Somatic Trauma Release: How the Body Holds What the Mind Can’t

One of the most fascinating – and humbling – parts of my work as a trauma therapist is witnessing how the body remembers what the mind tries to forget.

We often think of trauma as a “mental health issue” — something that lives in the mind. But what I see, day after day, is that trauma is profoundly physical. It’s not just about what happened to us, but how our nervous system experienced what happened. The body stores those moments of fear, helplessness, or overwhelm, and until we release that trapped energy, the past continues to live in the present.

As an EMDR therapist, I’ve always been fascinated by the brain’s remarkable ability to reprocess trauma — to take those stuck, distressing memories and finally file them away properly so they no longer feel like they’re happening now. EMDR works with the brain’s natural healing system, and it’s nothing short of transformative. But over time, I’ve become more and more curious about what happens beneath those cognitive and emotional layers — in the body itself.

That’s where somatic trauma release and newer approaches like DBR (Deep Brain Reorienting) really light me up. DBR is a deeply gentle yet powerful way of working that goes right to the source — to the body’s original shock response. It helps clients reconnect with that first moment of overwhelm that got imprinted into their system before the story or belief even formed.

It’s almost like we’re rewinding the body’s “recording” of trauma and allowing it to process in real time, safely and completely, for the first time.

What’s so beautiful about this kind of work is that it’s not about “talking it through” or forcing anything to happen. The body already knows what it needs to do — it’s just been waiting for the right conditions to feel safe enough to let go. When that happens — a deep breath that wasn’t possible before, a softening in the shoulders, tears that finally flow — it’s like watching the system reset itself.

Clients often describe it as a kind of quiet relief — a deep exhale they didn’t even realise they’d been holding.

As therapists, we can’t think or talk our way out of trauma; we have to feel our way through it. That’s why somatic approaches feel so right to me — they honour the body’s wisdom and invite healing from the inside out.

For me, the work is about creating that safe space — one where both the mind and body can finally be heard, where old survival responses can unwind, and where clients can start to feel genuinely free in their own skin again.

It’s deep work. It’s gentle work. And it’s the kind of work that reminds me, every single day, why I love what I do.