The Strange Science of Crying

From guest blogger Ana Kat, Director of Renew Wellness Center

Ana Kat is the Integrative Wellness Director at Renew inside Western Racquet & Fitness Club. Her work brings together integrative health, recovery, breathwork, Reiki, and emerging wellness technologies with one basic idea: looking at the whole person and connecting the dots.

She works with everyone from athletes to people navigating chronic or complex health concerns, drawing from both traditional practices and newer approaches to help people better understand what may be influencing how they feel.

In this guest blog, Ana explores the fascinating science behind why we cry and how crying affects the health of our minds and bodies.

I had a conversation recently about crying that really stuck with me—not necessarily the crying itself, but how differently we respond to it.

Some people are uncomfortable around tears. Some cry at the drop of a hat. Others can go through some pretty difficult things and barely shed a tear. Yet even though we all have a unique relationship to crying, we still attach an entire personality assessment to whether or not someone’s eyes produce water under certain circumstances.

If you’re a cryer, you’ve probably heard it before. Too emotional. Too sensitive. Dramatic.

And if you’re not a cryer, you’ve probably heard your fair share of assumptions. Strong for holding it together. Cold for not showing enough emotion. 

But pretending we know how someone feels just based on whether or not they cry is a little crazy when you think about it! The person crying isn’t necessarily the most emotional person in the room. They’re just the one whose emotions you can see.

And all that got me wondering—why do we cry in the first place?

For all the time I spend trying to understand the human body, I've never really questioned why it decides that when life gets complicated, the appropriate response is to leak water out of our eyeballs. So what actually happens when we cry?

First, tears aren't just water. They contain salts, proteins, and oils that help protect our eyes. We produce three types. Basal tears keep our eyes lubricated; reflex tears show up when something irritates them; and emotional tears happen when the brain responds to something meaningful.

And crying isn't just an eye thing. When you cry, your throat tightens, breathing changes, facial muscles contract, and your heart rate can shift. Sometimes your whole body shakes. And that runny nose? Tears actually drain through tiny ducts into your nose. Apparently, even your nose wants to participate!

Another fascinating fact: humans are the only species known to produce visible emotional tears.

One leading theory is that tears evolved partly as a form of communication. Before we can explain what's happening inside us, our bodies try to explain for us with visible signals. Researchers have even found early evidence that emotional tears may carry chemical signals. In one experiment, men exposed to women's emotional tears showed less aggressive behavior than men exposed to saline, despite not consciously smelling a difference. Our tears might be communicating more than we realize!

But why do some people cry so easily?

Hormones, temperament, culture, and personal experience can all influence how readily we cry. Some people learned that tears brought comfort. Others learned to hold them back to avoid discomfort. Neither tells us how deeply someone feels. And of course, crying isn’t always caused by just sadness. We cry in pain when we stub our toe. We cry from fear after the jump scare in the haunted house. We cry from relief when we get the good test results back. We cry from joy, overwhelm, anxiety, fear, relief, and embarrassment. And sometimes we don’t even know why we’re crying!

Which brings me to something interesting I see happen in Renew: people sometimes cry during a Vibragenix session.

When someone is in a Vibragenix session, they experience low-frequency sound and physical vibration. Nobody is asking them to talk about or think about anything particularly emotional. And yet, tears show up.

Sound has a fascinating relationship with the brain. Music can activate networks involved in memory, emotion, and reward. That’s why sometimes we cry because we hear that one song that takes us back to a certain moment fifteen years ago. Sometimes we can hear a song we have no history with that can still move us to tears. Music and sound have the ability to trigger emotions we might not consciously realize we’re experiencing.

Sound therapy is often used in integrative health practices using specific frequencies and music-based techniques to influence the nervous system. Many integrative health practitioners integrate evidence-based vibrational medicine into their treatment plans, backed by research by institutions like MIT, and clinical studies show that targeted frequencies can reduce chronic pain, improve cognitive function, and promote healing at the cellular level. Research continues to help shift attitudes about sound therapy from “woo woo” to health science worth studying. 

Vibragenix adds physical vibration to this sound experience. Renew’s Vibragenix machine includes a library of ancient tones, sacred harmonic intervals, and resonance frequencies curated from both historical traditions and modern acoustic wellness protocols. 

We don't yet know exactly why someone might cry during a session. Maybe it's the sound. Maybe a memory. Maybe simply being still long enough to bring buried feelings to the surface. I don't think every tear needs an explanation.

And it's not just something I notice in Renew. I notice it in my work with athletes, as well.

Think about what happens on a tennis court. Someone can spend an entire match focused, frustrated, competitive, trying to hold it together. Then the match ends, and suddenly they're emotional. Maybe they won. Maybe they lost. Maybe they've been working toward that moment for months. Or think about someone finishing a difficult workout, returning after an injury, or accomplishing something they weren't sure their body could do anymore. Physical effort and emotion aren't separate experiences. Movement, competition, and stress all involve changes in breathing, heart rate, muscle tension, and brain activity. Sometimes the emotional response surprises even the person experiencing it.

And what about the often-heard phrase “I just needed a good cry”? There’s a reason a good cry can sometimes offer relief. When we're upset, breathing can become irregular, muscles tighten, and heart rate may rise. As crying subsides, those physical responses can begin to settle. For some people, that change feels like relief. But for others, crying can leave them feeling worse. And sometimes all we've accomplished is a headache and a puffy face. Every person is unique!

It's also one reason I spend so much time talking about breathing, whether it's in a breathwork class, working with athletes on mental performance, or with someone coming into Renew for the first time. Our breathing changes with emotion, but the relationship works in both directions. Deliberately slowing our breathing can also influence how physically activated we feel. It won't fix whatever made us upset, and it certainly doesn't mean everyone needs to cry their way through a breathwork class. But it gives us something we can work with.

I think what keeps me curious about crying is how much our physical and emotional experiences overlap. A song can bring tears. A tennis match can bring tears. Twenty minutes of sound and vibration can bring tears. And the person sitting right next to us might experience all of those things completely differently.

So maybe we don't need to decide so quickly what another person's tears or lack of tears mean. For something humans have been doing for as long as humans have been around, there's still quite a bit we don't understand about crying—which is pretty remarkable for a little salt water.