Fascial Tension and Local Sensory Suppression

Why You Can't Feel What's Wrong

(And What Happens When You Can)

Here's something that surprises a lot of my clients:

The tightest, most restricted areas of their body are often the ones they feel the least.

Not more. Less.

They come in with pain in one spot, and when I start working somewhere else, somewhere they hadn't even noticed, they say, "I didn't even know that was tight." Or: "That area always felt kind of... dead."

This isn't a coincidence. It's how the body works.

The Paradox: Tight but Numb

You'd think chronic tension would hurt. Sometimes it does. But often, the body does something strange: it turns down the volume.

When tissue stays tight long enough, your nervous system starts to tune it out. The signals become background noise. You stop feeling it, not because it's healthy, but because your brain has decided it's not worth paying attention to anymore.

Thomas Hanna called this "Sensory Motor Amnesia," your brain literally forgets how to feel (and control) chronically tight muscles. They drop out of conscious awareness.

This is why you can have a massively restricted area that doesn't register as pain. The restriction is real. The sensation is suppressed.

How This Happens

There are a few mechanisms at play:

1. Reduced Blood Flow

Tight muscles and fascia can compress nearby blood vessels. Less blood means less oxygen to the nerves in that area. Nerves need oxygen to transmit signals. When they don't get enough, sensation dulls, like a limb "falling asleep."

Research shows that even moderate sustained pressure can impair nerve function until circulation is restored. Chronically tight tissue creates low-grade ischemia that dampens feedback from that region.

2. Nerve Compression

Nerves travel through fascia, between muscles, around bones. When surrounding tissue is too tight, it can physically squeeze the nerve, like a kink in a hose.

This is what happens in carpal tunnel syndrome (fascia compressing the median nerve), piriformis syndrome (muscle compressing the sciatic nerve), and thoracic outlet syndrome (scalenes and chest fascia compressing the brachial plexus).

The result isn't always pain. Often it's numbness, tingling, or just... absence. The area feels "dead" because the signals aren't getting through.

3. Receptor Adaptation

Your fascia is loaded with sensory receptors, nerve endings that detect stretch, pressure, and movement. Normally, they're constantly sending information to your brain about what's happening in your body.

But when fascia is stuck in one position, held tight, not moving then those receptors adapt. They stop firing as much. There's nothing new to report, so they go quiet.

This means less proprioceptive feedback. You lose accurate sense of where that body part is and how it's moving. The area becomes a blind spot.

4. Central Gating

Your brain decides what sensory information is worth paying attention to. If a signal has been constant and unchanging for long enough, the brain deprioritizes it.

Think of how you stop feeling your watch on your wrist after a few minutes. The pressure is still there, your brain just stops caring.

The same thing can happen with chronic tension. Your nervous system learns to ignore it.

Why This Matters

The problem area isn't always where it hurts. Sometimes it's in a region that feels like nothing, because sensation has been suppressed.

When I work on clients, I often find their most restricted tissue in places they had no awareness of. The tight hip that's causing the knee pain. The locked-up ribcage behind the chronic neck tension. The dense, immobile tissue that's been silent for years.

Absence of pain isn't proof of health. Sometimes it's proof of suppression.

What Happens When It Releases

This is the part that surprises people.

When chronically tight tissue finally lets go, through sustained pressure, improved blood flow, or nerve mobilization, sensation often comes flooding back.

Sometimes it's warmth, as circulation returns. Sometimes it's tingling, as nerves wake up. Sometimes it's a sudden awareness of an area that had been invisible.

And yes, sometimes it's discomfort. If sensation was suppressed, its return can feel like a lot at first. That's not damage, it's the nervous system coming back online.

I've had clients say things like:

"I can feel my hip for the first time in years."

"That part of my back used to feel like it wasn't even part of my body."

"It's like the lights came on."

This is the body remembering itself.

The Takeaway

If an area of your body feels stiff but strangely numb, not painful, just absent, that's not a sign it's fine. It might be a sign your nervous system has given up on it.

The good news: it can wake back up.

Myofascial release works by restoring blood flow, relieving nerve compression, and re-engaging receptors that have gone quiet. It brings areas back into awareness so they can actually heal.

Sometimes the first step isn't reducing pain. It's being able to feel what's really there.

Curious whether this applies to you? Book a session and we'll find out together.