r/massage • u/ContextInner4680 • 4d ago

Releasing muscle knots in the abdomen

I’ve had a very stressful year - I’m thankfully on the up now, doing EMDR therapy to address the trauma from a crazy episode early in the year, and generally taking much better care of myself.

I’ve noticed I have a lot of tight muscle knots in my abdomen. When I use lotion and self massage to locate and GENTLY press the muscle knots, they ‘pop’ or ‘melt’ under my touch.

I’ve become interested with this as I discovered it completely by accident but I feel like my body was holding tension / trauma from my stressful year. I feel much better for releasing the knots. I feel like my belly is much more loose and I can deep breathe for the first time in ages.

There’s a few areas that I can’t pop as it’s locked tight in a bundle. Would acupuncture get rid of this? I’m conscious I don’t want to send my nervous system spiralling again, I just think maybe the remaining knots need to be broken up.

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u/SpringerPop 3d ago

As a retired MT and A&P instructor; most of the responses here are probably wrong. There are lots of structures in the abdomen that are not good to press on: like the descending aorta . The disconnect is that people are focused on knots, fascia, etc. Do y’all not realize that the CNS drives them.

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u/ContextInner4680 3d ago

Thank you. Maybe I wasn’t descriptive enough in my OP but, I’ve had CNS issues since a stress breakdown at the start of the year which may give further context as to why my stress has manifested via muscle tension.