Prepared by the Couples TLC Editorial Team | Clinically reviewed by Jack S. Gershfeld, LMFT
There is a common experience among people who have done a lot of talk therapy and are still not well. They can explain their history with precision. They understand the mechanisms. They have the vocabulary, the timeline, the insight. And their chest still tightens when someone raises their voice, their stomach still drops when a partner goes quiet, and they still cannot fall asleep without the low hum of alertness that has been there since they were nine.
Insight arrived. The body did not get the message.
This gap is the reason somatic approaches to trauma exist, and it is worth understanding what they actually claim before deciding whether they are for you, because the field has attracted a considerable amount of imprecise language along with its genuine contribution.
What “stored trauma” means, and what it does not
The phrase stored in the body gets used loosely enough that it sometimes sounds mystical. It is not.
The claim is physiological. Under threat, the autonomic nervous system mobilizes: adrenaline and cortisol release, heart rate climbs, muscles prepare to fight or flee, breathing changes, digestion halts. In the ordinary course of events this mobilization completes. The threat passes, the energy discharges, and the system returns to baseline.
When the response cannot complete, which is what happens when a child cannot fight and cannot flee and can only freeze and wait, the physiological pattern does not resolve cleanly. What persists is not a memory sitting in the shoulder like an object. It is a nervous system that has learned a defensive configuration and defaults to it, along with the chronic muscular bracing, altered breathing patterns, and interoceptive changes that come with living in that configuration for years.
Peter Levine, who developed somatic experiencing, built his approach on observations of animals in the wild that experience life threatening encounters routinely and yet rarely show anything resembling PTSD. His argument was that animals complete the defensive response, often through visible shaking and trembling, and that humans interrupt this completion through cortical inhibition, social convention, and shame.
You do not have to accept every element of that account to find the practical implications useful. What is well established is that trauma affects autonomic regulation, that interoception, the sense of the internal state of the body, is measurably altered in trauma survivors, and that top-down reasoning has limited access to bottom-up processes. Bessel van der Kolk’s clinical work and Stephen Porges’s polyvagal framework converge on the same practical conclusion from different directions. If the problem lives in the body, the intervention has to reach the body.
The principles that make somatic work safe
Before any exercises, the principles, because somatic work done carelessly can make things worse and this is the part that most free content online omits.
Titration means working in very small amounts. You approach distressing material in slivers rather than plunging in. The aim is to stay within a window where the nervous system can actually process rather than being flooded.
Pendulation means moving deliberately between activation and calm rather than staying in either. You touch a small amount of discomfort, then return to something neutral or pleasant, then touch again. This alternation is what teaches the system that it can go up and come back down, which is the actual skill being rebuilt.
Resourcing means establishing access to a felt sense of safety or steadiness before going anywhere near difficult material. Without a resource to return to, there is nowhere to pendulate back to.
The window of tolerance, a term from Dan Siegel, describes the zone of arousal in which a person can think and feel at the same time. Above it is hyperarousal, which looks like panic, rage, and racing thoughts. Below it is hypoarousal, which looks like numbness, collapse, and dissociation. Somatic work happens inside the window. If you leave it, the priority is coming back, not pushing through.
Completion is the aim rather than release for its own sake. Cathartic discharge is not the goal. Regulation is.
Six exercises you can try
These are introductory practices. They are not a treatment for post traumatic stress disorder, and if you have a significant trauma history you should ideally learn them with a clinician rather than from a page. Stop any of them if distress rises rather than settles.
Orienting. Sit comfortably and let your head turn slowly to look around the room. Do not force your attention. Let your eyes land wherever they land, and let them rest there for a few seconds before moving on. Notice colors, textures, the corners where walls meet the ceiling. Then let your head turn slowly the other way.
This sounds almost too simple to matter. It is one of the foundational practices in somatic experiencing because it uses the orienting reflex, an ancient survival behavior, to give the nervous system direct sensory evidence about the current environment. The system is not persuaded by the thought that you are safe. It is somewhat persuaded by looking around and finding nothing wrong. Many people notice a spontaneous sigh or a small shift in the neck and shoulders after a minute or two. That shift is the point.
Feeling the ground. Place both feet flat on the floor and bring your attention to where they meet it. Press down gently through the heels and then the balls of the feet, enough to feel the contact clearly. Then feel where your body meets the chair: thighs, backside, back if you are leaning against it.
Trauma tends to pull attention upward and outward, into the head and into scanning the environment. Deliberately putting attention into weight and contact reverses that direction. It is the most portable regulation tool available and it works in a meeting, on a train, or mid-argument without anyone knowing you are doing it.
Extending the exhale. Breathe in through the nose for a count of roughly four, then out through the mouth for a count of roughly six or eight. Do this for six or eight rounds and stop.
The mechanism is real. The exhale is when parasympathetic activity dominates, so lengthening it shifts autonomic balance toward the calming branch. Keep it gentle. Forceful or prolonged breathwork can trigger dissociation in people with trauma histories, which is the opposite of the intention.
Self-contact. Place one hand on your chest and the other on your belly, or one hand on the opposite upper arm. Let the hands rest with a little weight in them. Notice the warmth and pressure.
Deep pressure and warmth are recognized by the nervous system as containment signals. This exercise is particularly useful for people who freeze or go numb, because it introduces a physical boundary at a moment when the sense of having a body has gone thin.
Voluntary tension and release. Choose one muscle group, perhaps the fists or the shoulders or the jaw. Tighten deliberately for about five seconds, then release slowly and pay attention to the sensation of letting go for fifteen or twenty seconds. Repeat two or three times.
The attention to the release is the active ingredient rather than the tension. Chronic bracing becomes invisible because it is constant. Creating and then dropping tension makes the contrast perceptible, and perception is what allows change.
Tracking a sensation. Notice one physical sensation in your body right now. Do not interpret it or attach a story to it. Just describe it: location, size, quality, temperature, whether it is still or moving. Stay with it for thirty seconds and notice whether it changes.
This is interoceptive training, and it is often the hardest of the six for people who spent childhood learning not to notice what they felt. If nothing is perceptible, that itself is useful information rather than a failure. Numbness is a finding.
When self-practice is not enough
Grounding exercises are genuinely useful and they have a ceiling. They help you regulate in the moment. They do not, by themselves, resolve the deeper pattern that keeps producing dysregulation, particularly when that pattern was laid down over years of childhood.
There are also situations where self-guided somatic work is actively inadvisable. If you dissociate readily, if you have a history of complex trauma, if body awareness itself triggers panic or shame, or if you have a history of physical or sexual abuse where attention to the body is loaded, then attempting this alone risks pushing yourself outside your window without anyone there to help you back in. Working with someone trained to track your nervous system in real time is not a luxury in those circumstances, and the standard of care you should expect from that person is higher than most directories imply.
Finding a somatic experiencing therapist online
Remote somatic work surprises people who assume it requires a shared physical room. It does not. The practitioner is tracking your breathing, posture, skin color, micro-movements, and voice quality, and all of that is visible on video. Many clients find home sessions easier, because they are already in a regulated environment and do not have to travel home in a raw state afterward.
The main things to check are these.
Verify actual training. Somatic Experiencing International maintains a public directory of practitioners, and the credential SEP means the person completed a three-year programme. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute maintains its own directory. Hakomi is a third recognized lineage. A therapist who took a weekend workshop and now lists somatic work on their website has not done the same training, and the difference matters.
Confirm licensure and jurisdiction. Somatic experiencing training is open to practitioners who are not licensed psychotherapists, including bodyworkers. Depending on what you need, that may or may not be appropriate. If you want trauma psychotherapy rather than a body-based practice, look for someone who holds both a clinical license and somatic training. Licensing also determines who can legally see you, since most jurisdictions require the therapist to be licensed where the client is physically located.
Ask about their approach to stabilization and pacing. A good answer will mention titration, resourcing, and staying within your window. A poor answer will emphasize breakthrough, release, or getting the trauma out.
Ask how they handle dissociation on video, because it happens and the response needs to be practiced rather than improvised.
Use the first session as an assessment in both directions. You should feel that the pace is yours and that you can say stop.
Where this fits in the wider picture
Somatic work addresses the physiological layer of trauma. It is often the right place to begin, because a nervous system that cannot regulate is not in a position to do harder work, and it is often the right thing to run alongside other treatments.
It is not the whole answer. Specific intrusive memories may need reprocessing rather than regulation, which is where a treatment such as EMDR therapy for post-traumatic stress may become relevant. The habit of continuous threat scanning, or hypervigilance has dynamics of its own that grounding will soften but not resolve. The pursuing, withdrawing, and difficulty allowing closeness are part of the broader pattern of how childhood trauma affects adult relationships.
The body is where a great deal of trauma lives. It is not where all of it lives, and the most durable recoveries tend to involve more than one door.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does it mean when trauma is stored in the body?
Stored trauma refers to lasting nervous system patterns that developed in response to overwhelming or prolonged stress. It does not mean that a traumatic memory is physically trapped in a muscle. Instead, the body may continue responding through tension, altered breathing, hypervigilance, numbness, or other protective reactions.
What are somatic exercises for releasing stored trauma?
Somatic exercises use body awareness, breathing, movement, and sensory observation to support nervous system regulation. Examples include orienting to the room, feeling your feet on the ground, extending the exhale, using gentle self-contact, practicing tension and release, and tracking physical sensations.
Can somatic exercises heal trauma on their own?
Somatic exercises can help reduce distress and improve regulation, but they may not resolve the underlying trauma on their own. People with complex trauma, intrusive memories, or significant relationship difficulties may benefit from working with a qualified trauma-informed therapist.
How do somatic exercises regulate the nervous system?
Somatic exercises help the body notice present-day signals of safety and practice moving from activation toward calm. Over time, this can improve awareness of physical reactions and strengthen the nervous system’s ability to return to a more regulated state.
Can somatic exercises make trauma symptoms worse?
Body-focused exercises can sometimes increase panic, shame, dissociation, or emotional distress, especially for people with complex trauma or a history of physical or sexual abuse. Stop the exercise if distress increases, and consider practicing with a trained clinician who can provide appropriate pacing and support.
How can I find a somatic experiencing therapist online?
Look for a practitioner with recognized somatic training and, when psychotherapy is needed, an appropriate clinical license. Ask about their experience with your type of trauma, their approach to stabilization and dissociation, and whether they are authorized to provide therapy where you are physically located.