How Somatic Exercises Help Gently Release Stored Trauma and Regulate the Nervous System
When the Body Remembers: Somatic Practices for Trauma Release
As we navigate continuous, unprecedented times, personal trauma and vicarious trauma continue to compound. Because of this, it’s increasingly important to learn body-based strategies that help release stored trauma and regulate the nervous system.
Somatic practices support this healing by gently releasing survival energy and helping us reconnect with safety, choice, and presence in the body.
Trauma Lives in the Body
Trauma doesn’t always live in our memories or emotions. Human bodies have incredibly sophisticated protective strategies that often allow us to forget traumatic moments or lose conscious access to those memories. But there is one part of you that never forgets: the body.
Long after the mind has moved on, or buried the experience, the body remembers. The body holds onto unprocessed survival responses. Much of our trauma history lives in the body, including generational trauma passed down through epigenetics and inherited patterns of physical and chronic pain and disease.
Stored trauma can show up as:
A jaw that clenches, pops, or tightens without warning
Shoulders that never fully drop and carry chronic pain
Shallow breathing, tight hips, constant bracing, hypervigilance, or anxiety
Many people seek medical care for chronic pain with no clear cause, only to later discover it’s connected to stored trauma, stress, or long-term nervous system dysregulation.
What Are Somatic Exercises?
Somatic exercises are body-based practices that help the nervous system complete survival responses that were interrupted during trauma.
Rather than reliving the past, somatic healing focuses on helping the body feel safe enough to release stored energy in the present.
Below are gentle, accessible somatic practices that support trauma release and nervous system regulation.
1. Grounding: Teaching the Body You’re Safe Now
Trauma often pulls us into the past, sometimes without us realizing it. Triggers can act like time machines, bringing the body and nervous system back to moments of threat or harm.
Grounding and orienting practices help bring us back into the present moment.
How to practice:
Look around the room slowly
Name (out loud or silently):
5 things you can see
3 things you can hear
1 thing you can feel in your body that’s neutral or pleasant
Let your eyes rest on something that feels calming
Take 3 slow, cleansing breaths
Go on a color walk and photograph everything you see in one specific color
Say affirmations in the mirror
Why it helps:
This tells your nervous system: I am here, and I am safe right now. These are all Grounding signals safety to the nervous system and interrupts trauma re-enactment.
2. Pendulation: Moving Between Sensation and Safety
Trauma healing doesn’t happen by forcing ourselves into pain. It happens by gently moving between activation and safety.
How to practice Pendulation:
Notice an area of tension or sensation in the body
Then intentionally shift attention to a place that feels neutral or supportive (feet on the floor, back against a chair)
Slowly move attention between the two, like a pendulum
You can also practice pendulation through the eyes:
Close your eyes and take a deep breath
Gently move your eyes side to side or up and down
Take another deep breath
EFT tapping can also act as a pendulation practice by engaging different meridian points in the body.
Why it helps:
Pendulation builds capacity without overwhelm and teaches the body it can return to safety.
This is similar to EMDR as it mimics REM sleep and helps activate the parasympathetic nervous system to rest and digest mode. Using Bilateral Stimulation or pendulation can help you brain and body process dififfiult traumatic memories for healing.
In essence, pendulation and bilateral stimulation helps your brain and body complete its natural healing process for traumatic events, moving them from a live threat to a manageable past experience.
3. Gentle Shaking: Releasing Survival Energy
This practice may feel silly, but it’s one of the quickest and gentlest ways to release stored energy. Animals shake after danger; humans have learned not to—and that’s often how energy gets stuck.
How to practice:
Stand or sit
Begin gently shaking your hands, then arms, then legs if it feels okay
Let the movement be small and organic
Stop when your body naturally wants to
Some people prefer jumping, doing jumping jacks, dancing, or using vibration platforms.
Why it helps:
Shaking releases excess adrenaline and discharges stored fight-or-flight energy, helping the body return to equilibrium.
4. Vagus Nerve Toning Through Sound
The vagus nerve plays a key role in calming the nervous system. Sound is a powerful way to activate it.
How to practice:
Inhale slowly through the nose
On the exhale, hum, sigh, or make a low “voo” or “mmm” sound
Repeat for 1–3 minutes
Some people prefer more intense sound release, like screaming into a pillow or yelling in an open, private outdoor space. Singing your favorite song can also regulate the vagus nerve.
Singing, vocal toning, or even controlled yelling in a safe space can all be effective trauma release exercises.
Why it helps:
Sound vibrations stimulate the vagus nerve and signal safety and relaxation.
5. Slow, Conscious Breathing (Without Forcing Calm)
Instead of forcing deep breathing, focus on longer exhales or active breath practices.
How to practice:
Inhale gently for 4
Exhale slowly for 6–8
Pause naturally before the next inhale
Active breathwork practices can also help pull you out of your mind and back into the body.
Why it helps:
Longer exhales activate the parasympathetic nervous system, the body’s rest state.
6. Boundaried Touch: Reclaiming Choice
Trauma often involves a loss of agency or control over the body. Somatic work restores choice.
How to practice:
Place one hand on your chest or belly
Ask internally: Is this okay?
Adjust pressure, placement, or remove your hand entirely
Use EFT tapping on areas that feel tight
Practice yoga or gentle stretching with slow, conscious intention
You set the pace, timing, and your boundaries.
Why it helps:
Boundaried touch teaches the body that it is safe and that you are in control now.
A Reminder About Healing
Somatic healing doesn’t have to be dramatic.
It’s often subtle, incremental, relational.
Sometimes release looks like a sigh.
Sometimes like tears.
Sometimes like feeling nothing at all… and that’s okay.
The goal isn’t to relive trauma.
The goal is to help the body complete what it never got to finish.
Healing happens when the body feels safe enough to let go and complete the repair process it couldn’t complete at the time of trauma..
Closing Reflection
You don’t need to push your body into healing.
You need space, time, and curiosity.
Every body responds differently to trauma release. One person may cry during yoga, another may shake during breathwork, another may laugh after EFT tapping.
Your body’s medicine is unique. Your body knows what it needs… if you listen.
Your body has been protecting you all these years. What would it feel like to take some time to ask what it needs from you now?
Somatic work is how you say: Thank you. You can rest now. I’ve got you.