Healing from Within: How Joy Releases Emotional Pain and Restores Inner Strength

When our muscles become tight and painful, we immediately run to “Dr. Google” to figure out how to release them. How does a muscle even become tight? What exactly is it “stuck” in? And how can we release it without straining another muscle? 

Tight muscles usually happen after a movement that wasn’t quite right, too fast, or at the wrong angle, creating tiny tears in the muscle fibers. When that happens, we feel a sharp pain, almost like a burning sensation in the area, all from that one incorrect movement.

The exact same thing happens in our inner world. When we feel an intense kind of pain we don’t recognize, it’s likely that a “spiritual muscle” is tight. We probably made a movement that wasn’t aligned, too fast or from the wrong angle, and it caused an inner tear.

The Ointment for the Soul: Joy

What do we do when that happens? Exactly what we do with physical pain: we apply ointment. The ointment for spiritual muscle pain is joy. In Hebrew, the words are even connected, ointment and joy share the same letters.

I learned an incredible lesson this week about a natural ability each of us has: the power to restore that inner muscle and ease the pain through joy. As simple as it sounds, it really works. Someone once commented on one of my articles, “Borrow a little joy from your future.” I decided to try it, because it sounded so powerful.

So I ran an experiment. I applied a bit of that “ointment,” joy, to the tight place, the part driven by too much self-reliance and control, and I let go. I didn’t demand to know when things would happen. I didn’t complain about a match that didn’t work out. I even smiled at myself in the mirror, thanking God that it ended.

Meeting Yourself Again

“Is this really you?” I asked my reflection, looking closely, trying to find what had changed. Something had to be different. This couldn’t be me. It felt like someone else was looking back at me.

“It’s me, can you believe it?” she seemed to whisper back, with a smile and shining eyes. “And do me a favor, don’t start telling me I’m fooling myself. Because I truly don’t feel that way.”

The feeling was, and still is, like finding something I had lost for far too long. As if an invisible diver had gone down into the depths and brought back treasures I had prayed for over the years. They were rusty now, their shine altered, but I recognized them as mine, and I was happy they returned.

Objects, or even desires, always connect me to memories. Receiving these “treasures” back brought something new, a deep sense of belonging, a connection to something vast, like the ocean they came from. For the first time, I didn’t feel the need to force things into a defined shape or to explain them so others would understand.

A Depth that Cannot be Contained

Spiritual things this deep can only be understood one way, through infinity.

Infinity has no end. It is deeper than anything we can imagine. And that is exactly what I feel now. A movement of “return” within the soul, where the tight muscle becomes a free-flowing song. A song that can express everything, hold everything, hear everything, imagine everything, hope for everything, rejoice in everything, and believe in One.

And that One is everything. When you have that, nothing is missing.

So what do you do after the muscle relaxes and the pain fades? Believe it or not, you simply sit quietly, calmly. You observe everything, even the soft voice you managed to bring out, however faint, and you say thank you.

Thank you for the ointment. Thank you that the muscle was tight and is now relaxed. Thank you for releasing me, my tight places, while never letting go of my hope. Thank you for the awareness of the wrong movements within my soul. Thank you for the ability to return to myself without harming anything else along the way.

A Feeling of Inner Freedom

Now the feeling is no longer just “soul,” but something closer to rest, to relief. And how we love that feeling, freedom, release, joy, change, stepping out of routine.

That is exactly how it feels when a tight inner muscle is released. It feels like going on vacation from everything that pressed you into a corner, everything that hurt, disappointed, or pierced you deeply. It feels like a profound inner shift, sometimes without even realizing what was taken from you in the process.

You do not need those broken pieces anymore. The storm that carried them away knew exactly what to take.

For me, it took away the bitterness of not being married yet, the frustration of not finding “the one,” the pain of not having children. It is not that I am indifferent to that absence, it is still there in some way. But today, I can hold it differently.

Today, I do not just accept it. I am grateful for it. Because without it, I would not be who I am. And being myself, is the true salvation in this entire story.