The relationship with your body you may not have learned to build

How safe does it feel to connect with your body? To a lot of people this question wouldn’t make any sense. The body is something most of us tend to fix, improve, optimise, scrutinise or try to get under control… More often than not, it is perceived as some kind of a machine that needs maintenance; for many it is a nuisance or a source of worry and concern.

So what would it even mean to connect with it? Or experience it as a source of support, connection and guidance? This is not something most of us have been taught to even consider, let alone how to accomplish, and for many, carrying the imprints of trauma, this idea might seem ridiculously far away.

Slowly, things are beginning to shift. With the release of seminal books like The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, the awareness of the importance of connecting with the felt dimension of our lives has grown. 

A lot of the clients that come to see me already bring an understanding that there is something important happening underneath words and stories. Even if they don’t know exactly how, they sense that tapping into this unnameable dimension is the direction that can help them resolve long-standing issues that talk therapy alone could not touch or help with.

The issues that make people pursue somatic therapy vary widely: from processing a complex relationship breakdown or traumatic loss to feeling persecuted by debilitating, inexplicable psychosomatic symptoms, like panic attacks, nightmares or physical issues no doctors can seem to explain. Loss of joy, purpose and direction, when everything seems to be going ok; being on the verge of tears all the time without understanding why or feeling like you are underperforming in the key areas of your life and stuck are all reasons that make people look for answers.

And at the root of all these very different human experiences, a lot of the time, we discover the same thing - lack of connection and communication with the body -  an ongoing rupture in what is one of the most important relationships we can have as humans.

When we can’t feel, trust or understand what our bodies are trying to tell us, we lose access to the very signals that could guide us: the tightness in our chest that says, “this relationship isn’t right,” the buzz that could fuel change, the sigh that could point us towards the need for rest. Or - and it happens just as often - we can mistake the signals from the events long past for those that are present day and act upon them to our detriment.

So what exactly lives in this body that we’ve learned to disconnect from? The usual answer is trauma - the overwhelming personal and collective experiences we couldn’t or cannot fully process, the feelings too big or too dangerous to feel at the time. This is what most people understand when they come to somatic work: the body is holding what the mind had to leave behind.

But this is only half the story.

Yes, the body carries our wounds - the bracing against criticism that over time became a habitual pattern of keeping ourselves small and unable to speak up in moments of conflict, the shutdown that was once a way to survive situations where we felt powerless, but now feels like lethargy, procrastination and inability to pursue meaningful change, the hypervigilance that scans for danger even when we’re safe and makes it hard to create the intimacy our hearts so long for.

These patterns live in us, running quietly and persistently beneath our awareness. While we are busy navigating our day-to-day, they shape how we perceive things that happen in our lives and define the choices that we make, so we can end up creating realities that can feel challenging, painful and inescapable.

If this were all the body held - pain, shutdown, defeat and limitation - it would make sense to want to stay disconnected from it forever.

But alongside the wounds live resources we’ve never fully claimed. The rage that had to be suppressed to keep us safe - its fire is still there, and when we learn to access and not be scared of it, it becomes the clarity, power and boundaries that allow us to finally say “that’s not okay” to a dismissive partner, set the price that honours our work or to walk away from situations that diminish us.

The joy that felt too vulnerable to feel or express - it’s still waiting, and when we reconnect with it, it gives us permission to pursue work we actually love, to play, to let ourselves be seen in our aliveness. 

The ‘no’ that couldn’t be spoken and now lives as a painfully familiar constriction in the throat - it holds the capacity for self-protection we’re longing for, the ability to set limits without being overwhelmed by guilt. 

The tenderness we had to armour against - it contains the pathway to intimacy we crave, the softness that allows us to truly be with another person.

The bottom line: the body doesn’t just carry absences or deficits, it carries all living capacities and parts of our power that had to go underground. It carries the seeds of our dreams and new pathways that can lead us to places we couldn’t imagine ourselves ever reaching. All of it is there, waiting to be reclaimed.

So when we begin to reconnect with the body, we’re not just processing what hurt us.

We’re rediscovering and recovering what belongs to us - the aliveness, the instinctive knowing, the full spectrum of what it means to be human and embodied and also - the fuller, truer version of our life story that has never had a chance to be told. 

We’re learning that right alongside the pain are pathways back to ourselves.

So if I bring this question back to you: how safe does it feel to connect with your body right now?

I invite you to give this question a bit more attention and space than might feel familiar. Not to try to figure it out, not to find the ‘right’ answer, but simply to notice what arises when you ask it. What sensations (if any) come? What happens to your breath? What impulses or feelings emerge? What resistance or curiosity do you notice?

If it feels right, I invite you to come to this question several times and see what you discover. This contemplation can, in itself, become a seed that, with time, may grow into a whole different chapter of your life. We may be used to looking for grand solutions and big insights, but simple awareness is where the healing actually takes place - in the underrated, yet gently radical act of turning toward what we’ve learned to turn away from.

If you’re feeling drawn to explore this territory more deeply and with professional support, reach out to a somatic therapist. 

Through gentle, trauma-informed exploration of what arises in your body during our sessions - sensations, impulses, patterns - you and your therapist can create space for both processing old wounds and reclaiming the capacities that have been waiting.

Bit by bit, you rebuild the foundation of the connection that might have been missing for a long time, if not forever. Whether you’re dealing with anxiety, overwhelm, disconnection, challenging relational patterns, navigating a major life transition, or simply sensing that something important is waiting to be discovered in your body, professionals can help support that exploration.