Somatic Work and Getting Trauma “Out of Your Body”

Could somatic work be helpful in your healing and freedom journey, especially when it comes to trauma healing? Today I want to share some perspectives that I hope will bring clarity and practical insight to this often-misunderstood topic.

“Soma” is simply the Greek word for “body,” and somatic insights encourage us to embrace our physiology in the trauma healing journey. I want to be clear upfront: I’m not here to promote any particular somatic practice. Rather, I want to bring the body—our physiology—into the conversation about trauma healing and allow our hearts to gain some helpful perspectives.

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Somatic work operates from a foundational belief: the body has a role in trauma and the body has a role in trauma recovery. This insight has become increasingly clear to me through decades of helping people in their healing journeys.

Here are four key insights that shape our understanding:

The body has been impacted by stress and trauma, and we need to allow our physiology to participate in the healing process. We aren’t just “heady beings” with a brain going through life. Many people feel stuck in their heads, trapped in circular thoughts. Somatic awareness invites deeper participation.

Trauma can leave people “disconnected” from their bodies. This is a very common pattern among those who have experienced trauma—there’s a disconnect from themselves, a disconnect from their actual physiology.

Trauma can leave stress and tension locked up in certain areas of the body. Just as physical labor can leave soreness in specific muscles, trauma’s impact can be intense and highly concentrated. We typically know that after working too hard physically, we need to rest and stretch. But we don’t always think this way about trauma healing.

Learning to engage those areas with nurture and compassion can be part of the healing journey. Approaching our bodies with a compassionate mindset—rather than a militant one—opens the door for genuine release and renewal.

Some practitioners say “the body has a story to tell,” and there is real insight there. Many people notice that their physical ailments—whether in joints, muscles, or other areas—carry a story. There’s often a particular part of the body where pain, soreness, or tension consistently builds up.

Understanding the Mind-Body Connection

Your spiritual, mental, and emotional life impacts your physiology. We’re gaining more understanding about how our mind and emotions can affect our bodies—what some call the “psychosomatic” connection.

Some teachers fall into a ditch by suggesting: “Just get your thinking aligned right, and your body will automatically come into alignment.” While there’s some truth to the power of renewed thinking, that perspective is incomplete. Somatic insight takes this further: we need to intentionally bring our body into participation with our renewal. The body needs to be invited into the healing journey, not left as a passive bystander.

Why Christians Often Miss This

In my years of pastoring, teaching seminars, and working with people, I’ve observed something fascinating: many believers are deeply disconnected from their physiology. We’re locked up in our heads. In our high-intelligence, information-driven culture, we’ve made “growing in God” primarily about sitting in a building while someone teaches us. Get information. Get more information. Then go home.

As a pastor, I found myself regularly encouraging believers to use their physiology—to stand, clap, raise their hands, move. And I felt the pushback. People would think, “I came here to get information and go home.” But I kept pressing: we need to embody what we’re learning and experiencing.

This isn’t a Pentecostal or charismatic thing—it’s a biblical thing. Scripture is filled with invitations for our bodies to participate: bowing, kneeling, lifting hands, shouting, dancing, weeping, wailing, stillness, standing, sitting, walking, running. Even James says to “be a doer of the word,” not just a hearer.

Three Observations About Physical Participation

When I pastored and encouraged physical participation—songs about jumping, dancing, celebrating—I observed three important things:

Christians don’t dance. Even though the Bible talks about dancing before the Lord, believers resist it. If you even suggest it, you get pushback from the “church lady” and “church gentleman” and everyone in between.
People are very self-conscious about their bodies. This is part of the disconnection. They feel goofy in their own skin. Put us in a social gathering with other people, and everyone kind of gravitates toward the corners. We have our social awkwardness. The disconnect shows up in how uncomfortable we are simply moving.
When they participated, the whole atmosphere shifted. People started smiling more. They took themselves less seriously. They had more energy. They became childlike. Joy showed up on their faces. And it made the teaching time so much more enjoyable, because everyone was in a state that was more welcoming and receptive.

I remember one time we did a song with a country flare, and I said, “We’re going to hold hands in a circle and just do a little two-step.” People resisted at first, but by the end, the whole room had transformed. There’s something powerful about allowing our bodies to participate in celebration and renewal.

Developing Body Awareness

Body awareness means becoming conscious of where you feel certain emotions, tension, stress, or pain. When you’re stressed and overwhelmed, where does it show up the most?

Often, the areas we struggle with physically are where our pain accumulates—the back, chest, stomach, bowels, feet, hamstrings, hips, or shoulders. I’ve experienced this personally: I once discovered I was clenching my teeth intensely without even being aware of it. I tend to feel anxiety in my chest and pain in my shoulders.

Now, I want to caution you: don’t get lost in this concept by obsessively wondering, “Where exactly is the trauma trapped in my body?” Keep it simple. The philosophy behind somatic work is straightforward: emotions are meant to work through you. Emotions arise, you experience feelings, and they move through you. With trauma, however, the experience can get trapped in your physiology because the emotions didn’t get a chance to complete their natural cycle.

Releasing Tension and Regulating Your Nervous System

Two main practices form the foundation of somatic work: breathing and gentle movement. These help you participate actively in your healing, let go of stress and tension, and embrace nurture for your body.

There’s also the importance of therapeutic touch. Many people with trauma need resources where they physically experience helpful touch—whether through physical therapists who assist with stretching or therapeutic massage. Our bodies are crying out for nurture. The Bible even talks about embrace and greeting one another with a kiss. Can we appreciate a hug? Many of you need one.

Learning to regulate your emotions compassionately—moving through troubling feelings rather than being overwhelmed by them—develops self-control and a sound mind. This is part of integrating your traumatic experiences into the whole picture of your life and journey.

Potential Problems and Confusion

Let me address some legitimate concerns about somatic work.

Concern about New Age influence. This is understandable—many aspects of body-focused practices can be hijacked by counterfeit spiritual systems. I have personal convictions about practices like yoga and certain New Age approaches. But here’s the problem: New Age often plagiarizes. It takes something God created and uses it outside of relationship with Him—like meditation and stillness, which are deeply biblical practices that Christians commonly neglect.

But here is the problem. We reject new age influences, but we also do not engage the practives that God originally designed. Christians will reject new age meditation and stillness, but then won’t practice meditation and stillness–both biblical principles. We complain about the counterfeit while still refusing to engage in what God originally designed.

Somatic work without emotional processing. Sometimes people use body-focused practices to avoid the emotional work. They want to apply something external without addressing what’s happening internally.

Obsessing about the body. This can manifest as obsessively researching physiology, becoming fixated on nutrition as if it will solve everything, compulsively checking how your body feels, or constantly monitoring physical sensations. This isn’t what somatic awareness involves. We simply need to be mindful of allowing our body to participate—not become consumed by it.

Healthy Goals for Somatic Awareness

When approached properly, somatic work aims to accomplish several important things:

Reconnecting with your body. Working on how you relate to your body can help heal how you relate to yourself.

Developing awareness (not obsession) of body sensations. There’s a significant difference between mindful attention and anxious monitoring.

Releasing stress and tension locked up in the body. Allowing what has been stored to find healthy release.

Regulating the nervous system and restoring healthy mind-body connection. Learning to move from dysregulation to grounded presence.

Empowering your ability to participate practically in your journey. You can do something. You need to do “the work.”

Keep in mind: all of this starts with a compassion response, not a militant one. Many people approach their healing purely from a soldier’s standpoint—fighting and pushing through. They need more balance in grounding themselves in love and grace. Ironically, many militant approaches to trauma actually stem from unaddressed trauma, adding fuel to the fight response of the stress system.

A Key Biblical Insight

Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Yet the church often lives as though our gathering places are the holy spaces. No—your body is a holy space, a place of value. Living with appreciation for your temple matters deeply to your healing journey.

Practical Body Practices

Here are practices you can incorporate into your journey:

Breathe. Pause to take deep breaths throughout the day. This signals your body to recalibrate into safety.

Slow down your daily routines. Look at everything in your day and simply slow down.

Practice gentle movement. Stretching, walking, and light physical activity help release stored tension.

Reframe your eating times. Pause, pray, and eat slowly. Notice what you taste. Take your time conversing during meals. Choose foods that serve your body’s health rather than reaching for intense flavors when you feel bad.

For highly sensitive people: Recognize things that heighten anxious symptoms in your body—certain medications, supplements, or stimulants.

Wear clothes that fit well and look good on you. This doesn’t mean expensive—it means not hiding in oversized clothing.

Practice the mirror exercise. Look at yourself without avoiding or focusing on flaws. Have a conversation with yourself.

Journal. Writing helps you observe yourself, process what you’re learning, and work through pain and emotions. You can connect the self-observing and narrative parts of your brain without worrying about how others will receive you.

Dance. Put on some music and let yourself move freely.

Laugh. Deep, hysterical laughter releases tremendous tension.

Weep. Allow yourself the gift of tears.

The Greatest Physiological Trauma Practice: Tears and Weeping

Scripture is rich with examples of emotional release through the body:

David’s processing of grief. After learning of Absalom’s death, the king “was shaken” and went to a private room to weep (2 Samuel 18:33). His body shook with grief, and he needed physical isolation to fully express his anguish.

Hannah’s silent weeping. In deep anguish over her infertility, Hannah cried so intensely that Eli thought she was drunk (1 Samuel 1:10). Her body was releasing years of accumulated pain.

Israel’s collective crying out. Exodus 2:23-24 describes the Israelites groaning in slavery, their cry going up to God—generations of trauma being vocally expressed.

Communal weeping with Ezra. Ezra 10:1 shows Ezra weeping and throwing himself down, joined by crowds weeping bitterly—trauma release through prostration and shared grief.

Daniel’s physical response. After his vision, Daniel describes losing all strength, his face turning pale, falling into deep sleep face-down (Daniel 10:8-9)—the body’s intense response to overwhelming experience.

Jesus wept. The shortest verse in Scripture shows even the Son of God releasing grief through tears at Lazarus’s tomb (John 11:35). In Luke 19:41, Jesus wept over Jerusalem, physically expressing prophetic grief.

Jesus in Gethsemane. Luke 22:44 describes Jesus in such anguish that “his sweat was like drops of blood”—hematidrosis, a rare phenomenon under extreme emotional stress, demonstrating the body’s intense trauma response.

Professional mourning. Jeremiah 9:17-20 describes calling for “wailing women” to help communities process trauma through tears—an ancient recognition that grief needs physical expression and sometimes needs help being released.

Moving Forward

Your body isn’t an obstacle to your healing—it’s a participant. Learning to invite your physiology into the journey, to listen to what your body holds, and to release what has been stored can be a powerful part of your renewal.

My biggest recommendation in all of this: understand that you are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Let your body participate in the journey as you connect with God, yourself, and other people. Allow yourself the full spectrum of expression—and catch yourself when you get stuck in a ditch. Maybe you’re crying all the time and need to allow some laughter. Or maybe you’re constantly laughing and uncomfortable with tears.

The beauty of emotion is that God wired us to express and connect through the full spectrum of feelings. They have their place not only in relating to others, but also in our healing. Approach this with compassion, not militancy. Ground yourself in love and grace. And trust that God, who made you as an integrated being—spirit, soul, and body—desires wholeness for all of who you are.

Empowering You to Live Healed and Free