When Shoulder Pain Is a Heart Story
Body Awareness
Unpack chronic shoulder pain as grief and over-giving; blend physical therapy, energy work, and journaling for lasting relief.
There’s this thing that happens with chronic shoulder pain: Over time, it stops acting like a simple tissue problem and starts behaving like a story—one woven from posture, protection, and unspoken emotion. By the time someone comes to me for help, they’ve usually rehabbed a strain, babied an old dislocation, or chased a diagnosis that no longer explains the heaviness they feel. What’s left is often an ache along the heart line: a sense that something inside is slightly off, unnamed, and asking to be heard.
I practice as both a physical and energetic therapist, so my “body detective” work includes the familiar (reviewing patients’ range of motion, joint mechanics, and soft-tissue patterns), as well as taking stock of the less visible (the tone of a client’s voice, how they narrate their life, the roles they carry, where they over give, and the places love feels blocked). I inquire about the moment pain began but also about the relationship threads around the pain—losses, resentments, disappointments, and the quiet ways we learn to hold ourselves together.
Grief Leads to Pain
In many long-standing shoulder cases, grief is nearby. Sometimes it’s obvious, like during bereavement, the aftermath of a breakup, or the mourning of a lost dream. Sometimes it’s subtle—years of postponing one’s creative life, chronically saying “yes” when the body wants “no,” or carrying family burdens that were never ours to lift. The shoulder is an elegant hinge between doing and feeling; it helps us reach, receive, and release. When those movements stall in life, they can stall in the body.
You don’t have to subscribe to any single philosophy to sense the symbolism. Many people recognize a quiet masculine-feminine split across the body. The right side often reflects doing, structure, and outward roles; the left side receiving, intuition, and inner life. Right-shoulder tightness can appear in seasons of over-responsibility or with friction with authority. Left-shoulder heaviness can surface when we’ve gone numb to our own needs or after a heart-centered loss. These are invitations to look more closely, not rigid rules.
A Plan for Care
Here’s how I approach care:
1) Create a Pain-Free Pattern
On the table, I start with gentle joint mobilization and soft-tissue work to find any clear range, no matter how small, where movement is easy. The nervous system needs evidence that safety and possibility still exist. Even 10 degrees of smooth abduction can help the brain learn to trust in the process.
2) Restore the Chest-Open Posture
So much time in modern life is spent hunched over—our work desks, our phones. I often have my patients use a foam roller, lying lengthwise along the spine with their arms gently opened like a cactus or T, and guide them to breathe soft and slow for two or three minutes. If appropriate and safe, lightly hanging from a sturdy bar or doorframe, with both feet able to touch the ground, can also decompress tissue and invite the rib cage to lift again. (Skip hanging if you’re suffering from with acute injury or instability, or when you’re advised not to by your clinician.)
3) Pair Movement with Meaning
On the roller or after a warm shower, briefly check in with yourself by journaling and answering these questions:
What might this ache be asking me to release or receive?
What have I been carrying that isn’t mine?
Where am I over-giving or under-receiving?
What grief within me is asking to be acknowledged and breathed through?
Write for five minutes without editing. Then place one hand over your heart and the other over the afflicted shoulder, and breathe in for a count of four, out for a count of six, for five cycles. Notice any softening.
4) Clear Cords, Restore Choice
In energy work we sometimes visualize cords—old attachments, roles, or stories—that keep tugging at us. Picture a physical cord or cords that are connected to your shoulder, then gently move them into your heart center, where they dissolve. Offer gratitude for what they once protected, then imagine your shoulder bathed in a warm, bright light. Whether you view this as metaphor or anatomy, the nervous system responds to this visualization by feeling safe and restored.
5) Rebuild Strength with Compassion
Strength isn’t about pushing, it’s about listening. As you move, let every action reconnect you to purpose, gratitude, and the quiet confidence of being in your body.
None of the above replaces medical care; it reframes it. If you have red-flag symptoms (sharp, escalating pain; neck or arm numbness; sudden weakness; unexplained swelling; fever; or post-traumatic stress following an injury), seek appropriate evaluation, which may include an X-ray or MRI. If imaging doesn’t match your lived experience or if pain lingers long after tissues should have healed, consider the possibility that your shoulder is carrying a heart story.
You may be burdened, but you are not broken. There’s a difference.
When we pair skilled physical care with tender attention to our grief, healthy boundaries, and the courage to receive love and help, something beautiful happens: Movement returns not just to the joint but to life. The arms feels lighter, the chest opens, and the world looks a shade brighter. In my clinic, I’ve watched people leave a session with the same shoulder they entered with, but with a different relationship to it—one defined less by guarding and more by love.
It’s time to open up and release the pain. Your shoulder knows the way.
Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes and is not medical advice. Please consult your healthcare provider for personalized care.
by Gina Calderone
