Somatic practices work through bodily sensation, movement and breath rather than through analysis alone. Their evidence varies widely: EMDR is recommended in major PTSD guidelines, while Somatic Experiencing, TRE and sensorimotor approaches have promising but limited research. This page says which is which.
Somatic — from the Greek soma, body — refers to any approach that works with the body as the primary site of change rather than the mind. The somatic field rests on the view that trauma, chronic stress and developmental wounding are expressed not only in narrative memory but in the body’s muscular patterns, autonomic set-points and habitual postures. That view has partial scientific support (for example, altered stress physiology and conditioned fear responses in PTSD); the idea that the body literally “stores” memories is more contested. What is clear is that bodily responses often do not follow verbal instruction.
When you tell your body to relax, it often does not. When you understand intellectually that a situation is safe, the amygdala's threat response may continue regardless. When you decide to stop feeling afraid, the physiological fear response proceeds independently of your decision. This is not weakness or failure — it is the correct functioning of a system that evolved to prioritise survival over comfort, and to trust physical signals over conceptual reassurance.
Somatic practices work with this reality rather than against it. Instead of trying to change the body's responses through thought, they create conditions in which the body can change its own responses — by completing interrupted cycles, by titrating the activation level back within the window of tolerance, by developing new physical patterns that provide different input to the nervous system. The change happens in the body first, and the thoughts and feelings reorganise around the changed body.
If you are new to somatic work and want to begin independently: Yoga Nidra and TRE are the most accessible starting points — both can be practiced at home with minimal guidance. Yoga Nidra requires only the ability to lie still and follow audio guidance; numerous free recordings are available online. TRE can be learned from David Berceli's book and video resources, or in a single workshop. Both are gentle enough for independent practice and provide immediate experience of the body's self-regulatory capacity.
If you have significant trauma history: The best-evidenced treatments are trauma-focused therapies (prolonged exposure, cognitive processing therapy, EMDR); working with a trained therapist (SE practitioner, EMDR therapist or Sensorimotor therapist) is strongly recommended before approaching intensive self-directed somatic practices. The window of tolerance principle matters most for people whose windows were most severely narrowed by developmental or complex trauma — going too fast without adequate support can retraumatise rather than heal.
The simplest daily somatic practice: Five minutes of body scan attention — moving awareness slowly and neutrally through each part of the body, noticing what is there without trying to change it. Body-scan and similar practices may develop interoceptive awareness, the ability to sense internal physical states (Farb et al., 2015), which some studies find reduced in people with trauma histories. For some trauma survivors, however, focusing on the body can itself be distressing: go slowly, keep your eyes open if you like, and stop if it becomes overwhelming.
Somatic work is powerful and must be approached carefully. The same quality that makes somatic approaches effective — their ability to access material below the level of cognitive defence — makes them potentially destabilising without adequate container and titration. Intensive somatic practices pursued without appropriate support, or with a practitioner who pushes too fast, can produce flooding, acute dissociation and temporary worsening of symptoms. Slow and supported is genuinely better than fast and overwhelming.
Somatic work does not replace medical care. Where somatic practices intersect with diagnosable conditions — PTSD, anxiety disorders, chronic pain syndromes — they are most effective as part of an integrated approach that includes appropriate medical care where needed. They are not a substitute for medication when medication is genuinely indicated, and they are not a substitute for other forms of support including appropriate psychiatric care for serious conditions.
The body knows, but the body is not always right. Somatic traditions sometimes adopt a stance of uncritical trust in the body's responses — as if every physical sensation is reliable signal rather than noise. The body does hold important information that the mind tends to override; it is also capable of generating threat responses based on misattribution, conditioning and cultural learning that do not reflect actual danger. Discernment in somatic work — as in all work — means neither dismissing the body's signals nor accepting them uncritically.
Statements on this page were checked against the sources below. Where the evidence is limited, contested or preliminary, the text says so; esoteric and traditional interpretations are marked as such.
Evidence for specific approaches
Guidelines and concepts
Last reviewed: October 2026. Educational reference, not medical advice.