When I first learned about Golgi tendon organs during cadaver lab in massage school, something clicked — like this was it.
Those little Golgi tendon organs are part of the hidden code that tells the nervous system how much tension to hold in the body. Not just in a moment of lifting or bracing, but sometimes all the time — even when that tension isn't helpful anymore.
This constant, unnecessary bracing wasn't just uncomfortable — it was costly. It used up precious energy that could have been going toward cellular renewal, detox pathways, digestion, and hormone regulation. Chronic tension isn't just a muscular issue. It's a full-body energy leak, and for most people it's significant.
And that's when a deeper question landed: if the body can choose to hold tension, can it also choose to release it?
For years, I experienced severe muscle spasticity — one of the many "mystery symptoms" doctors tried to label as Multiple Sclerosis. My muscles felt locked, bracing for something that wasn't happening anymore. It wasn't just tension; it was a deep, consuming rigidity.
It was so intense that walking became difficult. My legs felt like they weighed 300 pounds each. During what I came to call "flare-ups," I was housebound, unable to move freely or even trust my body to support me — in constant pain. It was frightening, exhausting, and isolating.
I tried everything: stretching, deep tissue massage, yoga, magnesium baths, muscle creams. But many of these pushed my system into an even deeper state of lockdown. My nervous system wasn't responding with relief — it was responding with more contraction, as if on a deeper level it was saying, "leave me alone, I'm not safe."
It wasn't until I began to study the nervous system's role in muscle tone — through modalities like meditation and Cognomovement — that things began to shift. I started to see how unresourcefully my body was using its energy, holding onto outdated patterns of protection and survival. Could this be why I was always so tired?
Discovering that I could change these deeply held patterns was more than physical relief. It felt like awakening to the idea that I was the creator of my own experience — and Cognomovement became the tool that helped me prove that to myself.
Adding Block Therapy: a deep release through the fascia
In the last year, I began incorporating Block Therapy into my daily nervous system remapping practice, and it took things even deeper.
While Cognomovement helped me retrain the brain and release the neural pathways keeping my muscles braced, Block Therapy allowed me to melt the physical layers of tension and restriction in my fascia. It reached areas I couldn't stretch or massage my way into — working with breath, pressure, and time to unwind deeply frozen patterns that were literally shaping how I moved, felt, and functioned.
Block Therapy gave my body the physical permission to relax, while Cognomovement gave my brain the neurological permission to rewire. Together, these two tools have helped me:
- Restore circulation to areas that were long restricted
- Improve my posture and gait
- Reduce the frequency and intensity of spasticity
- Feel more present, mobile, and energetically aligned
Your brain keeps a "tension map" of your body
Your nervous system doesn't just move your muscles — it keeps a live internal map of them. This sensory-motor map is constantly updated by input from your skin, muscles, joints, and especially your eyes.
But sometimes the map is outdated. Maybe it got shaped during an injury, or wired during a season of chronic stress or trauma. That map can include unconscious patterns of over-bracing, muscles that are "on" all the time, and restricted movement. These are what we call tension maps — neural patterns that tell your body, "keep this area tight; it's not safe to relax yet." The result is chronic tightness, spasticity, fatigue, and even pain.
In The Brain's Way of Healing, Dr. Norman Doidge explores how the brain holds onto patterns of pain and movement through neuroplasticity — and how the brain's maps of the body, in the somatosensory cortex, can become distorted by trauma, disuse, or chronic tension, and then rewired.
"If the brain's map of the body becomes inaccurate, it can lead to distorted movement and even chronic pain."— Dr. Norman Doidge, The Brain's Way of Healing
What are Golgi tendon organs: your body's built-in tension gauge
Golgi tendon organs (GTOs) live in your tendons, where the muscle meets the bone. Their job is to monitor how much force or tension is being applied to the muscle. When things function well:
- GTOs detect excessive tension and signal the brain to relax the muscle
- This protects your body from injury and promotes balance
But under chronic stress, trauma, or long-standing movement patterns, this system gets out of whack: the brain stops listening to the GTOs, muscles stay braced even when it's not useful, and your body becomes caught in a loop of protective tension. That's why deep tissue massage alone often doesn't hold — the message to "let go" never reaches the control center: the brain.
What do our eyes have to do with muscle tension?
It might seem strange — how could moving your eyes have anything to do with tight shoulders, locked hips, or heavy legs? But your eyes are deeply connected to the parts of the brain that control muscle tone, coordination, balance, and even emotional regulation.
When you move your eyes, you're activating brain regions involved in posture, movement, and body awareness — the cerebellum, superior colliculus, and vestibular nuclei, which communicate with the muscles via the spinal cord. That means eye position can directly influence patterns of muscle contraction and relaxation. In Cognomovement, we intentionally engage this system using:
- Specific eye positions
- Visual tracking with color and pattern
- Cross-lateral movements
- Somatic attention (noticing what you feel in the body)
This combination allows the nervous system to recognize outdated reflex patterns, reorganize how the body holds tension, and let go of protective bracing that's no longer needed.
What the research says
Science is beginning to catch up with what many somatic therapists have intuitively known: eye movements influence body tension.
One study published in Brain and Cognition (2016) found that 30 seconds of horizontal eye movements improved memory accuracy and decreased false memories. Why relevant? Because memory and muscle tension are often linked through emotional encoding — the way the brain "remembers" to brace or guard.
Other work in oculomotor neuroscience shows eye movements stimulate cross-hemispheric communication, helping regulate the autonomic nervous system. This can reduce sympathetic overdrive (fight-or-flight) and bring the body into parasympathetic dominance — a more relaxed, healing state. And the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) plays a key role in postural control; engaged through visual tracking, it can recalibrate the body's sense of orientation and stability, improving muscle tone, balance, and range of motion.
Rewiring the body through the eyes
In Cognomovement sessions, I've felt the exact moment my nervous system let go of an old pattern. I've watched clients feel the weight lift from their hips, necks, or legs — just by moving their eyes, tracking color, and tuning in. Over time I've come to understand that the eyes are a portal to the brain, and the brain is the command center of tension. When you work through the eyes, you're speaking directly to the nervous system in a language it understands.
As Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, explains, the body often holds onto trauma not just emotionally but physically, in patterns of muscular tension and postural rigidity:
"Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies. The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort… Their bodies are tense and defensive."— Bessel van der Kolk, MD
This internalized tension becomes part of the body's operating system — an unspoken map of where to brace, hold, or lock down. But the good news? These patterns can be changed. And tools like Cognomovement offer a non-invasive, body-led way to begin that change.
Final thoughts: you are the mapmaker
The day I realized I could influence my own muscle tension with movement, awareness, and eye position was the day I stopped feeling trapped in my body. I could consciously change this tension and rewire it for good.
If you've been living with chronic tightness, discomfort, or rigidity, know this: there is a way out, and it starts with the nervous system. Cognomovement isn't just about moving your body; it's about reshaping the very patterns that govern how your body feels.
And that's not just relief. That's liberation.
Written by Helen Parde, LMT — Integrative Health Facilitator and Certified Advanced Cognomovement Practitioner at Whole Body and Sole, Herriman & South Jordan, Utah.