Somatic Healing: How the Body Participates in Healing Trauma and Chronic Stress

If you are reading this, there is a good chance you already know something important: your body is still carrying more than your mind can explain.

You may understand your history clearly. You may have done therapy, reflection, or years of personal work. And yet, your body remains tense, on edge, exhausted, or disconnected. Stress does not fully leave. Rest does not feel restorative. Calm feels temporary or unfamiliar. This is often the moment people begin to search for somatic healing, even if they do not yet have language for it.

Somatic healing is a body-based approach that recognizes how trauma stored in the body continues to shape breath, posture, muscle tone, and nervous system responses long after an experience has passed. It offers a way to work with stress and trauma that does not rely only on understanding, but on helping the body feel safe enough to release what it has been holding.

This is the work I do.

My name is Cristina Maria Fort Garcés. Through my practice in somatic psychotherapy and energy coaching, I work with people who are deeply aware, intuitive, and often highly capable, yet feel that their nervous systems are constantly working overtime. Many of the people I support already understand their stories. What they are seeking is regulation, embodiment, and a way to return to a relationship with their bodies without force or overwhelm. Explore more at  somatic therapy for healers.



Somatic healing begins exactly there.

What is somatic healing? 

The word somatic comes from soma, meaning body. In a healing context, somatic work places bodily experience at the center of emotional recovery.

Emotions are not abstract ideas. They are lived experiences that involve breath, muscle activation, posture, temperature, and internal sensation. Anxiety might show up as tightness in the chest or shallow breathing. Grief may feel like heaviness or pressure. Trauma often appears as numbness, collapse, or chronic vigilance.

Somatic healing does not treat these sensations as symptoms to eliminate. It treats them as information. The body is communicating something important about safety, threat, and unmet needs.

Why trauma lives in the nervous system

Trauma is not defined only by what happened. It is defined by how the nervous system responded and whether that response had the chance to resolve.

When something overwhelming occurs, the body automatically activates survival responses such as fight, flight, freeze, or collapse. These responses are adaptive and protective. If they are supported and allowed to complete, the nervous system settles.

When interrupted, unsupported, or prolonged, the body remains partially activated or shuts down. This is why people may feel tense, anxious, fatigued, or disconnected even when their life circumstances are stable.

Somatic healing helps the nervous system gradually and safely complete these unfinished responses. Healing does not require reliving trauma. It requires regulation.

The role of safety in somatic healing

Safety is not an idea. It is a physiological state.

For the nervous system to change, the body must experience safety through sensation, breath, posture, and environment. This is why somatic healing progresses slowly and intentionally.

In sessions, attention is paid to moment-by-moment signals. If activation increases too quickly, we pause. If there is dissociation or overwhelm, we resource. Healing comes from building capacity, not from pushing through discomfort.

Understanding body symptoms as communication

From a somatic perspective, body symptoms are not random or purely mechanical. They are expressions of the nervous system.

A clenched jaw, tight shoulders, digestive discomfort, or chronic fatigue can be signals rather than problems. Instead of dismissing them or trying to fix them immediately, somatic healing invites curiosity.

Often, simply bringing awareness to a sensation begins to shift it. The nervous system responds to being noticed rather than ignored.

Embodiment and why it matters

We live in a culture that prioritizes thinking over sensing. Many people spend most of their time in their heads, managing, analyzing, and coping. The body often gets attention only when something hurts.

Embodiment is the ability to notice sensations, emotions, and movement as they happen, without judgment. This awareness supports regulation, emotional range, and resilience.



When people reconnect with embodied awareness, they often report feeling more grounded, more present, and more available for connection. The body becomes a resource rather than something to manage.

A foundational somatic practice used in sessions

Before working with stress or trauma, I always prioritize resourcing. One practice I often use is establishing an internal sense of support before approaching anything that activates me.

Begin by thinking of three to five people you admire. They can be alive or from another time. Focus on the qualities you associate with them, such as steadiness, warmth, wisdom, or courage.

As you imagine these qualities, notice what happens in your body. Does your breath deepen? Does your posture soften? You may feel a subtle sense of settling or expansion.

Now imagine that support behind you. You are not performing. You are not explaining. It is simply there.

Choose a physical anchor, such as leaning back slightly or feeling the chair beneath you. This creates a somatic reference point that your nervous system can return to when stress increases.

This practice is not visualization for comfort. It is nervous system regulation through embodied safety.

Choice, consent, and pacing

Somatic healing must always be grounded in choice and consent.

Nothing is done without explanation. Nothing is forced. The pace is responsive to the body, not a protocol.

This matters because trauma often involves loss of agency. Healing restores it. The nervous system learns to slow down, respond, and choose.

How change actually happens

Changes in somatic healing are often subtle before they become noticeable.

Sleep improves. Breath deepens. Reactions soften. Recovery happens faster after stress. The body begins to trust that it no longer needs to stay on guard all the time.

These shifts are not achieved through effort. They emerge as the nervous system reorganizes itself in response to safety.

The body is not the problem

In somatic healing, the body is not something to override or correct. It is not an obstacle to healing. It is the place where healing happens.

The body remembers how to protect, settle, and recover when given the right conditions.

If you are drawn to explore this work in a supported, embodied way, my offering of somatic therapy for healers is designed to help your nervous system finally feel safe enough to let go.