How to Release Trauma from the Body: A Holistic Approach
Releasing trauma from the body means working with the nervous system and the body’s energy field to process and discharge stored emotional experiences that the mind alone cannot fully resolve. Approaches such as somatic awareness, breathwork, movement and energy healing methods like the Body Code address these layers directly, often producing shifts that feel both physical and emotional.
Why does trauma get stored in the body in the first place?
Trauma gets stored in the body because the nervous system’s survival response, fight, flight or freeze, can become stuck when an experience is too overwhelming to process in the moment. The incomplete response is held in the tissues, muscles and energy field as a kind of unfinished business, long after the original event has passed.
Psychiatrist and researcher Bessel van der Kolk, in his widely cited work, described this phenomenon simply and memorably: the body keeps the score. When a stressful event floods the system faster than it can be integrated, the brain’s rational centres effectively go offline. The experience does not get filed away as a coherent memory. Instead, fragments of sensation, emotion and belief become lodged in the body, often showing up years later as chronic tension, fatigue, anxiety or a persistent feeling that something is not quite right, even when life looks fine on the surface.
This is why talking about a painful experience can help enormously and yet still leave something unresolved. Language lives in the cortex. Survival responses live much deeper, in the brainstem, the limbic system and the body’s own connective tissue. Healing that reaches those layers needs to speak the body’s language.
What are the most effective holistic approaches for releasing trauma from the body?
The most effective holistic approaches for releasing trauma from the body work by directly engaging the nervous system, the breath, movement or the body’s energy field rather than relying on verbal analysis alone. Methods range from somatic practices and yoga therapy to energy-based modalities that identify and clear trapped emotions held at a subconscious level.
Here are some of the most well-regarded approaches.
Somatic experiencing. Developed by Peter Levine, this method guides attention to physical sensations rather than the story of what happened. By slowly tracking sensations like warmth, pressure or the impulse to move, the nervous system is gently encouraged to complete the survival response it never finished. Clients often notice spontaneous trembling, sighing or a spreading sense of ease as the charge discharges.
Yoga therapy. Unlike a general yoga class, yoga therapy is adapted to the individual. Specific postures, breathwork and mindful awareness are used to regulate the nervous system, reconnect a person to their body in a safe way and shift chronic patterns of tension that often map directly onto emotional history. Research published in the International Journal of Yoga Therapy has pointed to yoga-based interventions showing measurable reductions in PTSD symptom scores, particularly when breath practices are included.
Breathwork. Conscious, directed breathing changes the chemistry of the body quickly. Even simple practices like extended exhale breathing (making the out-breath twice as long as the in-breath) activate the parasympathetic nervous system, signalling safety to a body that has been running on high alert.
Energy healing: Emotion Code and Body Code. These modalities, developed by Dr Bradley Nelson, work on the premise that unresolved emotional experiences become trapped in the body’s energy field as distinct energetic imprints. Using muscle testing (a form of applied kinesiology) as a biofeedback tool, a practitioner identifies these trapped energies and releases them using intention and a magnet drawn along the governing meridian. Many people report feeling lighter, calmer or noticeably freer in their body after a session, sometimes addressing experiences they had not consciously connected to their physical symptoms.
Holistic counselling. Talking and meaning-making still matter. When counselling is integrated with body-awareness practices, rather than sitting separately from them, it can help a person contextualise what they are noticing in their body and build a new narrative around their experience.
How do you know if trauma is still being held in your body?
Signs that trauma may still be held in the body include persistent physical tension with no clear medical cause, a hair-trigger stress response, emotional reactions that feel disproportionate to the situation, difficulty feeling safe or relaxed even in calm environments, and a sense of disconnection from your own body or emotions.
These signs can be subtle. You might describe yourself as someone who just cannot seem to switch off, or someone who always braces for the next thing to go wrong. You might notice you hold your breath without realising it, or that certain places, sounds or even smells send a wave of unease through you before your mind has time to catch up. These are not character flaws. They are the body’s learned attempt to protect you, running a programme that made sense once and has simply not been updated.
Physical symptoms worth paying attention to include a chronically tight jaw or neck, digestive sensitivity that flares with stress, a feeling of heaviness in the chest, or recurring headaches. None of these are proof of stored trauma in isolation, and any persistent physical symptom warrants a conversation with your GP. But when medical causes have been ruled out and the symptom persists, the body’s emotional landscape is worth exploring.
What can you do right now to begin releasing trauma from the body?
Right now, you can begin releasing trauma from the body by practising grounding techniques that bring attention into physical sensation, using extended exhale breathing to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, and moving gently in ways that feel good rather than disciplined. These small, consistent practices begin to shift the nervous system’s baseline over time.
A few starting points that require no special equipment.
Feel your feet. Pressing your feet into the floor and noticing the sensation of contact is one of the fastest ways to bring the nervous system out of a spiral and back into the present moment. It sounds almost too simple. That is the point. The body does not need complexity; it needs safety, and safety is felt, not thought.
Shake it out. Animals in the wild instinctively shake their bodies after a threatening experience to discharge the adrenaline. Humans have largely lost this habit. A few minutes of intentional shaking or bouncing, like a light jog on the spot, can release physical tension in a way that sitting still rarely achieves.
Name what you feel in your body, not what you think. Instead of saying “I feel anxious,” try noticing: “there is a tightening across my chest and my shoulders are up around my ears.” This shift from interpretation to sensation is a cornerstone of somatic work and begins to rebuild the relationship between mind and body.
Seek professional support. Self-practice is valuable. It is also limited. Working with a practitioner who understands the body’s role in trauma means you have a skilled, compassionate guide who can work at the pace your system needs, go deeper than solo practice allows and help you integrate what comes up.
At Zoe Bentley Healing, the Body Code offers a gentle, non-invasive route to identifying and clearing what your body has been carrying, whether that is a specific event, a pattern that has followed you for years or a heaviness you have never quite been able to name. You do not need to relive your story to release it.
Book a Body Code session with Zoe Bentley Healing to release trauma from the body.