How to Protect Your Nervous System While Holding Space for Others
- 8 hours ago
- 6 min read
Written by Alicia Taraji, Trauma Recovery Facilitator
Alicia Taraji specializes in trauma recovery through embodied practices, integrating Somatic Experiencing, Trauma-Sensitive Yoga, NeuroMeditation, breathwork, and art therapy. She is a certified yoga teacher (RYT-500, E-RYT-200, YACEP).
You already know how the nervous system works. You understand regulation, co-regulation, and what it takes to create safety for another person. That knowledge is real, and it matters. But knowing how to care for the nervous system and having the space to receive that care yourself are two very different things. If you are a therapist, yoga teacher, bodyworker, or trauma practitioner, this article is an invitation: not to learn something new, but to pause and ask yourself honestly how your own body is doing after all the holding you do for others.
"You cannot pour from a regulated nervous system you have not tended to."
The hidden cost of holding space
Helping professionals face a particular kind of occupational hazard that rarely gets named directly: the cumulative effect of co-regulating with people in pain. Research on vicarious trauma and secondary traumatic stress shows that clinicians, educators, and body-based practitioners can develop symptoms that mirror those of their clients, including hypervigilance, emotional numbing, sleep disruption, and a narrowing window of tolerance.
A 2018 study published in Frontiers in Neuroscience found that professionals who received Somatic Experiencing, a clinical therapy designed to resolve the physiological imprint of stress and trauma, showed significant improvements in quality of life and reductions in psychological symptoms like anxiety and somatization. The implication is clear: helping professionals benefit from specialized body-based therapeutic support rather than just practicing self-care on their own.
This is not about a lack of resilience. It is about physiology. When you repeatedly attune to another person’s dysregulated state, your own autonomic nervous system responds. Over time, without intentional recovery, that repeated activation can shift your baseline. The very sensitivity that makes you effective at your work also makes you more susceptible to its toll.
Why generic self-care falls short for practitioners
Most self-care advice is designed for the general public: take a bath, journal, go for a walk. These are valuable, but they do not address the specific nervous system demands of clinical and body-based work. As a practitioner, you need strategies that actively discharge the co-regulatory load you carry and restore your own interoceptive clarity, your ability to sense what is yours versus what belongs to your client.
Somatic self-care differs because it operates at the level of the autonomic nervous system, not just the cognitive mind. It meets the body where the impact actually lives.
Four somatic practices to integrate into your professional life
1. The between-session nervous system reset (2 minutes)
Between clients, instead of checking your phone or reviewing notes immediately, try a brief somatic discharge. Stand, let your arms hang, and shake gently from your hands to your shoulders for 60 seconds. Then pause, feet grounded, and notice three internal sensations: temperature, weight, and breath rhythm. This simple sequence helps your nervous system complete the co-regulatory cycle and return to your own baseline before the next session. Think of it as clearing the instrument before playing a new piece.
2. Balancing breath for practitioner recovery (5 minutes)
At the end of your workday, before transitioning into personal time, practice a balancing breath at a rate of 4 to 6 breaths per minute. Inhale for four seconds, exhale for six. Continue for five minutes. This rate has been shown to support heart-breath coherence and vagal tone, effectively shifting you out of the heightened attunement state that clinical work requires. The extended exhale signals safety to your system. This is not the breathing you teach, this is the breathing you do for yourself.
3. Body boundary reset: tapping and containment (5-10 minutes)
After a day of attuning to others, your sense of where you end and the other person begins can blur. This exercise helps you physically reclaim your own boundaries. Start by gently tapping the palm of one hand with the fingers of the other. Do this several times, then pause. Notice what you feel: tingling, warmth, pulsing, numbness. There is no right answer. Then tap the back of your hand, your forearm, your upper arm, noticing the sensation each time you stop. Next, place your hand on your opposite upper arm and gently but firmly squeeze the muscle enough to feel its density and shape beneath your skin. Move to your shoulders, your thighs, wherever feels right. With each squeeze, you are not just stretching or releasing tension. You are reacquainting yourself with the physical container of your own body, feeling where your boundaries are, and reminding your nervous system that this body is yours. This practice is simple, requires no special training, and can be done seated between sessions or at the end of your workday.
4. Weekly somatic check-in with a peer (20 minutes)
Schedule a brief weekly call with a trusted colleague where you both take turns sharing how your body feels after the week, not analyzing cases, not problem-solving, just noticing and naming physical sensations. One person speaks, the other simply listens and witnesses. No advice, no interpretation. This kind of peer support interrupts the professional isolation that accelerates burnout and offers something many practitioners rarely receive: the experience of being seen without having to perform or produce. It is not therapy, but it creates a relational container that can sustain your capacity over time.
When self-care is not enough: the role of somatic experiencing therapy
These four practices are genuine tools for daily nervous system maintenance. But it is important to be clear: they are self-care, not therapy. If you are experiencing symptoms of vicarious trauma, chronic depletion, or a window of tolerance that keeps narrowing despite your best efforts, self-care alone may not be enough.
Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a clinical therapeutic approach, developed by Dr. Peter Levine, that works with the body's innate capacity to resolve the physiological imprint of stress and trauma. It is not a set of exercises you can learn from an article. It is a guided process, facilitated by a trained practitioner, in which your nervous system is supported in completing survival responses that may have been interrupted or accumulated over years of clinical work. For helping professionals carrying the weight of others' pain, SE offers something that self-practice cannot: the experience of having your own system witnessed, tracked, and guided back toward regulation by someone trained to do exactly that.
Caring for the career is not a luxury, it is clinical integrity
When your nervous system is chronically depleted, your clinical attunement narrows. You miss subtle cues. You over-identify or under-respond. The quality of the space you hold for others depends directly on the regulation of your own system. Somatic self-care is not indulgence. It is the foundation of ethical, effective practice.
The wellness field is moving toward recognizing this. Nervous system literacy, trauma-informed supervision, and specialized body-based support for professionals are no longer fringe ideas. They are becoming the standard of care. Sometimes, the most professional thing you can do is allow someone else to hold space for you.
A place to begin
If anything in this article resonated with you, a good first step is simply to try the practices described above and notice what happens. For a guided starting point, I have created a free 5-minute nervous system reset audio designed for practitioners who hold space for others. I also offer online programs in English and Spanish, including Breathe: 21 Days of Connection, Rooted in Self-care, and Yoga & Trauma, totaling 4 hours of Yoga Alliance CE. If you sense that what your body is carrying needs more than self-practice, individual Somatic Experiencing sessions and tailored support for helping professionals are available too.
Learn more and book a session at Chiti Yoga.
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Read more from Alicia Taraji
Alicia Taraji, Trauma Recovery Facilitator
Alicia Taraji specializes in trauma recovery through embodied practices, recognizing that trauma lives in the body and must be addressed holistically. She integrates Yoga Sensible al Trauma, Trauma-Informed NeuroMeditation (NMI-2), breathwork to energize, balance, and relax, self-care education, and art therapy to support healing and resilience. Alicia is dedicated to understanding how traumatic experiences impact physical, emotional, and social processes, and to helping each person access their innate capacity to heal through the body. She has worked with women and non-binary people who have survived violence, offering individual sessions, group classes, and programs for women deprived of their liberty. She is, above all, a yoga teacher.
Sources & further reading:
Brom, D. et al. (2017). Somatic Experiencing for posttraumatic stress disorder: A randomized controlled outcome study. Journal of Traumatic Stress.
Winblad, N. E., Changaris, M., & Stein, P. K. (2018). Effect of Somatic Experiencing Resiliency-Based Trauma Treatment Training on Quality of Life and Psychological Health as Potential Markers of Resilience in Treating Professionals. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 12, 70.
Beranbaum, S. & D’Andrea, W. (2024). Trauma-Informed Yoga: A Capacity Building and Wellness Strengthening Intervention for Female Survivors and Affiliative Staff. Violence Against Women.
Dr. Peter Levine on the Somatic Experiencing Approach and the body’s innate capacity for self-regulation.
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk on body awareness, interoception, and trauma recovery.
Dr. Jeff Tarrant on the effects of meditation styles on brain function and the NeuroMeditation framework.
