How Trauma Lives in the Body

Understanding Somatic Memory & the Path Back to Safety

Most people think of trauma as something that happens in the mind. But the truth is—trauma doesn’t just live in your thoughts. It lives in your body.

It shows up as tight shoulders, shallow breathing, clenched jaws, racing hearts, frozen energy. It hides in digestive issues, chronic fatigue, autoimmune responses, and even an inability to be still. If you’ve ever said, “I know I’m safe, but I don’t feel safe,” you’ve already met your body’s trauma response.

This is where the science of somatic memory comes in.

The body remembers, even if the mind does not.

What Is Somatic Memory?

“Soma” is a Greek word meaning the living body. Somatic memory refers to the way our body “remembers” events, especially overwhelming ones, through sensation rather than story.

While your thinking brain (the prefrontal cortex) may not fully recall the details of a traumatic event, your survival brain and body do. They store trauma as incomplete responses—frozen fight, flight, or freeze reactions that didn’t get to finish. These “unfinished stories” get stuck in the nervous system, showing up long after the danger is gone.

Think of a deer that narrowly escapes a predator. After the danger passes, it shakes—literally discharges the stress. Humans don’t often get that same chance. We're taught to "stay calm" and "move on," but our bodies are still holding on.

This is why healing trauma isn’t just about talking—it’s about feeling, noticing, and slowly learning to relate to your body in a different way.

Shaking off stress

Why Trauma Doesn’t Respond to Logic Alone

One of the most frustrating parts of trauma recovery is that you can understand everything—why it happened, that it wasn’t your fault, that you’re no longer in danger—and still feel trapped in anxiety, shame, or numbness.

That’s because trauma primarily impacts the parts of your brain and nervous system that are pre-verbal and non-cognitive. It overrides logic and hijacks your body’s ability to sense safety.

This is where somatic (body-based) work becomes essential. It helps the nervous system relearn safety through slow, consistent practices of listening, noticing, and responding—not fixing or forcing.

How Trauma Shows Up in the Body

Here are a few common ways unresolved trauma may express itself somatically:

• Hypervigilance: Always scanning for danger, even when you know you're safe.

• Muscle tension & chronic pain: Especially in the jaw, shoulders, lower back, and hips.

• Shallow breathing: A system always braced for impact doesn’t breathe deeply.

• Digestive issues: The gut and nervous system are deeply connected (aka the “second brain”).

• Emotional numbness or detachment: The body goes into freeze mode to protect you from feeling.

• Startle response or irritability: Small stimuli trigger big reactions.

These aren’t flaws. They’re signs your body has been working hard to protect you. The goal isn’t to “get rid” of these reactions—it’s to help your body learn that it doesn’t have to stay in survival mode forever.

Valid and normal nervous system responses don't always work well for us.

What Is Somatic Work, Exactly?

Somatic work is a broad term for practices that help you reconnect with your body, regulate your nervous system, and build a sense of internal safety.

In trauma-informed coaching or therapy, this work might include:

• Grounding and orienting exercises: Bringing awareness to the present moment using your senses.

• Gentle movement or stretching: Helping stuck energy move through the body.

• Breathwork and regulation tools: Supporting the nervous system to down-regulate stress.

• Touch and boundaries: Exploring what safe touch and consent feel like.

• Guided meditations and visualizations: Creating internal safety and access to inner resources.

• Tracking sensations: Learning to notice without judgment and respond with curiosity.

The key to somatic work is going slow. Trauma was overwhelming. Healing should never be. We’re not trying to relive the trauma—we’re trying to give your body a new experience: one where it gets to feel safe, seen, and supported.

Breathwork is a great tool to regulate the nervous system

The Body as an Ally, Not a Battlefield

If you’ve felt disconnected from your body—or even afraid of it, you’re not alone. Many trauma survivors learn to cope by dissociating or numbing out. And that’s okay. Those were intelligent survival strategies.

But what if your body wasn’t the enemy? What if it was the part of you that kept going—holding the grief, yes, but also the strength, the hope, the desire to keep moving?

Somatic healing is about building a relationship with your body where trust is rebuilt gently over time. You don’t have to dive in. You can start by asking:

• Can I notice the sensation of my feet on the floor?

• What happens when I take a breath and soften my shoulders?

• Is there one place in my body that feels neutral or even safe?

That’s where healing begins—not in some grand breakthrough, but in small moments of reconnection.

Notice your body, does any part feel safe?

You Deserve to Feel Safe in Your Own Body

Trauma might have taught your body that the world is dangerous, that love isn’t safe, that you always have to be on guard. But you get to write a new story—one breath, one sensation, one choice at a time.

Somatic work doesn’t promise perfection. But it does offer you the chance to befriend your body, to listen deeply, and to move through the world with more compassion, presence, and peace.

Your body remembers. And with care, it can also remember how to feel safe again.

Your past does not define you. Reclaim your future.