Imagine your body as a chain of interlocked tension. One muscle locks up, triggering others to compensate, creating a cascade of tightness that can affect everything from your posture to your performance in bed. To heal, we must unwind this chain, starting from the most obvious sources of tension and working deeper into subtler, hidden patterns.
This process mirrors reliving your life in reverse. Each layer of tension reflects a unique chapter of stress, habits, or trauma. Identifying and releasing these patterns is deeply personal but universally necessary for reclaiming natural function.
The Chain Reaction: Why Your Muscles Stay Tense
Take a moment to relax your shoulders and belly. Chances are, as soon as you focus on relaxing them, you’ll feel your body resist. Why? These muscles often tense up to shield us from anxiety or stress. Relaxing them might even increase your feelings of unease.
This is a perfect example of the chain in action. Tensed shoulders or a clenched belly are often compensating for deeper anxieties. If you relax them, the stress needs to “move,” often revealing tension in other muscles. The key is to master relaxing these initial areas without letting the anxiety take over. Only then can you uncover and release deeper points of tension.
Identifying Tension Points
The first step in unwinding the chain is learning to recognize tension in your body. Initially, this is relatively straightforward. Most of us can identify when we’re clenching our jaws, hunching our shoulders, or feeling tightness in our belly. However, as we progress, this process becomes more nuanced and requires greater awareness.
This is a skill you need to master. The deeper you go, the more subtle and difficult to find the tension.
Understanding the Process
While this process is ultimately aimed at addressing erectile dysfunction (ED), we’ll start by practicing in non-sexual contexts to make the concept easier to grasp. Identifying and releasing tension in any part of your body contributes to your overall progress.
Relaxing your shoulders or jaw might not seem directly connected to ED, but it’s all part of the chain and your overall goal should be to get rid of any muscle tension in your body. Over time, even these areas will impact your sexual performance.
Practical Exercises to Identify Tension
Here are three accessible methods to help you locate and release tension in your body. This sequence is a natural progression, starting with physical sensations and building toward emotional scenarios.
I’m using non-sexual examples to show you how to trigger muscle tension in your body. The goal is to relax all of it.
1. Stretching
Stretching is an effective way to uncover areas of hidden tightness.
- Perform a forward fold stretch (try touching your toes). As you stretch, notice which muscles tighten to protect themselves—likely your hamstrings, back, or even your shoulders.
- Instead of forcing the stretch or bouncing up and down, focus on relaxing into it. Breathe deeply and allow your body to ease into the movement naturally.
- With practice, you’ll feel less resistance and discover new areas of tension to relax.
2. Temperature
Extreme temperatures are great for highlighting tension in your body.
- Cold: Try a cold plunge or go outside at night in your underwear. As the cold sets in, notice where your body tenses—likely your shoulders, back, and belly. Relax these areas and observe how the tension moves to other muscles. Relax those too. This is an example of crawling up the muscle chain.
- Heat: Use a sauna or hot bath. As your body reacts to the heat, practice relaxing through the discomfort. Over time, this will expose deeper tension points.
3. Fear Simulation
The previous exercises used physical triggers, but when confronting ED, we spend most of our time on the emotional. Confronting fear is a powerful tool for recognizing and managing tension. This requires an high level empathy and active imagination.
We are going to use a common fear—heights—as an example.
- Watch a video of someone performing a high dive (e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-svq8n7eJaI)
- Imagine being the diver.
Picture the height, feel the wind, and hear the water below. Immerse yourself in the experience. You don’t want to just be there, you want to be her. I go so deep as to pretend I am talking to the camera, even re-arranging her words into my verbiage and come up with my own stories. - As anxiety rises, notice how your body reacts. Are your shoulders stiff? Is your belly tight? Are you clenching your fists?
- Practice relaxing those muscles while maintaining the visualization. With repetition, this exercise will transform your fear into confidence and even allow you to crave the adrenaline rush.
You want to practice so much that you don’t have an emotional reaction to your fear of heights anymore (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/SRx4zh9Z4Kw). You go far enough, and you’ll crave that adrenaline rush. That’s when you’ve conquered your fear.
This approach directly applies to ED. Your goal is to go through all the reasons why you can’t get an erection. Practicing with fear-based scenarios makes it easier to master the technique. If you don’t know where to start, here’s a list to get started:
- I’m too stressed out about work/school/life.
- I’m too tired
- It’s the alcohol; I drank too much
- I’m feeling really anxious about performing well.
- I’ve been feeling depressed lately
- I feel like we’ve lost the spark
- I’m worried I’ll come too fast
- I’m afraid I’ll disappoint you
- I’m getting older, and my body doesn’t work the way it used to
- I didn’t sleep well last night
- I’m just not in the mood tonight.
- I think I’ve desensitized myself from watching too much porn
- And on and on it goes….
Watch porn and imagine any one of these excuses. Notice how it dials up anxiety and stress in your body. Start relaxing your body until you can turn your fear into confidence.
Why This Matters
Addressing tension is more than just a physical process—it’s about reclaiming control over your body and breaking free from the patterns that have held you back. By identifying and releasing these hidden tensions, you create space for natural function and confidence to return.
Next Steps: Building Strength and Resilience
Once you’ve started releasing tension, the next phase involves strengthening and retraining your body to handle stress without locking up. In the next article, we’ll explore techniques for recovery and resilience, ensuring lasting progress in your ED journey. For now, focus on these exercises, and take the first steps toward freedom.