Do you know the signs your body is releasing trauma? When you’re releasing trauma from your body, it’s important to recognize signs that you’re making progress. For example, if you’re feeling more comfortable around people you used to be uncomfortable with or around new people you’ve recently met, that’s a positive sign that your body is letting go of negative emotions and calming your nervous system.
What to do is if you’re still experiencing trauma symptoms
What if the signs your body is releasing trauma are not too clear? If you’re still experiencing trauma symptoms months after the traumatic event, it may be time to seek help from a professional. For example, if you’re having nightmares or flashbacks or you’re constantly feeling anxious and emotional numb, you might need to see a psychologist.
During trauma, the fight, flight or freeze response can occur in our bodies. It’s a natural response that’s designed to protect our lives from danger. However, when your body is unable to shake off the stress, it can cause you to develop mental or physical health issues like PTSD.
A common symptom of PTSD is having flashbacks, moments in which you vividly re-experience the traumatic event. This can happen suddenly or after a triggering incident, such as a reminder of the trauma or seeing someone who reminds you of the event.
You might also feel a sense of calm and strength in your body. This is because your nervous system has stopped processing the memories of the traumatic experience.
In this case, you might be able to release the trauma through touch or another physical stimulus. Some people report that they spontaneously cry during a massage or acupuncture session, for example.
How to release trauma from the body
The Body Keeps the Score
Trauma isn’t just emotional and it also has an imprint on your body, and in ways you may not realize. It can affect how you carry yourself, your posture, sleep, digestion and more.
When a person experiences a traumatic event, their body goes into a state of heightened arousal and activates a fight-or-flight response. This causes your heart rate to race, your breath to shallow and you get a rush of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline.
But when you don’t take care of yourself in this state, you can experience long-lasting health issues and chronic conditions. So it’s important to find the best practices for releasing trauma from your body so that you can enjoy healthy emotional and physical functioning again.
Here are a few techniques that you can try out to release trauma from your body:
1. Be Still
When you’re feeling overwhelmed, tense or anxious, it’s easy to neglect your body and go into autopilot mode. But staying present and focusing on your breathing is the best way to help your body heal from the effects of a traumatic event and create a new way of coping with stress.
2. Be Active
If you’re feeling stuck in a rut or stressed out, getting up and moving is an excellent practice for letting go of stress and trauma. Exercise releases stress hormones, calms your nervous system and can even improve overall health.
3. Dance or Shake Your Body
According to Peter Levine, author of Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma, animals shake their bodies vigorously when they’re stressed. In the same way, dancing or shaking your body can clear toxins, tension and other emotional baggage that can linger after a trauma.
How to heal trauma in the body
PTSD can be hard to navigate, but it is possible to heal from trauma. With the help of a trained therapist and these simple tips, you can get started on your healing journey.
Somato Respiratory Integration
One of the most important things for healing trauma is to tune into your body. To do this, you can use somato respiratory integration (SRI), which is a series of breathing exercises that teach you to connect with your body’s signals.
Movement
Getting up and moving can help you release trauma in your body, burn off adrenaline, and release endorphins that calm the nervous system. Just be sure to do it mindfully – ditch those distractions, pay attention to your breath, and feel your sensations in your body.
Connection
Trauma can leave you feeling isolated and cut off from others, so it’s important to reconnect with your friends and family. You can also ask for support from a counselor, clergyman, or other person you trust to listen to you and be supportive.
A Supportive Environment
The most important factor for healing from trauma is a positive mindset. The longer you are able to process your experience and find new coping mechanisms, the sooner you can begin to heal and move forward.
You can work through your trauma on your own, or with a trained therapist, but whatever route you take, the most important thing is that you are willing to heal. Whether that means talking with a therapist, finding an online therapist directory, or pursuing a group therapy program, be willing to get support and let it happen naturally.
How to release emotions trapped in your body
If you’re dealing with chronic pain, a relationship breakdown, or anxiety, you might have “trapped” emotions that have not been properly processed. These ‘stuck’ feelings can be harmful to your physical and mental health, and they may even affect your DNA.
In ancient healing traditions, we’ve known for ages that the body stores emotion and can be a powerful tool for processing and healing. The key is to acknowledge the emotion, give it full attention and permission, and to allow it to move through your body, no matter how hard it might be.
A common way to do this is through mindfulness practices, such as meditation and yoga, or by doing bodywork, like myofascial release or deep tissue massage. Often, clients will burst into tears during these sessions because it’s often the emotional trauma that is holding the fascia (the connective tissues in your body) tight and trapped.
Another way to release stuck emotions is through Somato Emotional Release, a practice of using conscious breathing and encouraging words to magnify and expand the emotion throughout the body. This exercise can be very challenging and will feel uncomfortable at times, but it is vital to rebalance your sympathetic nervous system and release any stored emotion that has been keeping you in a state of fear, anger, or depression.
This technique is best done with the help of a trained therapist. It can take time to retrain the body to let go of a long-held habit, and it may take several sessions to fully heal a stubborn affliction. However, it is well worth the investment!
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