up in predictable ways:
- Shoulders that creep up toward your ears
- A jaw that stays clenched even in sleep
- Crunching your back teeth
- Shallow breathing that becomes your new normal
- Lower back pain from months of compensating
- Digestive issues from a nervous system stuck in alert mode
- Headaches from holding tension in your neck and scalp
These are not random symptoms. This is how your body manages threat – real or perceived. What’s a threat: challenges, difficulties, something that makes you uncomfortable enough to cause a response or reaction to happen – like the above symptoms.
During the holidays, these threats might have been social (difficult family dynamics), physical (exhaustion, overcommitment), or emotional (grief, loneliness, pressure to perform). Your body responds to this uncomfortable arousal by tightening, bracing, and preparing to go into response mode, like fight or flight or freeze.
The problem is that your body doesn’t automatically release these patterns once the threat passes. The tension becomes habitual. Your nervous system stays activated or vigilant, and this holding tension pattern becomes part of how you move through the world.
When you know that your tight shoulders aren’t just a physical problem but a nervous system response to stress, you can work with them differently. When you understand that your clenched jaw is connected to all the things you didn’t say during family gatherings, the release becomes more than just physical.
This is what I bring to bodywork – not just the technical skill of therapeutic massage, but a psychotherapeutic understanding of why your body holds what it holds. My background in Buddhist psychotherapy means I’m tracking both the physical tension and the emotional patterns that keep it in place.
The difference between one-off treatments and regular care
A single massage can feel wonderful. It releases some tension, you sleep better that night, and maybe you feel looser for a few days. But the patterns come back because one session can’t undo months or years of holding.
Regular bodywork – monthly or fortnightly sessions – does something different. It teaches your nervous system that it’s safe to let go. It creates consistency in how you care for your body. It catches tension before it becomes chronic pain. You discover a deeper satisfaction and appreciation of how to maintain yourself through a more regulated life approach rather than just how you respond to a crisis.
Your body needs consistent attention, whatever your maintenance level requires. Especially true for women whose bodies are doing significant work – growing babies, cycling through hormonal shifts, managing the physical demands of mothering, moving through perimenopause. These are ongoing stresses that again require an appropriate response to navigate and support your daily life.
Regular sessions also build a relationship between us. I get to know how your body holds stress, what patterns keep showing up, and what’s changing. You don’t have to start from scratch each time explaining what’s going on. We can work with the deeper patterns instead of just addressing surface symptoms.
How bodywork supports your ongoing wellbeing
Bodywork does several things at once:
It releases physical tension – the obvious benefit. Tight muscles get worked. Restricted fascia loosens and opens up. Your body moves more easily.
It regulates your nervous system. Slow, nurturing touch signals safety to your body. Your parasympathetic nervous system can actually engage. You shift out of fight-or-flight-or-freeze into rest-and-digest. This is relaxing and physiologically restorative.
It reconnects you to your physical boundaries. When you’re constantly in giving mode to others, be it work, family, or others’ expectations, you can lose track of where you end, and everyone else’s demands begin. Bodywork brings you back to the felt sense of your own body, your heightened awareness of your own needs.
Emotions can naturally surface as your body permits this softening process of letting things go. It reminds you that your body deserves care for its own sake, not just for what it can do for others. Especially in mothering young children, caring for aging parents, trying to conceive, or growing a baby. Your body isn’t just a vessel for other people’s needs. It’s yours.
What this looks like in practice
If you’re considering regular bodywork, here’s what I offer:
Monthly maintenance sessions where we work with your body’s patterns over time, not just crisis intervention when pain becomes unbearable.
A psychotherapeutically informed approach that understands why your body holds what it holds – the connection between physical tension and emotional patterns, between stress and somatic response.
Support for your body through different life stages – whether you’re navigating fertility challenges, pregnancy, the demands of mothering, or hormonal shifts.
A space where your body’s needs come first, where you don’t have to perform or explain or justify taking this time.
Choose your starting time
January is a good time to begin. After all of the holiday intensity, Summertime is creating the ideal conditions for release. Book a session. See how your body responds to slow, therapeutic touch. Consider what monthly care might offer you through the year ahead.