How Somatic Therapy Works

The Body Remembers What the Mind Tries to Forget

Imagine driving a car with the parking brake on. No matter how hard you press the gas, something resists. The engine revs, the wheels turn, but there’s friction beneath it all. That’s what anxiety, burnout, or trauma can feel like: stuck in motion, always pushing, never arriving.

For many of us, healing has been a mental exercise—positive thinking, cognitive strategies, endless journaling. But what if the problem isn’t only in your mind? What if your body is holding on to stories your thoughts can’t rewrite?

That’s where somatic therapy comes in. It invites your body back into the conversation.

“I thought I had moved on from my past until I heard a voice that sounded like his, and suddenly my whole body went cold. My brain knew I was safe. But my body didn’t believe it.”

What Is Somatic Therapy?

Somatic therapy is a mind‑body, trauma‑informed approach that understands healing doesn’t happen only through insight—it happens through experience. Unlike traditional talk therapy that focuses primarily on thoughts and emotions, somatic therapy invites your body into the conversation.

Traditional talk therapy begins with thoughts. Somatic therapy starts with your felt sense: a clenched jaw, a fluttery belly, the sudden stillness that follows a raised voice. These are all breadcrumbs leading us to what needs to be healed.

When we follow these bread crumbs, we can help the system release stress, tension, and past wounds that have been stored physically in the body. Rooted in neuroscience and grounded in compassion, it supports emotional healing by working directly with the nervous system.

Why this matters:

• • Our bodies carry stories the mind can’t always tell.
  • Unprocessed trauma, anxiety, and depression often show up as muscle tension, shallow breathing, fatigue.
  • Somatic therapy offers healing that’s both emotional and physiological.

When we include the body in therapy, we access a deeper, more integrated path to healing—one that doesn’t rely on words alone. Bodies carry stories the mind can’t always tell.

Why We Get Stuck

If you’ve ever felt like your mind is running but your body can’t catch up, or when a simple sound triggers a flood of emotion, you’ve felt the body’s memory. Our bodies can hold onto experiences—tight shoulders from years of stress, a hollow ache in the gut after loss—long after the mind has moved on.

Most of us live in a chronic state of mild (or major) dysregulation. Our bodies are on high alert, our sleep is light, our breath is shallow, and our thoughts are racing.

That’s not just a personality trait—it’s a nervous system doing its best to protect us.

From a young age, our systems learn what’s safe and what isn’t. If we’ve experienced emotional neglect, relational ruptures, or trauma (big or small), our bodies adapt. We may freeze to stay safe. We may disconnect to survive.

These responses often continue long after the danger has passed.

When a gazelle escapes a lion, it shakes violently to discharge survival energy. Humans, too, need a way to release what gets trapped inside.

The Neuroscience of Somatic Therapy

To understand somatic therapy, it’s helpful to understand the Triune Brain. In a nutshell, the Triune Brain describes three different areas of the brain, each of which do different things:

• • The brainstem (reptilian brain) governs safety and survival.
  • The limbic system processes emotions.
  • The prefrontal cortex manages thoughts and reasoning.

In trauma, chronic stress or overwhelm, the parts of the lower parts of the brain (the brainstem and limbic system, which are responsible for fight, flight, or freeze) act reflexively, while the the prefrontal cortex goes offline. This is why we can’t think our way out of a threat—the threat response is happening in a different part of the brain.

Somatic psychotherapy works by engaging what scientists call bottom-up processing. Rather than starting with the rational brain (top-down), it begins with the body’s felt experience. As we work with the parts of the brain that hold the threat response, we can help the body move from a state of emergency to a state of calm. Through grounding, movement, and sensation-tracking, we slowly bring the whole brain back online.

The Core Principles That Guide Somatic Therapy

1. 1. The Body Holds Wisdom: Symptoms are messengers, not malfunctions. Emotions don’t just happen in the mind. They echo in our bodies—tightness, stillness, pain, energy. Somatic therapy honours the wisdom of both.
   2. Bottom‑Up Healing: Healing happens at the root. Rather than starting with thoughts, this work starts with the body. It explores what your nervous system is already telling you.
   3. Resourcing: Regulation precedes exploration. We start by building safety. We identify and strengthen internal and external supports.
   4. Pendulation: We gently move between discomfort and safety to avoid overwhelm.
   5. Completion: The body completes responses it couldn’t at the time of trauma.

These principles create a framework that honours your unique pace and process.

Healing isn’t about pushing harder. It’s about learning to listen to what your body has been trying to say.

How Somatic Therapy Helps You Heal

Underneath the surface, somatic therapy works by engaging the autonomic nervous system, especially the vagus nerve—a key player in rest and regulation.

Through bottom-up processing, the body sends signals to the brain, rather than the other way around. With the right support, you can literally rewire your brain’s fear and safety pathways.

This makes it helpful in treating a wide range of cooncerns, including:

• • Anxiety and panic
  • Depression and emotional numbness
  • PTSD and Complex PTSD
  • Chronic stress and burnout
  • Dissociation
  • Relationship struggles
  • Grief and loss

Through practices like breathwork, mindfulness, EMDR, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and Deep Brain Reorienting, clients begin to feel more connected, more present, and more alive.

And crucially: less alone.

Your Body Is Not The Enemy

So many of us learned to leave our bodies behind. To live from the neck up. To mistrust what we feel.

Somatic therapy is a way back. Back into your breath, your boundaries, your being.

It’s a journey—but you don’t have to walk it alone. Whether you’re feeling anxious, numb, exhausted or just… off, there is a path forward. One that begins not with fixing, but with feeling.

You are allowed to come home to yourself.