Your Body Keeps the Score, and Breathwork Helps You Release It
- Brainz Magazine
- Aug 15
- 6 min read
Updated: Aug 18
Written by Tundie Berczi, Wellbeing & Neuroscience Coach
Tundie is a Wellbeing & Neuroscience Coach, who is expert in breathwork, meditation, cognitive neuroscience and therapeutic coaching. With a background in corporate wellbeing, neuroscience, and holistic healing, she helps individuals and organisations reduce stress, enhance resilience, and cultivate mental clarity through science-backed and transformational practices.
In our bodies, trauma isn’t just stored in memories, it’s embedded in the nervous system. In this article, we explore how breathwork can help release this stored trauma, offering a path to healing by gently guiding the nervous system back to a place of safety. Through conscious breathing, you can unlock the body’s ability to process past experiences, rewire survival responses, and find inner calm, even when the mind says you’re safe.
A short story to begin
On a rainy Tuesday, Maya stood in the queue at the chemist. A customer raised his voice. Her chest tightened. Her breathing became shallow. Her hands tingled. Her mind said she was safe, her body did not agree.
She stepped outside by the doorway. She placed one hand on her chest and one on her stomach. She breathed in through her nose for a count of four, then out for a count of six. The first breaths were shaky. She kept going. Four in, six out.
After a minute, her shoulders lowered and her heartbeat slowed. An old memory came to mind, a closed kitchen door and loud voices behind it. She let the memory pass and returned to her breathing. When she went back inside, the shop was the same, but her body felt calmer. That evening, she set a timer for five minutes and practised again. Over the next weeks, she used the same simple pattern whenever she felt tense. Bit by bit, her body learned that it was safe.
When the body remembers what the mind cannot
The phrase “the body keeps the score” comes from psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk. His work shows that trauma is not only an emotional memory, but it is also a biological imprint.
Here is the science in simple terms. When something overwhelming happens, for example, a car accident, a sudden loss, or ongoing stress, the amygdala in the brain, the threat detection centre, switches on at once. It signals the hypothalamus and brainstem to flood the body with stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. The body prepares to survive. The heart beats faster, muscles tense, and breathing becomes rapid or shallow.
In many situations, this stress response turns off once the threat has passed. In trauma, especially when the event feels inescapable, the brain and body may not return to baseline. The nervous system learns that danger is constant, even during safe moments. This is why you might:
Freeze when someone raises their voice, even if they are not angry with you
Feel your heart pounding without knowing why
Struggle to relax even when you are physically safe
These reactions are not “all in your head”. They reflect real changes in the brain’s threat and safety networks. Over time, these patterns become stored as implicit body memory. While many approaches focus on thoughts and talk, one of the most direct ways to influence these survival circuits is through something you can control at any moment, your breath.
Trauma lives in the body, not only the mind
Neuroscientists call this somatic memory, the storage of emotional experience in the body’s systems. This is biological, not mystical.
When you face a threat, your body mobilises to survive:
Fight or flight, sympathetic activation: faster heart rate, tight muscles, more blood to limbs, rapid breathing
Freeze: slowed movement, reduced breath, low sensation, a kind of numbness
If the threat passes but your body does not complete this survival cycle, the readiness remains switched on. You may not be thinking about the event, but your autonomic nervous system behaves as if danger is still present. This can look like:
Chronic breath holding or shallow breathing
Jaw clenching and muscle tightness
Digestive issues, because blood is pulled away from the gut under long stress
Hypervigilance, a constant scanning for danger
The vagus nerve, which runs from the brainstem through the face, chest, and abdomen, helps end the stress cycle. It signals safety to the body. Trauma can reduce vagal tone, the ease with which this safety signal appears. You can know you are safe, yet still feel on edge, because the body’s safety switch has not reset.
Why talk therapy alone is sometimes not enough
Talk therapy can be life-changing. It helps you understand your story and make meaning. Yet many people feel stuck when their body keeps reacting even after they understand the why. You cannot think your way out of a dysregulated nervous system. When trauma lives in the body, we also need to work with the body to release it.
How breathwork gently unlocks stored survival energy
Polyvagal theory offers a simple map. The nervous system moves between fight or flight, freeze, and rest and repair. Breath acts like a remote control that helps guide this shift.
Certain patterns support safety:
Coherent breathing, about five to six breaths per minute, helps balance the system
Longer exhales, for example, inhaling for four and exhaling for six, stimulate the vagus nerve and calm the stress response
With steady practice, the body can release stored survival energy without forcing or retraumatising.
A real example from practice
One client experienced panic attacks for over a decade. Talk therapy helped her see her triggers, but the heavy, tight feeling in her chest stayed. When she began slow, carefully paced breathwork, something changed. She learned to create safety in her body. Over time, the grip in her chest eased, her breathing deepened, and panic moved from daily to rare. The key was going slowly, with gentle curiosity, and not pushing past what her body could handle.
A gentle breath ritual to try
If you would like to try this yourself:
Settle: Sit comfortably. Place a hand over your heart. Close your eyes if it feels safe.
Breathe: Inhale through your nose for a slow count of four. Exhale for a count of six.
Continue: Repeat for three to five minutes. Let your shoulders soften with each exhale.
This is not about fixing yourself in one sitting. It is about reconnecting with your body and letting it know it is safe.
Closing the loop, what happened to Maya
In the chemist, the raised voice acted as a trigger. Maya’s body reacted first: a quick breath, tight muscles, a racing heart. That was implicit memory and a sensitive threat system at work. By using a simple pattern, four in and six out, she sent a steady safety signal along the vagus nerve. The longer exhale told her body that the danger had passed. With practice, her nervous system learned a new pattern. The same world, the same sounds, a calmer response.
Your body is not the enemy. It is your ally in healing. Your breath is the bridge back to balance.
If you would like more support, you can find my details by searching for @tundieberczi on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
Read more from Tundie Berczi
Tundie Berczi, Wellbeing & Neuroscience Coach
Tundie is a Wellbeing & Neuroscience Coach specialising in stress management, resilience, and workplace wellness and helping people to reconnect with themselves. With over a decade in the corporate world, she understands the demands of high-performance environments and integrates neuroscience, breathwork, and holistic therapies to create effective well-being solutions. She delivers corporate workshops, individual coaching, and breathwork programs designed to help people regain clarity, balance, and focus.
References:
Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. New York: Penguin. Bessel van der Kolk, MD.
Ulrich-Lai, Y. M., & Herman, J. P. (2009). Neural regulation of endocrine and autonomic stress responses. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10, 397–409. NaturePMC
McEwen, B. S. (2007). Physiology and neurobiology of stress and adaptation: Central role of the brain. Physiological Reviews, 87, 873–904. PubMed
LeDoux, J. E. (2000). Emotion circuits in the brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 23, 155–184. PubMed
Craig, A. D. (2002). How do you feel? Interoception: the sense of the physiological condition of the body. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3(8), 655–666. PubMed
Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, Self-Regulation. New York: W. W. Norton. Stephen Porges PhD
Zaccaro, A., Piarulli, A., Laurino, M., et al. (2018). How breath-control can change your life: A systematic review on psycho-physiological correlates of slow breathing. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 12:353. FrontiersPMC
Lehrer, P. M., & Gevirtz, R. (2014). Heart rate variability biofeedback: How and why does it work? Frontiers in Psychology, 5:756. PMC
Steffen, P. R., Austin, T., DeBarros, A., & Brown, T. (2017). The impact of resonance frequency breathing on measures of heart rate variability, blood pressure, and mood. Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback, 42, 99–108. (Background on ~6 breaths/min ≈ 0.1 Hz resonance.) PMC
Noble, D. J., & Hochman, S. (2019). Hypothesis: Pulmonary afferent activity patterns during slow, deep breathing contribute to the neural induction of physiological relaxation. Frontiers in Physiology, 10:1176. Frontiers
Bae, D., Matthews, J. J., Chen, J. J., & Buman, M. P. (2021). Increased exhalation-to-inhalation ratio during breathing enhances cardiac vagal activity. Psychophysiology, 58(12):e13905. PubMedWiley Online Library
Laborde, S., Iskra, M., Zammit, N., et al. (2021). Slow-paced breathing: Influence of inhalation/exhalation ratio and respiratory pauses on cardiac vagal activity. Sustainability, 13(14):7775. MDPI
Gerritsen, R. J. S., & Band, G. P. H. (2018). Breath of life: The respiratory vagal stimulation model of contemplative activity. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 12:397. Frontiers
