Somatic Experiencing: What It Is & Why It’s Essential to Trauma Healing

When we think of trauma healing, often the first place we go is the mind: talk therapy, unraveling the story, processing feelings. These are absolutely important. But there is a critical piece that many of us overlook: the body.

As Bessel van der Kolk writes, “Trauma is not the story of something that happened back then. It’s the residue that lives on in your body, mind, and brain.”

Enter Somatic Experiencing® (SE) — a trauma-healing model developed by Peter A. Levine that helps “go where the body is stuck” rather than only where the mind is working. As Levine says, “Although humans rarely die from trauma, if we do not resolve it, our lives can be severely diminished by its effects.”

In this blog post, we’ll explore:

• What Somatic Experiencing is

• Why it’s essential for trauma healing

• The 7 core steps to somatic processing

What Is Somatic Experiencing?

Somatic Experiencing is a body-oriented approach to healing trauma. Rather than solely focusing on what happened, SE invites us to explore how it lives in the body—the sensations, rhythms, contractions, and incomplete survival responses that trauma leaves behind.

Trauma often keeps us stuck in survival mode: hypervigilance, shutdown, dissociation, emotional overwhelm, or looping relationship patterns. SE helps the nervous system return to completion, coherence, and safety.

In simple terms: trauma isn’t just an event you remember — it’s something your nervous system holds. And until the body completes what it didn’t finish, the system stays locked in a protective pattern.

Why Is SE Essential for Trauma Healing?

1. Trauma lives in the body.

The mind may remember the story, but the body holds the experience.

2. Regulation is foundational.

Healing requires learning how to shift out of survival states into grounded, regulated states.

3. Small steps create lasting change.

SE doesn’t force you into retraumatization or emotional flooding; it gently builds capacity through tiny, digestible “doses.”

4. It honors your pace and your nervous system.

SE is designed for complex trauma, attachment wounds, and chronic dysregulation — places where traditional talk therapy may not go deep enough.

5. It integrates meaning, presence, and embodiment.

As Pete Walker writes, “There is often a close relationship between emotion and physical sensation… sensations of tightness and tension can develop as a defense against feelings.”
SE helps unwind both the defenses and the feelings beneath them.

The 7 Steps of Somatic Processing

1. Orienting

Definition: Using your senses to come into the present moment so your body can recognize safety.
Practice: Look slowly around your space. Let your eyes rest on something neutral or pleasant. Notice any shift in your breath or shoulders.

2. Resourcing

Definition: Connecting with internal or external sources of support that help your body feel steadier.
Practice: Bring to mind a person, place, or memory that feels comforting. Notice where that feeling lives in your body and let it expand by 2–5%.

3. Tracking

Definition: Noticing internal sensations with curiosity rather than judgment.
Practice: Scan your body for temperature, tightness, pulsing, spaciousness, or movement. Name one sensation you feel.

4. Pendulation

Definition: Gently moving between a sense of safety and a mild activation.
Practice: Find a comfortable sensation, then briefly notice a mild discomfort. Move back and forth slowly, returning to the comfortable sensation each time.

5. Titration

Definition: Touching only tiny doses of activation—1–2% at a time—so your body can digest it safely.
Practice: Bring up a small piece of a stressful moment. Notice the first small shift in your body. Pause. Return to your resource.

6. Discharge / Completion

Definition: Letting the body naturally release stuck survival energy (shaking, tears, sighs, warmth, trembling).
Practice: Allow any impulse to move. Shake gently, bounce your feet, sigh, or stretch. Let your body finish something it didn’t finish before.

7. Integration

Definition: The settling and meaning-making that happens after the body processes something.
Practice: Place a hand on your heart. Notice one thing that feels different now compared to when you started.

Healing Is a Return to Yourself

Somatic Experiencing gives you a way to come home to your body — slowly, compassionately, and with deep respect for your nervous system. It helps you release what your body has been holding for years… sometimes decades.

You don’t have to do it alone, and you don’t have to rush. Healing is cyclical, layered, and deeply personal. As Peter Levine teaches, trauma is unresolved energy — and your body already knows how to complete it.

All it needs is space, safety, and support.

Join the Somatic Circle

If this work speaks to you and you’re wanting a deeper, embodied way to heal, I’d love to welcome you into Somatic Circle — a weekly trauma-informed group designed to support nervous system regulation, embodiment, and community healing.

Each gathering includes gentle somatic education, group discussion, and a guided practice rooted in Somatic Experiencing, polyvagal theory, mindfulness, and trauma-sensitive yoga.

Your first session is free.
Sign up here: https://www.bodyandmindcollective.com/somaticcircle
Use code: FIRSTFREE

You don’t have to heal alone.
Your body remembers the way home — and we’ll walk it together.