Why Your Posture Holds Your Feelings Hostage

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Breaking the Pattern with Somatics

The good news is that our bodies hold not just the patterns but also the pathways to release. Through conscious awareness and gentle somatic practice, we can begin to deconstruct these limiting postures and access our full emotional range

Exercise: Conscious Posture Exploration

Stand up if you’re able, or sit comfortably if standing isn’t accessible. Notice:

  1. Which parts of your body continue to brace?
  2. Where do you feel ongoing tension or holding?
  3. Recognize that there was likely once a good reason for this pattern, perhaps protection or self-defense
  4. Bring conscious awareness to the holding pattern and see if you can begin to soften or release it
  5. Ask yourself: “In this moment, do I need this protection?”
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Integration: The Path Forward

Finding our way back into our bodies to feel and integrate these emotions is essential for authentic expression and wellbeing. Remember that these patterns once served as protection. Approach them with curiosity and compassion rather than judgment. Each contracted posture, each area of pain, holds not just discomfort but also wisdom and information about your deepest needs.

As we move through spring, a season of natural expansion and growth, I invite you to notice where your body might be holding outdated protective patterns. What emotions might be waiting to be felt and expressed? What new possibilities might emerge as you release these old postures?

For those interested in exploring these patterns more deeply, I’m offering a special focus on emotional embodiment in our May Monthly Integration session. We’ll practice gentle somatic movements that support emotional expression and integration in a safe, supportive environment.

And for those feeling called to deeper immersion in this work, spaces are still available for our July Root to Rise retreat near Wakefield, where we’ll explore these patterns in the healing container of nature and community.

Your body holds not just your pain, but also your pathway to freedom. The journey begins with simply noticing how you’ve learned to hold yourself in the world, and what might be possible if you begin to let go.

For further practice, please click on this video!

Inner Rhythms: How to Heal Nervous System Dysregulation Naturally

Your body operates on multiple biological rhythms that keep your physical, emotional, and mental processes synchronized.  When these rhythms are disrupted by trauma, the effects ripple through every aspect of your being.

These intricate systems are regulated by our nervous system and when functioning optimally, you experience balance and flow. When trauma disrupts this coordination, dysregulation follows, leaving you feeling disconnected from your body’s natural wisdom.

How Trauma Interrupts Your Natural Flow

As Bessel Van der Kolk MD states: ‘Rhythm is essential to the structure of life… Trauma is the ultimate interrupter of rhythm.’ When your system cannot restore equilibrium following trauma, your body becomes stuck in survival mode, creating a loss of internal rhythm where the natural shifts between alertness and calm no longer happen smoothly.

This manifests in two primary ways. Hyperarousal keeps your sympathetic nervous system overactive, creating racing heart, hypervigilance, insomnia, and shallow breathing. Alternatively, hypoarousal dominates through dorsal vagal shutdown, resulting in dissociation, numbness, low energy, and emotional flatness. Many people swing between these states, never finding the balanced middle ground where true regulation exists.

Trauma affects your brainstem and limbic structures, disrupting heart rate variability and breathing patterns. Elevated cortisol impacts sleep-wake cycles, while damaged interoception leaves you unable to sense internal cues like hunger, fatigue, or tension. Emotional rhythms become stuck in numbness or overactivation, preventing the natural ebb and flow that healthy nervous systems enjoy.

Take a moment now: Can you sense your heartbeat? Your breath? The tension or ease in your muscles? This is interoception – your internal sensing system that trauma often disrupts.

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Restoring Rhythmic Flow Through Somatic Practice

Your breath serves as your most accessible rhythm regulator. Try coherent breathing with 5-6 breaths per minute, maintaining equal inhale and exhale. Or practice extended exhale breathing: inhale for 4 counts, exhale for 6, which activates your vagus nerve and signals safety to your system. 

There are many more exercises that we explore just like this during monthly Somatic Teachings in The Collective, that create harmony and return our bodies to a state of flow and ease. They are not just somatic practices, they are your nervous system’s medicine.

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What bodily rhythms are asking for your attention today?