A Somatic Pathway to Trauma Healing – Overcoming the Impact of Trauma Through a Somatic Approach

Written by Danielle Bereziat, Executive Contributor

Dani Bereziat is a highly skilled Life Coach and Somatic Trauma Therapist, guiding others to overcome emotional distress, dysregulation and overwhelm, underpinned by unresolved trauma.

Dani is committed to safely transforming traumatic imprint stored in the body into growth, meaning, connection, regulation, self-mastery, and resilience.

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Trauma leaves an indelible mark, not just on the mind but deep within the body. Modern research by leading trauma experts has revealed that unresolved experiences are stored in our nervous system, shaping our thoughts, behaviours, and physical health. In this article, Danielle Bereziat explores the profound connection between body and trauma, and how a somatic approach offers a pathway to genuine healing, resilience, and wholeness.

The trauma and body connection

In recent years, world-renowned trauma experts, including Peter Levine, PhD, Dr. Gabor Maté, and many other professionals dedicated to developing effective approaches to trauma recovery, have played a pivotal role in reshaping our collective understanding of trauma and its healing processes.

Thanks to their dedication and ongoing efforts, our understanding of trauma’s true impact has transformed. As highlighted by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk in his pioneering work The Body Keeps the Score, research demonstrates that the body “remembers” and stores trauma at a physical and subconscious level, a phenomenon known as “somatic memory.”

Polyvagal theory, developed by Stephen Porges, provides the framework for understanding the physiological basis of trauma responses and nervous system states, which develop as a result of unprocessed traumatic imprint stored in the body. These include the fight/flight, freeze/shutdown, and fawn responses.

This insight has been instrumental in driving a significant paradigm shift in how trauma is perceived and addressed in the 21st century. It challenges traditional views, emphasising that trauma is not merely a psychological issue but a deeply embodied, whole-body experience that requires a holistic and somatic approach to healing.

We now know that it is not necessary to experience a “big T” (acute or shock trauma) event. There are many toxic environments and seemingly innocuous, covert, and subtly nuanced life experiences that result in survival stress, overwhelm, and traumatic imprints.

We understand that the undigested overwhelm of experiences we are unable to process in the moment, when we lack the internal or external resource of safety to allow full processing, is stored in the body and subconscious mind as unresolved traumatic imprint.

The energy and activation of the undigested experience (the unprocessed traumatic imprint) is held in the body, where it retains its charge and continues to activate until it can be safely embodied and resolved, allowing trauma loops to complete and close.

Unprocessed nervous system activation stored in the body results in nervous system and emotional dysregulation, hypervigilance, and states of contraction, which underlie protective survival patterns.

Stored trauma deeply imprints upon and informs our subconscious minds, manifesting in negative, critical thoughts, and false and limiting beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world. These subconscious thought processes subsequently drive our behaviours, patterns, and reactions, inhibiting our ability to relate and respond from a place of alignment with our true nature.

This awareness informs and deepens our understanding of how trauma develops and imprints in the body at a somatic level, and underpins a shift away from traditional “top down” talk therapy to a “bottom up,” body-based, somatic approach to trauma healing.

Trauma is not ‘dysfunction’: It is the body’s perfectly designed innate protective mechanism

Typically, trauma responses and associated nervous system states are referred to as “dysfunction.” However, they are the body’s perfect and innate protective mechanisms and responses, which we develop to safeguard us from future real (or perceived) threats to our safety, shielding us from the possibility of further harm or re-traumatisation.

Despite being protective states, the reality is that unresolved trauma left untreated over time increasingly impacts our health and ability to function. Trauma wounds interfere with our ability to feel, understand, and relate to others, and can underpin any number of physical and mental health issues, including freeze states/functional freeze, depression, anxiety, dissociation, and more.

Our bodies develop physical holding patterns in response to ongoing or prolonged survival stress, affecting the musculoskeletal system and the body at a cellular level, impeding the function of cellular mitochondria, leading to oxidative stress, inflammation, and a vast array of serious and ongoing health concerns and syndromes.

The complex survival physiology of unresolved trauma overrides our conscious will, motivation, and desire to take aligned action in our lives, keeping us stuck despite our best efforts to move forward.

What is trauma healing?

As stated in my first article, 'What is Trauma?'

“The truth is, everyone carries some degree of unresolved trauma. And yet, healing is always possible. As much as our bodies have the innate intelligence to protect us from future harm through developing trauma responses and survival patterns, our bodies also possess the capacity to recover and restore, when offered the right conditions and environment to facilitate healing.

Trauma healing is not about erasing the past. It’s about safely reconnecting with our bodies and the parts of ourselves that were left behind during moments of overwhelm and trauma…

It is about growing in our capacity to safely access, touch into, embody, and process the undigested emotions, nervous system activation, and energy of stored trauma, allowing traumatic imprint to metabolise and discharge, facilitating a return to emotional and nervous system regulation, connection, and wholeness.”

Trauma healing allows us to reconnect with and reclaim our personal power. By safely processing the traumatic imprint that lies at the roots of our subconscious triggers, fears, and survival patterns, we can begin to move from contraction to expansion, from fear and constriction to freedom, from pain to health, joy, and resilience.

Healing trauma through the body

Understanding these connections is crucial for trauma healing. Trauma is not the conscious memory of the traumatic events, in fact, many traumatic memories are locked away in the subconscious mind until they can be safely accessed. Trauma is the unprocessed survival stress (nervous system activation), emotions, and overwhelm associated with the traumatic experience that are stored in the body and subconscious mind.

Talking therapies take a ‘top down’ approach, working with the conscious mind and memory are limited in their ability to effectively resolve trauma stored in the body and subconscious.

Although traditional talk-based therapies can offer support, validation, and information to help us increase our awareness of trauma and our understanding of its impact in our lives, this approach alone is largely ineffective in long-term trauma healing.

It is common for trauma survivors who engage in talk therapy as ‘treatment’ to experience re-traumatisation, leaving them in distress, overwhelm, and stuck in a trauma response after being asked to re-live and talk about traumatic experiences.

Although there are many tools, exercises, and practices that can support short-term regulation and management of nervous system activation and triggers, including those based in grounding in the body, movement, yoga, sound, and meditation practices, it is vital to understand that lasting, long-term trauma healing requires a patient, gentle, and ‘bottom up’ somatic approach, facilitated by a skilled somatic trauma therapist, to enable traumatic imprint to slowly, safely, and gently process through the body and subconscious mind.

Long term trauma healing is possible

There is no ‘magic wand’ that can heal trauma, and each person’s healing journey is as individual to them as they are unique. Trauma healing asks that we take personal ownership of our journey, with an ongoing commitment to the process, while honouring the need to allow ourselves the time and space to heal, with self-love, self-compassion, and self-forgiveness.

We must acknowledge that while we are not responsible for what has happened to us, we do have the power to heal, with support from others and through a holistic, patient, somatic approach, without expectation or pressure to achieve our desired outcomes within specified timeframes.

As trauma is stored in the body, trauma healing must be facilitated through the body. With the awareness that the conditions which result in traumatic imprint are a combination of overwhelm and absence of safety, we can understand that somatic therapy to facilitate trauma healing must begin with establishing and connecting to a resource of safety before beginning any exploration through the felt sense of the stored traumatic imprint in the body.

Trauma healing happens through safe connection with another

Despite our best efforts, long-term trauma healing cannot happen in isolation. While we develop and grow our personal capacity for nervous system regulation, we require safety in connection and co-regulation with a skilled somatic trauma therapist to safely guide us through the felt sense of triggers rooted in trauma to facilitate deep, lasting trauma healing.

This framework informs and underpins Embodied Processing (E.P.), a holistic, somatic trauma therapy in which clients are individually guided by the E.P. practitioner to connect with their bodies and anchor in a resource of safety, before being gently guided through somatic inquiry of traumatic imprint in the body and subconscious mind.

This holistic, somatic approach allows us to safely access and process stored traumatic imprint without talking about and revisiting traumatic events.

Facilitating transformation through trauma

When we commit to this process, we can be guided to incrementally increase our capacity to safely explore through the felt sense of traumatic imprint held in the body and begin to gently embody and metabolise nervous system activation, stored emotions, and subconscious imprints, allowing trauma loops to complete and close.

As we gently touch into, embody, and process unresolved traumatic imprint stored in the body, we begin to connect with the innate wisdom of our body and the capacity of our nervous system to organically ‘self-right.’ By resolving traumatic imprints, we allow space and expansion for our nervous system to begin to re-organise and return to a regulated ‘rest and digest’ state (the ability to move in and out of stress).

We begin to reprogram false and limiting subconscious beliefs about ourselves that are rooted in traumatic imprint and have kept us stuck, in lack, and restricted in our ability to show up in the world. We reconnect with and integrate orphaned parts of ourselves that were lost in trauma and begin to return to connection and wholeness, growing in our capacity to respond from a place of aligned authenticity.

Although the process of trauma healing is not finite or linear, nor with precise measures of recovery expected within a given timeframe, there are definite indicators by which we can identify progress in trauma healing.

We know that we are beginning to heal from the impact of unresolved trauma when we can feel and see that we are growing in our capacity to:

• develop nervous system and emotional regulation

• release survival patterns

• overcome trauma responses to triggers

• release physical holding patterns in the body

• rest and relax

• connect with our bodies

• connect and attune with others

• heal health issues including syndromes rooted in trauma

• be present

• align with our authentic nature and take aligned action

• reintegrate orphaned parts of ourselves

• develop self-mastery of our emotions, responses, and behaviour

• reconnect with a sense of hope and capacity to experience joy

As we gently embody and process traumatic imprint through somatic trauma therapy, we increase our capacity for expansion and allow space in our body and subconscious mind for lasting, long-term post-traumatic growth and integration, facilitating long-term healing and transformation through trauma, and restoring safety, connection, regulation, resilience, wholeness, and hope.

To know more about my work as a Somatic Trauma Therapist and certified Embodied Processing Practitioner, and to connect with me to facilitate your trauma healing, submit an enquiry through my website.

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Read more from Danielle Bereziat

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Danielle Bereziat, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine

Dani has a profound understanding of the extensive conditions and environments that inform how trauma develops, stores in the body and subconscious mind, resulting in trauma responses, emotional and nervous system dysregulation, trauma responses and survival patterns, and impacting our functioning on every level until resolved.

Her holistic, somatic approach to trauma healing encompasses her lived experience, extensive professional knowledge and skill set and her expansive capacity to attune and co-regulate with her clients, as she facilitates personal transformation by gently guiding each person individually through the felt sense of traumatic imprint in the body, to safety, connection, self-mastery, authenticity and wholeness.