A way for this newsletter to be a greater force for good is to donate 100% of the newsletter's ad revenue (minus taxes) to charities chosen by readers. So, when you get to this week's sponsor further down, check them out knowing you're helping them and the newsletter.

I have been working remotely for nearly six years.

Which is great in a lot of ways. No commute. Flexible schedule. Comfy clothes everyday. My alligator is right outside. But after a while, the walls of your home office (that is also your laundry room) start to feel a little close, and you realize you've gone three days without leaving the house and the most social interaction you've had is waving at the DoorDash driver.

So I picked up a part-time job doing retail resets at local Dollar General stores. A couple evenings each week, I go in and reorganize shelves, reset product layouts, that kind of thing. It gets me out of the house, it's straightforward work, and it generates a little extra pocket change to help fund all the weird stuff 12 year-old boys are absolutely convinced they need to survive.

Last Saturday I volunteered to help with an overdue job at a store I had never been to before.

I walked in, introduced myself, and explained why I was there. And before I could finish my sentence, the store manager was off. A full, unfiltered download of every overdue job, every unresolved problem, and every frustration she had been sitting on, all directed at me as an apparent representative of the company responsible for her stress.

Now, I had been in the building for approximately sixty-three seconds.

If you know me, confrontation is not my jam. Unexpected confrontation from a stranger at 8am on a Saturday is even less my thing. And I could feel it immediately. Shoulders up around my ears. Jaw tight. Chest a little compressed. The particular kind of stillness that happens when your body is deciding whether to respond or just wait for it to be over.

And then I remembered something. Notice the tension. Adjust. Open up. Unclench. Shift position.

I took a quiet breath. Dropped my shoulders. Unclenched my jaw. Let my chest open back up. And then I just listened until she was done, acknowledged what she said, and got on with the work I came to do.

It didn't fix her day. But it kept her stress from becoming mine. And, at the end of the job, she told me it was the best work she’d ever seen from someone at my company. So, yay me.

In honor of stressed out store managers everywhere, this week we're talking about body awareness, specifically how stress lives in your body long before your brain catches up, and why learning to notice and shift your physical tension might be one of the most practical stress tools you're not using. Oh, and please put items you pick up but decide you don’t want back where they belong and not in some random spot in the store.

Our bodies do some weird stuff with stress when we're not paying attention.

Stress hits the body before it hits the brain.

When you encounter a stressful situation, your nervous system responds in milliseconds, long before your conscious mind has time to process what's happening. Your amygdala, the brain's threat detection center, triggers a cascade of physical responses. Muscles tighten. Breathing becomes shallow. Heart rate increases. Your body is already in stress mode before you've formed a single thought about the situation. This is why you can walk into a tense room and feel it before anyone says a word. Your body is picking up information your brain hasn't processed yet. The problem is that most of us never tune back in to notice what our body is holding.

Tension has favorite places to hide.

Research on stress and somatic awareness shows that people tend to carry chronic tension in predictable locations. The shoulders and neck, the jaw, the hands, the chest, and the gut are the most common. For a lot of people this tension becomes so habitual that it stops registering as tension at all. It just becomes the baseline. You stop noticing that your shoulders have been living somewhere near your ears for the past 17 weeks, or that you've been clenching your jaw through every video call for the past three years. The tension is there. You've just stopped seeing it.

Unnoticed chronic tension is a slow drain on your system.

When muscle tension becomes chronic and unaddressed, your body stays in a low-grade stress state even when nothing acutely stressful is happening. Research shows that chronic muscle tension is associated with elevated cortisol levels, increased anxiety, disrupted sleep, headaches, and reduced immune function. Your body doesn't distinguish between the tension you're carrying from a stressful moment that happened two hours ago and a threat that's happening right now. It just stays activated. The stress response that was supposed to be temporary becomes a permanent background hum.

Body awareness is one of the fastest stress regulation tools available.

But there is good news. The same speed that makes the stress response so quick works in your favor when you know how to use it. Research on somatic awareness and stress regulation shows that deliberately shifting your physical posture, opening a closed body position, releasing clenched muscles, taking a slow breath, produces measurable reductions in cortisol and activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the body's rest and recovery mode. You don't need twenty minutes of meditation. You need thirty seconds of noticing and adjusting. The body is always available. It's always giving you information. You just have to remember to check in.

This week we're practicing the shift. Not a full meditation session. Not a yoga class. Just a simple, repeatable habit of noticing what your body is holding and adjusting before it becomes your whole day.

1. Do a quick body scan right now.

Before you read the next tip, stop and check in. Start at the top and work down. Is your jaw clenched? Are your shoulders up? Is your chest compressed or open? Are your hands gripping something they don't need to grip? Are you holding your breath? Just notice. No judgment. Just information.

2. Learn your personal tension spots.

Over the next few days, start paying attention to where tension shows up in your body first. For some people it's the shoulders. For others it's the jaw or the gut. Once you know your tells, you'll start catching stress earlier, before it has time to set in.

3. Use the shift when stress shows up uninvited.

Next time someone walks into your space with their stress and tries to leave it with you, before you respond, notice what your body just did. Then quietly open it back up. Drop the shoulders. Unclench the jaw. Take one slow breath. You don't have to announce it. You don't have to make it a whole thing. Just shift position and let your nervous system know it's okay to stand down.

4. Build in one check-in per day.

Pick a consistent moment, maybe when you sit down at your desk in the morning, or when you get in the car, or right after lunch, and use it as a daily body scan. Thirty seconds. Notice what you're holding. Adjust what you can. That's it. Done consistently, this builds the habit of catching tension before it becomes chronic.

5. End the day with an unclenching.

Before you go to sleep tonight, do one slow, deliberate release. Roll your shoulders back. Unclench your jaw. Take three slow breaths. Let your hands go soft. You've been carrying the day in your body and you don't have to take it to bed with you. Put it down.

Reflection questions:

Where does tension show up in your body first? And when did you last actually notice it before it had already taken over?

Where does stress live in your body? Shoulders? Jaw? Gut? And what do you do, if anything, when you notice it?

📩 [email protected]

If this made you realize your shoulders have been up since last Tuesday, put them down right now and send this to someone who could use the reminder that their body has been trying to get their attention for a while.

Last chance this month to check out the sponsor below to help raise a little change for charity, so click the ad and check ‘em out :)

If you’re optimizing for growth, you need ecomm tactics that actually work. Not mushy strategies.

Go-to-Millions is the ecommerce growth newsletter from Ari Murray, packed with tactical insights, smart creative, and marketing that drives revenue.

Every issue is built for operators: clear, punchy, and grounded in what’s working, from product strategy to paid media to conversion lifts.

Subscribe for free and get your next growth unlock delivered weekly.

Sign up now

That's Volume 057. Here's to noticing what we're holding, adjusting before it sets in, and remembering that someone else's bad Saturday doesn't have to become ours.

Until next time: breathe deep, drop your shoulders, and chill the duck out.

Jason

Research shows the amygdala triggers physical stress responses in milliseconds, before conscious thought can process the situation. Studies on somatic awareness identify the shoulders, neck, jaw, hands, chest, and gut as the most common locations for chronic stress-related tension. Research links chronic unaddressed muscle tension to elevated cortisol, increased anxiety, disrupted sleep, and reduced immune function. Studies on somatic awareness and stress regulation show that deliberately shifting posture and releasing muscle tension produces measurable reductions in cortisol and activates the parasympathetic nervous system. Research on body-based stress regulation shows that brief, intentional physical adjustments can interrupt the stress response without extended meditation or formal practice.