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move through spring, a season of natural expansion and growth, I invite you to notice where your body might be holding outdated protective patterns.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: Heal Your Nervous System Naturally

When Trauma Disrupts Your Body’s Rhythm, and How to Restore It

Your body is a symphony of rhythms. The steady beating of your heart, the rise and fall of your breath, the cycles of waking and sleeping, all of these biological patterns keep your physical, emotional, and mental processes synchronized.

When these rhythms are intact, you feel balanced, grounded, and connected. But when trauma enters the system, the harmony falters. The effects ripple outward, touching every part of your being.

Trauma and the Nervous System: The Breakdown of Rhythm

Your body’s rhythms are regulated by the nervous system. When it functions optimally, you naturally move between alertness and calm, activity and rest, effort and recovery.

But trauma interrupts this coordination. Dysregulation follows, leaving you feeling disconnected from your body’s innate wisdom and flow.

As Bessel van der Kolk, MD, famously wrote in The Body Keeps the Score:

“Rhythm is essential to the structure of life… Trauma is the ultimate interrupter of rhythm.”

Hyperarousal and Hypoarousal: The Two Survival States

When trauma hijacks your system, you can become stuck in survival mode. Instead of smoothly shifting between activation and rest, your body defaults to extremes:

  • Hyperarousal (fight/flight): Your sympathetic nervous system is overactive, showing up as racing thoughts, rapid heartbeat, hypervigilance, shallow breathing, and insomnia.

  • Hypoarousal (freeze/shutdown): The dorsal vagal system dominates, leading to dissociation, numbness, fatigue, and emotional flatness.

Many people swing back and forth between these states, wired one moment, numb the next, never quite reaching the balanced middle ground where true regulation lives.

The Science of Disrupted Rhythm

Trauma alters the body on a deep physiological level:

  • Brainstem & limbic system: These survival regions become overactive, trapping you in stress cycles.

  • Heart rate variability (HRV): Trauma reduces HRV, a key marker of resilience and adaptability.

  • Cortisol cycles: Elevated stress hormones throw off sleep-wake rhythms and repair processes.

  • Interoception: Your internal sensing system—awareness of hunger, breath, muscle tension, fatigue—often goes offline, leaving you feeling cut off from your body.

This is why trauma survivors often feel “stuck.” Their biology is literally out of rhythm.

Rebuilding Interoception: Your Inner Compass

Take a moment right now. Can you sense your heartbeat? Feel the rhythm of your breath? Notice if your muscles are tense or soft?

This simple act of tuning inward is called interoception. Trauma disrupts it, but somatic practice can rebuild it—like tuning an instrument back to pitch.

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Somatic Practices: Medicine for Your Nervous System

One of the most accessible ways to restore rhythm is through your breath. Breath is both automatic and under your control, making it a direct line into your nervous system.

Here are two science-backed practices you can try today:

  • Coherent Breathing: Slow your breath to 5–6 breaths per minute, keeping inhales and exhales equal in length. This has been shown to regulate HRV and balance your autonomic nervous system.

  • Extended Exhale Breathing: Inhale for 4 counts, exhale for 6 counts. The longer exhale stimulates your vagus nerve, signaling safety and activating the body’s natural “rest and digest” state.

These are just the beginning. Rhythmic movement, guided interoceptive awareness, and somatic practices all act like medicine for the nervous system—helping you restore flow, balance, and resilience.

An Invitation to Return to Flow

Trauma may have interrupted your rhythms, but your body still remembers how to return to harmony. With practice, you can restore the natural ebb and flow that supports healing, connection, and vitality.

💫 Inside The Collective, we explore somatic teachings like these every month—practices designed to re-regulate your system, rebuild resilience, and return your body to its natural state of flow.

Because healing isn’t about “fixing” what’s broken. It’s about restoring the rhythm you were always meant to live in. 

For a brief video on this theme and more related somatic practice, click here!

What bodily rhythms are asking for your attention today?