My Unpopular Opinion About Stretching
(And what I look at first instead)
by Giacomo Kyle Hatanaka, LAc, MAcOM | Hidden Summit Acupuncture
A lot of people are surprised when they come into our clinic with neck or back pain and I don’t immediately hand them a long stretching routine.
Not because stretching is bad (don’t worry, I’m not going to be that contrarian, wellness guy who just fights things for the engagement).
Sometimes stretching helps a lot.
But over the years, I started noticing something:
A lot of people who were stretching constantly?
They weren’t getting much better.
That’s usually a clue.
Because if a muscle keeps tightening right back up after temporary relief, sometimes the body is trying to tell you something.
Tight does not Always mean
"short”
This is the part most people never hear.
A muscle can feel tight for a lot of reasons:
- stress
- guarding
- poor sleep
- inflammation
- nervous system overload
- weakness
- instability
- breathing patterns
- pain anticipation
In other words:
sometimes muscles tighten because the body is trying to create protection and stability.
Not because the tissue needs to be yanked.
That’s an important distinction.
Why stretching sometimes
stops working
Most people know the feeling:
You stretch your neck.
It feels good for about 11 seconds.
Then the tension comes right back.
That’s because stretching often changes sensation temporarily without changing the reason the body created tension in the first place.
Imagine trying to relax an anxious person by physically pulling their shoulders downward.
Technically you lowered the shoulders.
But you didn’t actually make the person feel safe.
The body works similarly sometimes.
The surprising thing
I noticed clinically
Some of the people with the tightest necks and backs were not people who needed more intensity.
They were usually:
- exhausted
- overstimulated
- sleeping poorly
- highly stressed
- stuck in constant “go mode”
Their nervous systems were already acting like the world required permanent bracing.
And their muscles reflected that.
This is one reason a lot of high-functioning people around Boise feel temporarily better during vacations, slow weekends, or after finally getting a deep night of sleep.
The body softens when it no longer feels like it has to stay guarded.
I get it:
This sucks to hear
Most people hate hearing this “guarded nervous system” stuff at first.
Totally reasonable. I hated to hear it, too, when it was happening to me.
It’s much easier to believe the solution is:
- stretch more
- buy a new pillow
- get a massage gun
- up your magnesium
The alternative sounds frustratingly vague:
“So what… I need to relax more?”
Not exactly.
This isn’t about pretending stress is the only cause of pain.
And it’s definitely not about blaming yourself for being overwhelmed by modern life.
It’s just recognizing something important:
The body often tightens and guards when it no longer feels like it has enough recovery, safety, rest, or margin.
In other words: sometimes chronic tension is less about the body failing…
and more about the body trying to keep up for too long.
One thing I wish
more people understood
Your body is usually not fighting against you.
A lot of chronic tension patterns are actually the body trying (sometimes imperfectly) to protect you.
And when you start looking at tension that way, the conversation changes.
It stops being:
“How do I force my body to loosen up?”
And becomes:
“Why does my body feel like it needs to stay braced in the first place?”
That’s often the more useful question.
Where Acupuncture
Fits Into This
One reason acupuncture can work so well for chronic neck and back tension and pain is that it often helps people get out of that constant guarded state.
Not by “forcing” muscles to relax.
But by helping the nervous system stop acting like it’s under threat all the time.
That’s why people often say things like:
- “my shoulders finally dropped”
- “my body feels lighter”
- “I didn’t realize how much tension I was carrying”
- “I finally slept deeply”
Those shifts matter more than people realize.
Because once the nervous system calms down, the body often becomes much more responsive to everything else:
- movement
- exercise
- rehab
- stretching
- strengthening
If this sounds
familiar
If you’re in Boise, Meridian, Eagle, or Nampa and feel like your neck and shoulders tighten right back up no matter how much stretching, foam rolling, or posture work you do, there may be more going on than tight muscles.
At Hidden Summit Acupuncture in Boise, we look at both the structural and nervous system side of chronic tension and pain.
And for a lot of people, that combination is what finally helps things start changing long-term.
Giacomo Hatanaka is a licensed acupuncturist and co-owner of Hidden Summit Acupuncture in Boise, Idaho, where he focuses on pain, nervous system regulation, stress physiology, and helping overwhelmed high-functioning people feel like themselves again. He’s especially interested in why so many intelligent, capable people can function at a high level while feeling terrible almost all the time.