DO YOU KNOW WHAT SOMATIC PRACTICES ARE ACTUALLY DOING TO YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM?

Why healing the body is inseparable from transforming the mind — and what the science says.

There is a moment I witness again and again in my work — and it never loses its ability to move me.

A client shows up carrying something they have been carrying for a long time. They are articulate about it. They understand it, intellectually, with great clarity. They have talked about it in therapy, journaled about it, read books about it. They know, in their mind, exactly what it is and where it came from.

And still, it is there. In their chest. In the tightness of their shoulders. In the way they hold their breath without realising.

Because the mind understood long ago. But the body has not yet been given permission to let go.

This is why somatic practices are not an optional add-on to personal development work. They are, for many people, the missing piece.

What Somatic Actually Means

The word somatic comes from the Greek soma — meaning body. Somatic practices are body-based approaches to healing, growth, and transformation. They operate on the understanding that our experiences — particularly our difficult, unresolved, or overwhelming ones — are not stored only in the mind.

They are stored in the body. In the nervous system. In the patterns of tension, bracing, collapse, and activation that become, over time, our default way of inhabiting ourselves.

This is not a new-age concept. It is supported by decades of neuroscientific research, most notably the work of Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, whose landmark research demonstrated that trauma — and indeed any significant emotional experience — lives in the body, not just the brain. His conclusion, made famous in his book title, is one I return to often in my practice: the body keeps the score.

What's Happening in Your Nervous System

Your nervous system is, among many other things, a threat-detection system.

When it perceives danger — physical, emotional, relational — it responds. The sympathetic nervous system activates: heart rate increases, muscles tense, breath shallows, cortisol floods the system. This is the famous fight-or-flight response, and it is exquisitely well-designed for genuine emergencies.

The problem is that the nervous system does not always distinguish between a genuine threat and a remembered one. Between a current danger and an old emotional wound being triggered by a present-day circumstance. It responds to both with the same urgency — and if those responses are never fully completed and discharged, they become chronic. Patterns of tension, hypervigilance, emotional reactivity, numbness, or disconnection that live in the body long after the original experience has passed.

Somatic practices work directly with the nervous system to complete those incomplete responses, discharge stored activation, and gradually — gently — shift the body out of chronic threat-response and into a state of greater safety, presence, and regulation.

What This Looks Like in Our Work Together

In my personal development sessions, somatic awareness is woven through everything we do. It might look like:

Pausing mid-conversation to notice what is happening in the body — where sensation is present, where there is tension or numbness or held breath — and bringing gentle attention there.

I always say your breath is your greatest friend, Using specific breathwork practices to shift the state of the nervous system in real time. The breath is one of the few autonomic functions we can consciously control, and it is a direct pathway to the vagus nerve — the great regulator of our nervous system's equilibrium. Even a few minutes of intentional breathing can move the system from activation to calm, from contraction to expansion.

Working with posture, movement, and physical sensation as entry points into emotional material that talking alone cannot always reach.

The results of this work are often both immediate and lasting in a way that purely cognitive approaches are not. Because we have not just understood something.

We have felt it shift — in the body, at the level where it was being held.

Something to Try Right Now

The next time you notice emotional distress, anxiety, or a sense of being overwhelmed — before you do anything else, place one hand on your chest and take three slow, deliberate breaths. Inhale for four counts. Exhale for six. Feel the weight of your body in your seat.

This simple act activates the parasympathetic nervous system — the rest-and-digest counterpart to fight-or-flight. It signals to your body, at a biological level, that you are safe. And from safety, everything becomes more possible.

Your body is not the obstacle to your transformation. It is the doorway.

— Lidija

Ready to work with your whole self — mind, body, and nervous system? Book a Personal Development Guidance Session or begin with a 15-Minute Clarity Call.

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