Where Your Body Stores Stress, and How to Release It After 40
You used to be able to handle so much stress in your life and just keep going. Now your shoulders are permanently up around your ears, your sleep is unreliable, your digestion has opinions it never used to have, and none of it traces back to anything specific that happened this week.
Dr. Carli Axford, a chiropractor with 30 years of clinical experience and the founder of the Spinal Flow Technique, has a theory about why: your body may be holding the physical residue of stress it never got the chance to finish processing, some of it decades old.
This is for you if you've been thinking:
I used to be able to handle so much more than I can now, and I don't understand what changed.
I have a knot between my shoulder blades that has been there for years and no massage ever fixes it.
My digestion started acting up in my forties and every test comes back normal.
I'm exhausted all day and then wired the second my head hits the pillow.
I've heard people say the body stores stress and I want to know if there is anything physiological behind that or if it's just a saying.
I don't feel especially stressed right now, so I can't figure out why my body is acting like I am.
I've been told my back pain is from bad posture, but it started around the same time as a hard year in my life.
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What "Your Body Stores Stress" Actually Means
Carli's explanation starts with a reframe of a phrase you have used a hundred times. When something happens that you cannot deal with, you put it to the back of your mind. She argues that the back of your mind is not a metaphor. It's your spine.
Here's the physiology she walks through. Your brain sits inside bone, which tells you how much your body values it. Pull the brain out and it comes attached to the spinal cord, one continuous organ, with nerves branching to every organ, cell, tissue, and muscle you have. Surrounding that spinal cord are 33 movable vertebrae. When your nervous system detects a threat, whether that's a genuine emergency or your inbox, it moves you into fight or flight. The signal starts in the brain, travels down, and the vertebrae lock together to brace you. Digestion slows. Reproduction goes on hold. Everything reroutes toward running.
That response is supposed to be temporary. The problem is what happens when you never come back. Carli describes the body making a deal with you: I can't process this right now, so I'll hold it, and you come get it later. For a lot of us, later never comes. The bracing stays. And she is careful to say she cannot separate bone from nerve from muscle from organ in this, because they function as one integrated system. What she can say is that the holding pattern starts in the brain and shows up everywhere else.
The Three Kinds of Stress, and What They Feel Like
Carli separates stress into three categories: physical, chemical, and emotional. Physical stress is the bending, twisting, lifting, and impact your body absorbs. Chemical stress is anything coming in that your body cannot process through its normal channels, including pesticides, alcohol, caffeine, medications, and also viruses and bacteria generated internally. Emotional stress is any experience that carried more feeling than you could metabolize at the time.
The interesting part is that she says they feel physically different under her hands. Chemical stress sits closer to the surface and feels squishy, which she describes as marshmallow-like. Emotional stress sits deeper, right at the spine, and feels ropey and hard. She also maps stress to seven regions of the spine, which she calls gateways. Physical trauma tends to settle low, around the pelvis. A painful memory tends to settle in the thoracic spine, behind the heart.
Over years of practice, she kept seeing people arrive with digestive complaints, irritable bowel, Crohn's, gluten problems, and finding a blockage in the lumbar spine. But when she felt deeper, the older pattern was in the thoracic spine, behind the heart. Her interpretation is that when one region locks up, another region compensates and takes on more load. The place that hurts is not necessarily where the problem started.
A note on evidence: some of this is established physiology, the fight or flight response, the nervous system's control over digestion, the way compensation patterns develop. The mapping of specific emotions to specific spinal regions comes from Carli's own clinical observation across three decades, not from published research. She is upfront that she works from what she feels and sees. Take it as a practitioner's pattern recognition rather than a proven mechanism, and see whether it matches your own experience.
Why It Catches Up With You in Your 40s and 50s
The short answer is that it is cumulative. Carli tells the practitioners she trains to go feel a two-day-old baby's spine so they know what a body with no stored stress feels like, then feel an adult spinel. Her description is that the way the body stores stress is like the layers of an onion. Layer on layer on layer, plus all the secondary compensations that build up around each layer.
Then perimenopause arrives and removes some of the cover. Carli's framing is that fluctuating and declining estrogen and progesterone act like a mirror. For years your hormones were smoothing things over and letting you push through. When that support changes, your resilience drops and everything you have been carrying becomes visible at once. This is why women often describe midlife stress as a new problem when it is more accurately an old problem you can finally feel.
She is also direct about the fact that being good at handling stress is not the same as recovering from it. You can cope beautifully, mentally, for decades while your body never gets to complete the cycle. That gap is why so many capable women say they are not stressed while their bodies are clearly reporting otherwise.
How to Tell a Pulled Muscle From Something Older
Jessica asked her a question you have probably asked yourself. There's a knot between my shoulder blades. Is that from my workout, or is that emotional?
Carli's answer is refreshingly practical: use time. A physical injury, a strain or a sprain or a small tear, has a healing timeline. It might stick around four, five, six weeks, and then it goes. It does not hold a story and it does not change your nervous system. If you trace the same spot back and realize it was there a year ago, and a few years before that, you are looking at something older.
Her second suggestion is to ask the area a question. In a calm moment, during breathwork or afterward, put your attention on the spot and ask how it makes you feel. Sometimes nothing comes. Sometimes there's a flood, or a specific age, or a memory you had not thought about in years. She frames that as giving the area a voice, and says that noticing it is sometimes the whole intervention.
Worth saying plainly: not every symptom is stored stress. If something is new, worsening, or accompanied by anything alarming, get it looked at medically. Carli emphasized the importance of having a medical team lined up.
What to Do About It, With or Without a Practitioner
Carli's honest bias is that this is easier with a practitioner. Her preference is a Spinal Flow Technique practitioner, and there is a directory on her site to find one near you. But she was notably unwilling to tell you a chiropractor is better than a physio or an osteopath. Her actual advice on choosing someone is about the human, not the credential. Find the person you trust, whose explanation makes sense to you, and whose presence lets your nervous system settle when you talk to them. Call a few. Notice how you feel. That is the criteria.
For everything you can do on your own, her answer is breath, and she knows how that sounds. Her argument for why it is not throwaway advice: when you are in fight or flight, your sympathetic nervous system is running the show and your body is storing stress, not releasing it. It is not doing repair work because it does not believe it is safe enough to. Breath is the fastest available switch into the parasympathetic state, where healing and digestion actually happen. Cut your finger and it heals on its own. That capacity is always there. It just needs the right conditions.
Practically, she suggests bringing breath and attention through the whole length of your spine rather than only into your chest, and moving each vertebra, since the spine is a continuation of your brain. It takes minutes, not an hour. You can do it in the car, on a walk, or at your desk. Her closing point was less about technique and more about permission: you are the one deciding your body matters enough to spend five minutes on.
FAQs
Where does the body store stress?
According to Dr. Carli Axford, a chiropractor with 30 years of clinical experience, stress is stored in the spine and nervous system rather than in any single tissue. When the brain detects a threat, it signals the vertebrae to lock together as a protective bracing response, which in turn affects the muscles, nerves, and organs connected to that region. She identifies seven regions of the spine, which she calls gateways, and observes that different kinds of stress tend to settle in different places. Physical trauma often settles low, around the pelvis. Emotional experiences that were not processed at the time tend to settle in the thoracic spine, behind the heart. Because the nervous system, spinal column, muscles, and organs work as one integrated system, stress stored in one region typically produces compensation and symptoms in others.
Why does stress affect my body more after 40?
Two things happen at once. The first is accumulation. Stress that was never fully processed does not disappear, it layers, and each layer produces compensations in the regions around it, so the body has progressively less capacity to adapt. The second is hormonal. During perimenopause, estrogen and progesterone fluctuate and eventually decline, which reduces the nervous system's resilience and removes some of the buffer that let you push through for decades. Dr. Axford describes this as a mirror: the stress load was always there, and the hormonal change is what makes it visible. This is why many women experience midlife stress as a sudden new problem when it is more accurately an older accumulation they can finally feel.
How do I know if my back pain is physical or emotional?
Use the timeline. A physical injury such as a strain, sprain, or muscle tear has a healing curve. It may persist for four to six weeks and then resolve, and it does not alter your nervous system or hold a pattern. If you trace the same spot backward and find it was present a year ago, and several years before that, Dr. Axford considers that a sign of stress stored over a longer period rather than an acute injury. She also suggests putting your full attention on the area during breathwork and asking how it feels, since a specific memory, age, or emotion sometimes surfaces. That said, any pain that is new, worsening, or accompanied by other concerning symptoms should be evaluated medically first.
What is the Spinal Flow Technique?
The Spinal Flow Technique is a gentle, non-invasive method developed by Dr. Carli Axford, a chiropractor with more than 30 years of clinical experience, and now practiced by thousands of certified practitioners internationally. The practitioner assesses posture and movement, then uses light touch along the spine to locate what Axford calls blockages, areas where movement is restricted and stress appears to be held. She describes distinguishing chemical stress, which feels superficial and soft, from emotional stress, which feels deeper and more fibrous. The intent is not to adjust or manipulate the spine but to facilitate the body's own capacity to release stored stress patterns. It is worth noting that this framework comes from Axford's clinical observation and training program rather than from published clinical trials.
What can I do at home to release stored stress?
Breathwork is Dr. Axford's primary recommendation for anyone without access to a practitioner, and the mechanism is straightforward. When you are in a sympathetic fight or flight state, your body prioritizes survival over repair, which means it stores stress rather than processing it. Deliberate breathing shifts you into the parasympathetic state, where digestion and healing actually occur. She recommends directing breath and attention along the full length of the spine rather than only into the chest, and adding gentle movement so each vertebra moves. This takes minutes rather than an hour and can be done sitting in your car, at your desk, or on a walk. Consistency matters more than duration.
Meet Dr. Carli Axford:
Dr. Carli Axford is the founder of the Spinal Flow Technique, a globally practiced healing modality designed to support the body's natural ability to heal through the spine and nervous system.
With more than 30 years of experience in chiropractic care and holistic healing, she is recognized internationally for her expertise in stress, trauma, and nervous system regulation.
She has trained thousands of certified practitioners worldwide and founded both the Spinal Flow Certification Program and the Free To Be She Foundation. Her book Awaken Your Spinal Flow is forthcoming from Hay House in May 2027.
Connect with Dr. Carli Axford:
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Jessica Long (00:01)
You've probably heard that the body stores stress or that emotions get stuck in there somewhere. But where do we store it? How do we store it? And if it's stuck in there, how do we get it out? Today I'm talking with Dr. Carly Axford. She's a chiropractor with more than 30 years of clinical experience. She developed the spinal flow technique and she's trained thousands of practitioners around the world in this technique. So she's had her hands on a lot of spines. And here's what she said: when something happens that we can't deal with,
We say we're putting it in the back of our mind. Carly says the back of your mind isn't a figure of speech. It's your spine. That's where it goes. Hmm. Okay, interest peaked. Let's hear what she has to say.
Jessica Long (00:45)
Hello, my friend. You are in the right place. This is where smart and sassy women over 40 come to figure out all things midlife. We talk hormones, careers, relationships, and everything in between. I'm Jessica Long, health coach and fellow midlife woman on this wild ride with you. Stick around for honest conversations with experts, rebels, and wise women rewriting midlife on their own terms. Let's dive in.
Jessica Long (01:09)
Quick reminder before we start, I am not a medical provider. This episode is for education and general information and is not medical advice. Please talk with your healthcare provider before making changes to medications, supplements, or beginning any treatment. And as always, guests are here to share their own expertise and perspective. It doesn't necessarily mean we agree on every detail, just like you and your partner. Am I right? Okay, let's get on with the show.
Jessica Long (01:34)
I am very excited to dive into this whole topic of how and where our bodies store stress and how we can release that. So Dr. Carly Axford, thanks so much for coming on the show today.
Dr Carli Axford (01:46)
Thank you for having me. It's good to be here.
Jessica Long (01:48)
Good to be here here. I don't even know where here is 'cause we just decided that you're in tomorrow for me.
Dr Carli Axford (01:55)
Here right now looking at each other speaking in a whole different part of the world, I think.
Jessica Long (02:00)
We're in a different dimension. All I know is that you're in the future.
All right. Well, let's let's get into the meat of our conversation. So we've all heard this phrase, the body stores stress, but I think it's kind of nebulous. And a lot of us are wondering, what does that actually mean physiologically? How and where do our bodies store stress?
Dr Carli Axford (02:24)
Ask me that because this is something that I really want people to understand because right now there is so much stress in our world. There's physical stresses, chemical stresses and emotional stress. And a lot of us have normalized it and said, you know what, that's okay.
Gonna keep going, but reality is our body is so smart and clever and says, you know what? If you can't process that right now, I'm gonna store that and I'm gonna keep it for later. And the runahow sometimes we go, I can't deal with that. I'm gonna put that to the back of my mind. The back of
Is our spine, our nervous system, the brain, the spine, it's like the master controller, and that part says, No problem, I'm gonna store stress for later. And where it stores is what I call one of the seven gateways, one of the seven regions of the spine, and says, I've got you, I'm gonna hold this right here, and when you're
You've got time, we can find it, we can move it, and we can release it. So it's just saying, you know what, I've got it. But what happens with so many of us? There's no later, there's no coming back, and If we look at the brain, I talk so much about the mind and body and the brain and the spine, but if we actually just picture it, we've got our cranium here. So that's the brain, it's surrounded by bone. The fact that it's surrounded by bone makes you think the body thinks it's pretty important. If you actually
Pull that brain out, it's going to attach to this spinal cord. One organ, it just comes out, and that spinal cord has nerves that come out to every organ, cell, tissue, and muscle of the body. But surrounded by that spinal cord is 33 movable bones, 33 movable vertebrae, that's a spinal column. And that's the place in one of those seven regions of the spine, from the top to the bottom, the body says, You know what? I've got
Sometimes if it was a painful memory, it might store behind the heart in the thoracic spine, which is I call the center gateway. If it's physical trauma, like you know, bending and twisting, it might store in the foundation gateway, which is at your pelvis. But it's just storing there to say, I can't process it right now, but please get to it.
Jessica Long (04:40)
Okay, so are you saying it's stored in the bones or in the nerves or in the spinal cord? Like can you get really specific for us?
Dr Carli Axford (04:50)
Can get really specific and tell you that we're an integrated system that works together, and there's probably no way I can separate one part because every nerve talks to a muscle, talks to a bone, and they all connect together. But
If we start with the nervous system, because the nervous system's the boss, that's the master, the controller, that's what tells us what to do. And if there's stress, stress is like I need to really protect the body. So if a stress is coming in, the nervous system, which is the brain, spinal cord, the nervous system is gonna detect the stress and think, I'm
Safe right now. And if I'm not safe, or I've done this stress before, similar to if you were in the wild and there was a tiger coming, the body would brace into fight flight. That is a nervous system response. So it starts with the brain and then it talks to the spinal cord, the vertebral column, therefore the muscles and the system. So what happens is the brain says, fight, flight.
There's a threat, there's a stress. The physical stress, chemical, physical, and emotional, is turned into our daily tigers. What happens is that holds us together. It's going to actually lock, it's going to send a signal to the brain, starts up here in the brain. It's going to come into the vertebra lock it together to hold us. That in turn is going to talk to the nerves and the organs to say, you know what? Under stress, not time to digest, not time to reproduce. It's actually really time to run. But that's where.
I can't separate brain, spinal cord, the response of the muscles, the guarding together, and the response of every organ system because it works together and it works beautifully to say we're all holding. So it's kind of like chicken and egg, like what came first for me.
I believe it's the brain. The brain senses the threat, it holds us together. Once we're held together, everything says, I get it. I'm going to actually put everything on hold for the stress. But then what happens is if we don't come back, we stop functioning how we need to function.
Jessica Long (07:06)
So
you mentioned as an example that if we had an emotional experience that we were not processing in the moment and that our body was gonna store it, it might store it near our heart region. So the thoracic spine. How might that show up for us? what would we feel as a clue to know that we're holding stress in our thoracic spine?
Dr Carli Axford (07:32)
that you've said that because a lot of us are holding stress in our thoracic spine behind our heart that we've had for a really long time.
Like actually as a little a little girl, little boy, like a painful memory that we weren't able to process. And we can talk about big trauma, you know, big abuse and trauma, but we can also talk about Mum said up you're not coming to a supermarket with me, or Dad said, Not now, because we can't grade small and big trauma. If there's a painful memory that we can't process, that was store in the thoracic spine. But we haven't been taught what that feels like. So many of us keep going.
Keep going, keep going in life because we don't know that it's been stored there, or the body's not going to show you. What I saw in my practice year after year after year after year was that was a primary stress in the spine, the emotional stress which was in the thoracic spine. But what a lot of these people were coming in with was digestive issues in the lumbar spine. Because if you can imagine the spine as a whole, if there's a blockage in one region, what's going to happen in the region below is going to compensate more.
On more body weight, more compensation. So, what I saw very early on was that a lot of people were having digestive issues, irritable bowel, Crohn's, problems with gluten. So they were coming in with digestive issues. But when I was having a feel of their spine, I realized that that's secondary. There's definitely a blockage in the lumbar spine, which I call the power gateway. But actually, if I feel deeper, it's a thoracic spine. That's when it starts. When we get to older, older, older, and the body's
Compensated, sometimes you can see a forward bend. So sometimes there's a thoracic spine which is a forward bend, which is called a kyphosis, and I call that a hiding of the heart. Sometimes we can have a sidewards bend this the other way, which is a scoliosis, and sometimes that's what I feel is a protection of the heart. And so depending on how much stress is in there, the thoracic spine, the cage, can really go into a holding and
And sometimes it's seen, not felt, and we have to also know what people are. Some people are so busy in their worlds, they just keep going, quit going. Other people might feel a shortness of breath, they might feel less movement, they might feel less energy, problems with their sleep. It doesn't mean they're gonna feel a trapped emotion. The body will show it in a different way, maybe a whisper, maybe a scream. But earlier on, I did see it a lot with.
with my people lower down as a secondary with digestive issues in the lumbar spine or back pain.
Jessica Long (10:17)
and we've talked about that on this show before, where the where you're feeling pain is not necessarily where the actual problem lives. And that's to your point from earlier, we're holistic beings, our body compensates. It's smart, it's trying to protect us. So it makes sense. But tell me more about how you identify stress in the spine. So in that person that you are using as an example who's presenting with digestive issues, but then you notice there's a blockage in their thoracic spine, how do you
See that. what is your technique?
Dr Carli Axford (10:49)
I started as a chiropractor, and then I started to really specialise in stress. and then years, years later, I've developed the spinal flow technique. And so for me, the only thing I've done in my life is put my hands on people's spines on their backs and actually have a feel. So it got to a stage where I could feel what's moving and what's not. for chiropractors, we really like the spine to have beautiful movement. A vertebra is designed
To move. So we want to make sure that all the vertebrae are moving. So that's one sign. If there's a little bit of stuckness in a vertebra as a blockage, there's a sign that there's stress stored. But that could be primary, that might be just the first stress. After years and years of accumulated stress, what happens is you start to see a pattern. You start to see that there's layers of chemical stress, physical stress, and emotional stress. And how I see it, but I feel it as well. So as soon
As I speak to someone, I see them, I analyze their posture. I have a look at where there's flow. That's why I've created spinal flow. I have a look at where there's flow, what's happening with their head, what's happening with their shoulders. Is there movement? Are there parts of the spine speaking one language, other parts speaking in the other? And then when I have a feel of their spine, I can feel when there's chemical stress in the body. It feels more squishy, a bit like a marshmallow. I can
Jessica Long (12:10)
Can you give us some examples of chemical
stress so people know what you mean by that?
Dr Carli Axford (12:14)
Chemical stress is the stuff that's coming in your body that your body doesn't like. It could be chemicals, pesticides, it could be the alcohol, the coffee, the drugs. The body just says I don't really know what it is. I can't process it through the normal channels, so I'm gonna store it. It also could be, you know, virus, bacteria, it could be coming from the inside, it can be coming from the outside. And the body can hold it in a marshmallow way, like, I can't actually move this through. So it
It
stores chemically, and generally chemical stress stores on more of the superficial layers on the outside. And then what I felt is if I go under it, I can feel an emotional stress. An emotional stress, which could be a painful memory, it can be stress or trauma that's happened in your life, any type of fear, anger, there's a massive range of emotion, energy in motion. So if energy is not in motion, it doesn't move through it, it will stop.
But that feels more like a ropey feel. So the tissues feel ropey to me, like harder. And that's at a deeper level, right at the spine. And so for me, I can see it, I can feel it, and then I'll go into inquiry and find out about you know my people's lives, like what's happened, how much stress do you have in your life? How much stress do you have that's coming day to day? But what's happened over the years to hold?
It's also a breathing pattern, too, because like you said, our body's integrated. It moves, it flows as one with breath, with movement. If sections are starting to move separately and are not integrating and the parts are being separate, I'm looking at what's happened. What's happened for this person to be in a holding pattern where there's not flow in their system? I love what you said because we are a system that's connected. Everything needs to connect to everything. So when things stop connecting,
And things start working in isolation, I want to know why. And sometimes what happens.
Jessica Long (14:17)
So I I want to talk
about your your typical midlife woman who has a ton of stress in her life. There's so much on our plate. we're keeping all the balls in the air, we're managing all the things for all the people all the time. So they're gonna say, Of course I have stress in my life, but this is there all the time, and I can't get rid of that stress. So how do you know the difference between the day-to-day stress that we feel like we can manage pretty well versus a deeper held emotional trauma from childhood?
And the two part question if you do find that deeper held stress, are you able to release that or isn't that something that they need to do through therapy or breath work or a somatic practice?
Dr Carli Axford (14:56)
there's so much in here because reality is we're doing life differently to how we ever did. We just are. And as a midlife woman, we are insane with the things that we do. And I'm not telling you to do any different because I'm not. So, you know, I'm a midlife woman that has children, that's running a business, so I'm doing the same stuff. But reality that doesn't make it normal. It doesn't mean that our body goes, Yep, that's okay. So we need to really look at it.
When it's day-to-day stress and we're in movement and we're in flow and we're in busyness, you know, that may not be storing at a system, or it might be storing just at the superficial layers. We lie down, we shake it off, we change our breath, we do a meditation, we go for a walk, we do for a swim, we do something, and it may just leave. A stress that's been there for a really long time, it's stored. It's staying at a deeper level, it's changing the posture, it's making the body whisper or scream. That's
Been there for a longer time. but I'm also saying the body is our friend. So we do really need to go, okay, my body does not like this. What can we do differently? And I'm never about a one-way solution to anything. I'm like, find your thing. There's a million beautiful things out there. Find the one you love that can.
possibly quiet in your mind that can move your body. That's super important. So that's a day-to-day stress. And then as you said, the deeper, deeper, deeper stored stress that's been there for a long time. This is my gig. This is what I was doing as a practitioner was layer by layer by layer, removing stress from the system. And that's what I teach and that's what I do as well. But what I did was I started to track what I was doing. I started to look at what am I doing? I'm making a contact here. The body is
Moving deep, deep stress from the system, that's a great idea. But am I doing that? No, I'm not. I'm actually facilitating their body's wisdom to go find that stress, release it themselves. And that's what I've created is a way that people can do that, and really it can be doing it by breath, by movement, bringing your focus into the spine, focusing on where works as opposed to knowing that there's parts that don't work, but there's so many areas that do work that.
Do have flow, but we've got a switch, and the switch is our breath. And I know everyone talks about breath, and everyone's like, someone else telling me to breathe. But a lot of our bodies are in fight-flight. And when we're in fight-flight, that's the sympathetic nervous system. The body is not moving towards healing, and it's not moving towards removing the stress, it's storing it. If we can just flick that switch into
The parasympathetic, the rest digest, the body will start to heal. Your body wants to heal. You cut your finger, it gets better. There's a wisdom inside our body that's super smart. So even just at home, saying, you know what, I'm gonna change my breath, I'm going to connect into my body because my brain's here, my body's here. I'm going to bring breath, not just here, all the way up and down my spine.
and I'm going to actually make sure every vertebra moves because that's a continuation of my brain.
Jessica Long (18:05)
Well, I love that. I'm a breath work facilitator. So I'm over here nodding like, Yes, breathe, please. Go download.
Dr Carli Axford (18:10)
Great, great.
Jessica Long (18:12)
Go download my private podcast that has three breath work sessions in it, five, ten, twenty minutes. It's things that you can do in your day, right? You don't have to set aside sixty minutes and sit totally still. Breath work can be short. You can move your body during it, as you're saying. So
you're preaching to the choir here.
Dr Carli Axford (18:28)
Breath and movement.
That's and and really minutes, like in minutes. no one has told people that there's the body and there's a switch actually and you get to control it. Just use your breath. Use your breath in a second, it will change your whole body into this healing zone and it's gonna make you feel different. It's gonna make you remember that you have a body, not just a head floating around in busyness. You got your head here, we've got the heart, we've got our body, and breath is a really good tool.
I've seen, thousands of people heal their own body, remove their stress. It doesn't have to be hard. But make a decision that you're important, your body's important and your life is important because there's
way too much suffering right now and we can change it. We really can't.
Jessica Long (19:11)
Preach, woman,
preach. Okay. So I love it. I love it. But we all
Dr Carli Axford (19:15)
Pretty passionate. I'm pretty passionate. Because you know what? We s well 'cause everybody
get really self-empowered. And you know, I teach practitioners. I want everyone to go to my practitioners, but I also want to empower you that you have it inside you and you can heal your body. You really can.
Jessica Long (19:32)
I love that. And so since we're talking to midlife women, we would be remiss if we did not bring up the hormone topic. So we have wildly fluctuating hormones in perimenopause that are on their way down, declining by the time we're in menopause, postmenopause. Do these fluctuating and declining hormones have an impact on how our body stores stress or our stress resilience or even our ability to release stress?
Dr Carli Axford (19:59)
they a hundred percent have an impact I feel like it's a big mirror inside. we've been so busy, so caught up, and everything's been okay because we've had these really floating hormones that are making us feel better, not see. And when this change happens, I think it's giving us a big mirror of like,
This is inside my body. Doesn't feel good. And like you said, the resilience is less. It's like, one more.
thing to do and I really get it it's a harder time but I mean there's a beauty in it as well to say what's happening in my body wow it's not coming from outside there's a change inside our body but it's also a mirror of how much stress we have in our lives and how much stress we've got stored so
it's another opportunity for us to say, okay, My body's speaking to me louder, or I can't ignore it anymore because it's driving me insane. What can I do? Okay, I can decrease the stress every single day. I have to, I have no choice now. I've lost my patience. And I'm going to start to move one layer at a time because stress in the system, it's more visible now.
Jessica Long (21:11)
Well, that's another question I had. Is it cumulative? Cause I feel like we can kind of go through our 30s and manage this fairly well. And then we just hit this point in our forties, or if you're lucky your 50s, where you're just feeling like, I can't handle this anymore. Is it because the stress is layering on top of old stress that we have? So this stored stress from years ago now has more stored stress on top of it and more on top of that. Is that part
Dr Carli Axford (21:38)
Yeah.
Jessica Long (21:38)
of what's going on?
Dr Carli Axford (21:39)
Yeah, I'm at a stage now that when I want to teach my practitioners how to feel a spine, I'm like, Go find a baby. Go find a two-day
Jessica Long (21:46)
Mm.
Dr Carli Axford (21:47)
old baby so you can feel what a beautiful body feels like. So you can feel what a spine feels like without stress. And when you feel that body and you go and feel an adult spine, don't tell me that adult is normal. It's not. The layers and the years of stress, like an onion, layer upon layer upon layer of stress is getting stored in our in our spine, and therefore a
affecting every system, the hormonal system,
the digestive system. And that's what's happening is it's accumulative. if it's in one area, then the compensations, the secondary compensations in the other area. So it's like we're holding a lifetime in stress, which is why when I see someone's body I can see what's happened in their life because
Jessica Long (22:35)
Well, so let me ask you this too, because as we're standing here, this is for selfish reasons, I'm feeling this knot in between my shoulder blades, thoracic spine. and I'm thinking, this has got to be a physical thing, you know, I aggravated myself in my workout, but now I'm like, is this emotional trauma that I'm holding behind my heart? Like, how do I know the difference?
Dr Carli Axford (22:55)
How to know the difference is, you know, if it's a notch and it's something that you did in a workout, it's not going to be there for very long. So you may notice it, like if it's physical, it really can stay four, five, six weeks and then it can go. A bit like a sprain strain. It's not there for very long. There's a muscle tear, there's something that goes on. It doesn't hold a story, it doesn't actually change your nervous system. It sits there, it heals, and it goes. If it's there for longer and you start saying,
But actually, this was there a year ago. And actually, a few years ago it was there. Then I will imagine it's been there for a while. And in the quiet time of when you are doing your breath, you can also ask, like, how does this make me feel? Because if we can bring out the feeling or the emotion or the first time that's been stored, it might just be a flood. It might just be a little feeling of,
I was six or there might be something that just shows up and that's a way of finding that area to give it a voice, a feeling, and that might mean all you need to do as far as to feel it and move it.
Jessica Long (23:58)
So, how do we know when we should be engaging in a breath work practice or when we need to go see someone like you and have a deeper evaluation done versus going to a medical doctor?
Dr Carli Axford (24:10)
I think it's super important to listen and to understand your own body. what your body's saying. A medical team is a good idea always. I'm not a medical person at all, but I always say to my people, Have your team, have your experts lined up.
I'm in the business of wellness, of not waiting for a symptom, not waiting for a whisper, a scream. I'm in the business of what if we could be at optimal function? What if every vertebrae could move? What if your body wasn't in fight flight? What if you had perfect health? So I'm always gonna say, I wanna
Everyone to have that in their bodies and their spines because then we're jumping out of bed in the morning feeling good with lots of energy. I want to see a world where people have movement and flexibility in their spines. When you have movement and flexibility in your spine, you have movement and flexibility in your life. So for me, I want everybody to have that body, and it's easier with a practitioner. It's easier to have a practitioner and say, you know what? Where is the stress? Can you find it? Can you help relax?
Release it because you get to lie down on the table. So for people that can do that, great. Go find someone that you resonate with. For the people that can, then it's about the daily practice of I'm gonna do it my way for now because that's the best I can do. or I'm gonna do everything possible to make sure I have full alignment in my body because you can do that as well.
Jessica Long (25:32)
Well, for those of us who are like, Yes, it sounds great to have no blockages in my spine and be storing no stress in my body. if we want to go see a practitioner, who do you recommend we go see? I know you have your spinal flow technique and you have, I think, an a search in there so we can see if there's someone nearby us who is trained in your technique. If there is, great, we could go see them. I think there's actually someone in my hometown. but if not
Who
should we go see to help us with freedom of movement and release of stress in our spine?
Dr Carli Axford (26:02)
Yes, so like you said, I'm always gonna say spinal flow technique practitioners first because they're the ones I trained and they could be someone in the area they may not be as as we're growing more and more.
I am not going to be specific with a Cairo, with a physio, with an osteo. I want to be more specific in find the person that you like, that you trust, that makes sense, that connects to you with what you say, and you know that can hold you on a healing journey. And they might come from a very different set of practitioners. It doesn't mean what they're trained in, it's who they are as a human. When you speak to them, how does it feel? Does your nervous system relax?
Straight away.
Within every practitioner field, there's such big ranges of what you do. You know, I'm a Cairo, I've never cracked the back ever. I only work with emotions. so we're all so different. So find the person that you love that you can surrender, that you feel like, you know what, this person's got me. Then I can tell you you're in the right place.
Jessica Long (27:04)
I love that advice. And I feel like that has become so much more important to me the older I get. So I used to look at someone's credentials and think, okay, that's the right person and kind of block my own intuition if it felt like an energetic mismatch. But I don't do that anymore. And it took some wisdom and years of experience and some confidence on my own to make those choices. But I love hearing you say that. I had a
plastic surgeon on the show several episodes ago who said the same thing. She said, call the office. Talk to the people in the office. Are they nice? Do you like them? Because you're going to be dealing with them. Meet with the
Dr Carli Axford (27:35)
Yeah.
Jessica Long (27:35)
person. Do they feel like a good fit for you? And I think in midlife that just becomes so much more important. Dr. Carly, thanks so much for coming on the show. Where can everybody find you, learn more about spinal flow and see if there's a spinal flow practitioner in their area?
Dr Carli Axford (27:51)
Yes, on my website drlyaxford.com that will link you to me but also the spinal flow technique and all on the Instagram and Facebooks on Dr. CarlyAxford. You can find me there.
Jessica Long (28:04)
Thank you so much for your time today. Such a fun conversation.
Dr Carli Axford (28:08)
Thank you for having me.
Jessica Long (28:11)
Okay, go check out Carly's website to learn more about her techniques. And if you are feeling ready to try some breath work to move stored stress out of your body, then come join me for a free breath work session. I have two free sessions coming up Thursday, September 24th and Friday, October 2nd, both at 12 p.m. Pacific time. No experience is needed. Just show up live and I will teach you how to use your breath to release stored emotions and feel an ease that you haven't felt in years. It is so, so good.
So go save your spot by clicking the link in the show notes, or you can visit my website, belongwellness.com, or find me on Instagram at hey Jessica Long and click the link in my bio. I cannot wait for you to experience the way breath work makes you feel. It's like nothing else. All right, my friend. Thank you so much for listening, and I will catch you next time.
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Disclaimer:
Belong Wellness and its members, managers, employees, contractors, and other agents or representatives are not licensed medical care providers and do not provide medical services or advice, including without limitation diagnosing, examining, preventing, treating, or curing any medical conditions. The information shared in this podcast is meant to be educational, not prescriptive. Please consult your medical doctor before making any changes to your diet or lifestyle. Further, the opinions of guests on this show do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Jessica or anyone affiliated with Belong Wellness.
