Why is the body key to trauma healing?

The body and the mind are inseparable

Our sense of safety is something we feel in our bodies. In the aftermath of trauma, we might know, cognitively, the danger is gone. However, if our bodies don’t register a felt-sense of safety, we remain stuck in survival mode. This is one of the many reasons that incorporating a body-based approach to healing trauma can be more helpful than talk-therapy alone.

Through our bodies, it’s also possible to both discern and alter the state of our nervous systems. By learning to read and respond to the cues produced by our felt-sense of being in a body (capacities that are often diminished in the wake of trauma), we expand our resiliency and support the nervous system’s innate capacity to heal. Through sensing and moving the body, we can restore our natural capacity to down-regulate the nervous system when it’s stuck in high-activation (fight or flight, hyperarousal) or up-regulate the nervous system when it’s stuck in low activation (freeze, dissociation, hypoarousal).

What happens as we expand our resiliency? When our nervous systems are well-regulated, we are able to move from stressful experiences back into states of calm-alertness with relative ease. Our bodies were designed to do this: to feel some stress, and then return to a comfortable baseline, like a pendulum seamlessly weaving back and forth. Trauma can disrupt this flow, but using body-based approaches, it is possible to work directly with the nervous system to restore this innate capacity.