by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
How To Unite the Mind-Body and Grow Real With Somatic Experiencing
Most of us, at some point in our lives, get the sense that something just isn’t quite ‘right’:
Maybe you feel stuck, like you’re spinning your wheels no matter what you try; maybe you’ve noticed that you can’t quite express yourself the way you want to, that you hold yourself back, or that you’re restless and never satisfied.
Maybe some of your most familiar companions are anxiety, depression, or the nagging sense that “something is missing” and you’re living in a kind of void.
What you need to know if you’re dealing with any of these things is that they aren’t random quirks of personality or some inherent fact of life that we all just have to deal with as long as we’re here.
No, they’re not even the real problem – they’re symptoms and, like any symptom, they’re the body’s way of pointing to something deeper.
This is worth knowing because most people try to ‘fix’ their lives at the level of symptom management and so they chase productivity hacks to fix restlessness, use positive affirmations to counter low moods, or hide behind quick distractions to plaster over anxiety.
These may provide temporary relief, but if the underlying issue remains untouched, then the symptoms will always return.
What actually needs to be faced is the fundamental problem and this is the one that most of us spend years (if not whole lifetimes) avoiding:
The state of DISCONNECTION – disconnection from the body, disconnection from the truth of our emotions, and disconnection from the natural drive towards wholeness.
The cause of this disconnection is often rooted in shame, guilt, or trauma (the Unholy Trinity) which cause inner blocks that force us to live in our heads and creating narratives and beliefs to protect us from pain but also cutting us off from our real selves.
When you address this deeper layer and start to reconnect to your REALNESS then you stop merely patching over cracks and allow real integration.
This is where somatic experiencing comes in.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
Self Somatic Experiencing: What We’ll Cover in this Article
- How To Unite the Mind-Body and Grow Real With Somatic Experiencing
- What Is Somatic Experiencing?
- Why the Body Holds the Key
- A Simple Self-Somatic Experiencing Process
- Why This Works
- Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Living Your Real Life
- Self Somatic Experiencing: The Final Word
What Is Somatic Experiencing?
Somatic experiencing (SE) is a body-based approach to healing developed by Dr Peter Levine:
It’s used clinically to resolve trauma and stress disorders but its principles can also be applied in everyday life to help us unblock ourselves and get moving in a more real way again.
At its core, somatic experiencing is about listening to the wisdom of the body by refusing to push emotions away or explain them with endless mental chatter so that you can tune into the raw sensations in your body – for example, the tightness in your chest, the heaviness in your stomach, or the buzzing in your arms – and allowing them to move.
What’s the point of doing something like this?
Because unprocessed experiences often get ‘stuck’ in the nervous system and so the body holds on to them as tension, stress, or frozen energy and so – instead of flowing through your system (which is what they’re supposed to do – they loop in the background of your life and keep you locked in fight, flight, or freeze.
Once you learn how to regulate yourself and to stop confusing emotional discomfort with actual physical danger, you’re able to free this stuck energy and return to safety.
This is important because, from a place of inner safety, you can access the deeper wisdom within you – in other words, your realness.
Why the Body Holds the Key
Think of it like this might make it easier to apply this to your own life:
- The mind creates narratives and defences, often shaped by shame, guilt, or the ego’s need to control life.
- The body, on the other hand, doesn’t lie – it records everything we experience and holds unspoken truths and unresolved emotions.
Trauma researchers like Bessel van der Kolk (author of The Body Keeps the Score) have shown that unprocessed trauma is stored physiologically – not just mentally. This means that things like muscle tension, shallow breathing, and racing heartbeats can all be the echoes of unresolved stress.
By working to engage the body directly, you bypass the ego’s tricks and access the deeper integration system built into your biology:
This is why self-somatic experiencing is such a powerful process – it helps you resolve symptoms at their root and come home to yourself.
A Simple Self-Somatic Experiencing Process
Now we’ll get into a basic but very powerful five-step process you can use anytime you feel stuck, anxious, overwhelmed, or just disconnected.
Think of it as a way to stop firefighting any symptoms of disconnection you might be experiencing and instead to tap into the fundamental safety and wholeness that’s already within you.
Here we go:
Step 1: Get into a Place of Regulation and Safety
Safety always needs to come first when we’re doing this kind of work.
This is because the nervous system can only process and release emotions when it feels safe and so if you’re running on adrenaline, no amount of ‘thinking’ will get you unstuck.
The first step, then, is to find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed:
Sit or lie down comfortably, close your eyes, and begin breathing slowly and deeply through your nose. Don’t force it – just settle into a rhythm that feels natural and calming.
Keep breathing in this way until you feel a subtle ‘shift’ – it might feel like your shoulders dropping, your breath deepening, or a sense of warmth spreading through you.
Whatever it is, this is your body moving from sympathetic arousal (fight or flight) into parasympathetic regulation (rest and digest) which means that your body knows that your safe in the moment.
Tip: If deep breathing feels difficult, try lengthening the exhale slightly longer than the inhale – this also signals safety to the nervous system.
Step 2: Feel Your Feelings
Now that you’ve created a safe container for yourself, it’s time to let something in and hold space:
This is where it’s time to bring to mind a feeling you’ve been struggling with – maybe it’s sadness, anger, fear, or just that vague ‘stuckness’ that haunts so many of us.
The really important part here is that you don’t analyse it:
In other words, don’t ask why you feel it -just let it be there and allow it to expand fully inside the container of safety you’ve created.
You may want to remind yourself if you feel the urge to resist:
This is just an emotion – it is not physical danger. The container of safety is bigger than the feeling will ever be.
Now tune into your body and ask yourself where you feel whatever you’re feeling as a bodily sensation:
Is it a tightness in your chest? A knot in your stomach? A buzzing in your jaw? Be precise by naming the location and describing the sensations with words like sharp, dull, heavy, fluttery, hot, or cold etc. etc. etc.
Stay with it whatever you’re feeling and let it be there without resistance – be brave enough even to allow it to EXPAND:
More often than not, when you stop fighting, the feeling begins to move and – even though it might grow stronger for a moment – it will eventually dissolve or shift into a new sensation entirely.
This is the body finally processing and releasing what was once being held in the nervous system.
Step 3: Zoom Out and Change Perspective
Once the emotion has moved or softened, imagine zooming out:
See yourself from a higher perspective – what I call your realness.
From here, notice how the emotion looks:
Is it still a threat in this real state or can you see it with compassion or even gratitude?
Most people find that from this wider perspective, emotions lose their bite and they appear as signals rather than dangers – a simple part of the human experience, not something to fear.
This step is crucial because it rewires the nervous system to understand: I can feel big feelings and still be safe – it also allows you to drop any unreal stories that have been associated with your feelings because of your familiar ways of identifying (as opposed to reality itself).
Step 4: Ask for Guidance
Now, ask your higher self – your realness – for guidance:
What does this part of you want you to know about the emotion? What action, if any, should you take next?
Sometimes the answer will be practical: “Have that difficult conversation”.
Other times it will be gentle: “Rest”.
And sometimes it will be simple: “Let it go”.
Whatever comes, trust it because it came from a very REAL part of you and not all of the stories you tell yourself day-to-day when you get caught up in your head (you can even turn it into a short affirmation or note it down as a reminder of your inner wisdom).
Step 5: Ground Yourself
Finally, return to the safety you created at the beginning.
Take a few slow breaths. wiggle your fingers and toes and feel the contact of your body with the chair or floor.
Open your eyes when you’re ready and notice how you feel.
Often you will feel lighter, calmer, clearer – in other words, simply more real.
My book Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace will help you to create a deeper relationship with your own realness so you can from a foundation of safety.
Why This Works
You might be wondering: why is such a simple process so effective?
(Of course, you won’t know for sure until you stop reading and actually try it yourself).
Here’s the evidence:
- Neurobiology of Safety: When you intentionally regulate your breath and environment, you activate the parasympathetic nervous system which reduces cortisol and adrenaline. This shifts the body out of survival mode (where healing isn’t even possible).
- Completion of Stress Cycles: Emotions are biological events with a beginning, middle, and end. When you stop resisting them, they run their course and resolve. Studies on stress cycles show that physical expression and awareness help “complete” them which reduces long-term effects of resistance.
- Bottom-Up Processing: Trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk highlights that body-based practices bypass the rational mind and work directly with the limbic system and brainstem – the areas where trauma and stress are stored.
- Rewiring Perception of Threat: By repeatedly proving to your nervous system that emotions are safe to feel, you weaken the false link between emotional discomfort and physical danger. Over time, this builds resilience and emotional flexibility and you can face yourself, the world, and reality head-on (instead of getting lost in your head).
- Integration of Realness: From a psychological and spiritual perspective, the process helps you reconnect with the “higher” wisdom within – the part of you that sees the whole picture. This shifts you from ego-driven narratives to truth-driven action (which is good because real action is the only thing that will ever really change your life).
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Try not to do any of these things:
- Forcing it: If a feeling doesn’t shift, don’t push – remember that simply being present with it is enough to get it moving and so keep chipping away at it over time.
- Overthinking: The goal isn’t to analyse but to feel. If you catch yourself spiralling in thought, gently return to the sensations and remove whatever ‘meaning’ you’re putting onto things.
- Skipping regulation: Without safety, the process won’t work so always start by calming the nervous system otherwise you’re kinda wasting your time.
- Expecting instant transformation: Sometimes release is dramatic, other times subtle – both of these are valid but the real change happens over time as you repeat the process.
Living Your Real Life
Self somatic experiencing is more than just a technique – it’s a very real practice of returning to yourself and each time you do it, you weaken the grip of old shame, guilt, and trauma and the patterns that have arisen within you because of these feelings.
It allows you to loosen the narratives of ego and free up energy that was once locked in symptoms like restlessness, anxiety, or disconnection.
Most importantly, you remember that there is a place of safety and realness within you that is always bigger than whatever comes up – this is the foundation of wholeness and where real healing begins.
Self Somatic Experiencing: The Final Word
If you’ve been chasing quick fixes or fighting symptoms for a prolonged period of time, then consider this article your invitation to stop looking for a magic bullet and to start reconnecting in a deep way.
Your body knows what it needs and your realness is always waiting – all you have to do is slow down, listen, and allow.
Self-somatic experiencing isn’t complicated and it’s not about doing something new – it’s just about letting go of resistance so that the natural process of integration can unfold.
When it does, you’ll find that the symptoms you’ve been fighting for years dissolve not because you forced them away, but because you reconnected with the part of you that was whole all along.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’d like to go deeper into your own realness and you’d like some guidance as you go through the process then book a free coaching call with me and I’ll help you find a real foundation within yourself.
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