Somatic Memory Explained: How the Body Stores Trauma and Emotion
- Dr Heather Dyson
- 5 days ago
- 13 min read
Introduction: When the Body Becomes a Storyteller
You might not remember the words someone said during a painful event years ago, but your stomach might tighten when you hear a similar tone of voice. Or your shoulders might stiffen in a crowded elevator even though you know you’re safe. This isn’t coincidence, it’s your body remembering.
While the idea that the body “keeps the score” has gained mainstream attention through Bessel van der Kolk’s landmark book The Body Keeps the Score, the concept of somatic memory (the body’s capacity to store and express past experiences) has deep roots in both psychology and neuroscience. Modern research is now illuminating how emotional and traumatic experiences are encoded not only in neural circuits but also through physiological, hormonal, and muscular pathways that shape our sensations, posture, and even immune responses.
Somatic memory bridges two worlds: the subjective realm of emotion and the biological reality of the body. Understanding this bridge offers profound implications for therapy, healing, and self-understanding.
What is Somatic Memory?
The word somatic comes from the Greek sōma, meaning “body.” Somatic memory refers to the way experiences, especially emotional and traumatic ones, are stored and recalled through bodily sensations rather than conscious thought.
This differs from explicit or declarative memory, which is the kind that lets you remember your birthday or where you parked your car. Somatic memory is a form of implicit memory, the subconscious record of experiences that influence behaviour, emotions, and physiology without conscious awareness.
In practical terms, somatic memory manifests as:
A racing heart or tight chest in response to a trigger.
Chronic muscle tension or pain without a clear medical cause.
A “gut feeling” or instinctive response rooted in past experience.
Emotional flooding during bodywork, yoga, or mindfulness.
In short, the body is not merely a vessel for memory, it’s an active participant in remembering.
The Neurobiology of Somatic Memory
To understand somatic memory scientifically, we must look at how the brain and body communicate. Memory, at its core, is the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information. But not all memories are stored in the same way.
a. The Triad of Memory Systems
Explicit memory — Stored in the hippocampus and medial temporal lobe, it involves conscious recall (“I remember what happened”).
Emotional memory — Governed largely by the amygdala, it stores the emotional valence (fear, joy, shame) of experiences.
Procedural and somatic memory — Encoded in the cerebellum, basal ganglia, and sensorimotor cortex, it stores body-based knowledge: how to ride a bike, flinch, or brace for impact.
When trauma occurs, these systems can become fragmented. The hippocampus, which helps us contextualize events in time and narrative, may shut down under extreme stress, while the amygdala goes into overdrive. This imbalance means the emotional and physiological components of the event remain imprinted, even if the narrative memory fades.
b. The Role of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)
The autonomic nervous system, divided into the sympathetic (“fight-or-flight”) and parasympathetic (“rest-and-digest”) branches, is central to somatic memory. During threat, the sympathetic system floods the body with adrenaline and cortisol, increasing heart rate and muscle tension. Once the danger passes, the parasympathetic system should bring the body back to balance.
However, in cases of trauma or chronic stress, this system can become dysregulated. The body remains “stuck” in hyperarousal (anxious, restless, reactive) or hypoarousal (numb, shut down, detached). These physiological states become memorised patterns that shape how we respond to future experiences, even benign ones.
c. The Polyvagal Perspective
Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory provides further insight into this process. The vagus nerve, which connecting the brainstem to the heart, lungs, and gut, plays a key role in regulating our sense of safety.According to Porges, our body’s responses to threat exist on a spectrum:
Social engagement (ventral vagal): calm connection and presence.
Mobilization (sympathetic): fight or flight.
Immobilization (dorsal vagal): freeze or collapse.
When trauma overwhelms the nervous system, the body can default to protective patterns of shutdown or hypervigilance, patterns that can persist long after the event has passed. These become embodied memories (for more information about the Polyvagal Theory see:- https://www.drhdysonpsych.com/post/what-is-polyvagal-theory).
How the Body “Remembers” Trauma
Trauma, in this context, is not defined by the event itself but by the body’s response to it. Whether it’s a car accident, childhood neglect, or a global pandemic, the nervous system reacts as if the danger is ongoing when it cannot complete its natural defensive cycles.
a. Incomplete Defensive Responses
Ethologist Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing, observed that wild animals regularly face life-threatening situations yet rarely develop post-traumatic symptoms. After a chase, they often shake or tremble, physically discharging the residual energy of the event. Humans, on the other hand, often suppress these instinctive reactions due to social conditioning (“don’t cry,” “stay calm”), leaving the body in a state of unfinished activation.
The uncompleted motor patterns (the urge to run, fight, or scream) remain encoded in the body’s neuromuscular and autonomic systems. Over time, these unresolved impulses can manifest as chronic tension, pain, or unexplained anxiety.
b. The “Body Keeps the Score” Phenomenon
Neuroimaging studies support van der Kolk’s assertion that trauma leaves a physiological imprint. In a 1996 study at Harvard Medical School, researchers found that when trauma survivors were reminded of their experiences, areas involved in speech (Broca’s area) shut down, while sensorimotor regions and the amygdala lit up. This explains why many trauma survivors say, “I can’t talk about it, but I feel it.”
The body, quite literally, remembers when words fail.
Everyday Examples of Somatic Memory
While trauma is the most researched form of somatic memory, it also appears in ordinary life:
Muscle Memory in Athletes and Performers: A pianist doesn’t consciously think about each note — their fingers “remember.”
Conditioned Physical Reactions: A child bitten by a dog may feel their muscles tense years later when hearing barking.
Cultural and Postural Memories: A lifetime of social messages (“stand up straight,” “don’t take up space”) shapes body language, which in turn reinforces self-concept.
Medical Procedures or Accidents: Even after healing, the body may “guard” the injured area, maintaining protective postures.
In each case, the body serves as both the container and the storyteller of experience.
The Science of Releasing Somatic Memory
If the body remembers, can it also forget, or rather integrate, what it holds? Research suggests yes, but not through cognition alone. Healing somatic memory requires re-establishing safety and completing the body’s unfinished stress cycles.
a. Bottom-Up Regulation
Traditional talk therapy primarily engages the prefrontal cortex, referred to as the rational mind. However, trauma often lives below the level of cognition, in subcortical structures like the amygdala and brainstem, or the feeling/experiencing part of the brain. Therefore, bottom-up approaches that start with the body (breath, movement, sensation) can be more effective for certain types of trauma.
Examples include:
Somatic Experiencing (SE): Focuses on tracking bodily sensations and allowing gentle completion of defensive responses.
Body-Oriented Mindfulness and Yoga: Studies show trauma-sensitive yoga can reduce PTSD symptoms by enhancing interoceptive awareness (the ability to feel internal bodily states).
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing): Though primarily cognitive, EMDR uses bilateral stimulation to integrate somatic and emotional memory networks.
b. The Role of Interoception
Interoception (the sense of the internal state of the body) is central to healing somatic memory. It’s mediated by the insula, a brain region that connects bodily sensations with emotional awareness. People with trauma often experience alexithymia (difficulty identifying emotions) or dissociation from the body. Strengthening interoceptive awareness helps rebuild the bridge between sensation and meaning.
Simple exercises like mindful breathing, body scans, or noticing subtle sensations (“What does safety feel like in my body?”) begin to re-establish this connection.
c. Social and Relational Safety
The body also remembers safety, not just threat. Secure relationships, compassionate touch, and attuned presence can rewire the nervous system toward calm.
Research in attachment theory shows that co-regulation (two nervous systems synchronizing in safety) plays a powerful role in healing. Therapeutic relationships, support groups, or mindful friendships all provide contexts in which the body learns that connection, once dangerous, can again be safe.
The Double-Edged Sword of Somatic Memory
Somatic memory is, in many ways, an evolutionary gift. The body’s ability to retain traces of past experience allows us to anticipate danger, learn from mistakes, and navigate an unpredictable world. A racing heartbeat when crossing a busy road or a tightening of the stomach before a difficult conversation are adaptive responses, the body drawing upon its implicit archive to protect us.
Yet the same system that keeps us safe can also become a source of distress when it misfires. When the body’s warning mechanisms fail to switch off, what was once protective becomes imprisoning. Instead of signalling momentary danger, the body learns to exist in a perpetual state of readiness or shutdown. In such cases, somatic memory ceases to serve survival and begins to erode wellbeing.
a. Chronic Stress and the Body’s Burden
The human stress response evolved for short bursts of mobilisation, to fight, flee, or freeze when threatened. Once the danger passes, the body is designed to return to equilibrium through parasympathetic recovery. However, in modern life, threats are rarely physical and often continuous: financial pressure, relational conflict, work overload, social media exposure, or unresolved emotional pain. The nervous system, unable to distinguish between psychological and physical threat, remains activated far beyond what it was built to endure.
This chronic activation of the stress response, sometimes called allostatic load, floods the body with stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. Over time, these biochemical patterns disrupt almost every major system. Blood pressure rises, digestion slows, immune defences weaken, and inflammatory processes take root. It is no coincidence that conditions such as hypertension, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, and autoimmune disorders frequently accompany histories of prolonged stress or trauma.
From the perspective of somatic memory, these are not random ailments but the long shadow of uncompleted survival responses. The body, having learned to expect danger, adjusts its physiology accordingly. Muscles remain partially tensed, breathing patterns shallow, heart rhythms irregular. Even when external circumstances change, the internal pattern persists, a learned vigilance that has become embodied habit.
At a cellular level, chronic stress also alters gene expression through epigenetic mechanisms, influencing how the body regulates inflammation and stress hormones. In this way, somatic memory may even shape biology across generations, a sobering reminder of how deeply the past can live within us.
b. The Challenge of Dissociation: When the Body Forgets to Feel
If chronic stress represents the body remembering too much, dissociation can be seen as the body remembering too little, or more accurately, remembering by numbing. Dissociation is the nervous system’s emergency brake. When neither fight nor flight is possible, the body opts for disconnection. Heart rate slows, breathing flattens, awareness narrows. From the outside, a person may appear calm, but inside they are profoundly detached.
In trauma, dissociation is a protective mechanism, a way of surviving the unbearable by retreating from sensation. For a child in a dangerous home, or a person trapped in an accident or assault, this shutdown of bodily awareness can be lifesaving. However, when dissociation becomes habitual, it severs the vital dialogue between mind and body. Emotions lose texture, physical sensations feel muted or distant, and the individual may describe feeling “numb”, “foggy”, or “not quite here”.
This state of disembodiment hinders integration. Because traumatic memories are stored somatically, as sensations, impulses, and emotional fragments, healing requires re-establishing safe access to the body. Yet for someone accustomed to dissociation, re-entering bodily awareness can feel overwhelming. The very sensations that signal life, a racing pulse or a flutter in the stomach, may be interpreted as danger.
Therapeutically, the process of re-embodiment must therefore proceed with great care and consent. Techniques drawn from somatic therapies, mindfulness, and grounding exercises aim to build tolerance for bodily sensation in small, manageable increments. Rather than plunging into the past, the focus is on cultivating a present-moment sense of safety. Over time, the individual learns to stay connected to their body without being flooded by it.
Importantly, dissociation should never be viewed as pathology alone but as a creative adaptation, the body’s ingenious attempt to protect itself. Recognising this reframes healing not as fighting the body’s defences but as thanking them and gently guiding them towards integration. As the nervous system begins to trust that the danger has passed, sensation can return, and with it, a fuller experience of self.
Bridging Science and Practice: What Therapists and Individuals Can Do
The field of embodied psychology highlights that healing is not solely a mental or cognitive process. Our minds and bodies are in continuous dialogue, and both must participate in recovery for it to be sustainable. The latest research in neuroscience, attachment theory, and trauma studies demonstrates that emotional integration depends upon the regulation of the nervous system. In other words, we cannot simply think our way to safety; we must feel our way there too.
The following approaches, drawn from both science and clinical practice, outline ways to engage the body in remembering and re-patterning. They invite a shift from intellectual understanding to embodied experience, allowing the body to become a partner rather than an obstacle in healing.
a. Cultivate Safe Embodiment
Before deep emotional work can take place, the body must first feel safe enough to be inhabited. Many trauma survivors live largely outside their bodies, caught in cycles of hypervigilance or numbness. Practices that encourage safe embodiment are designed to rebuild trust in bodily experience and to stabilise the nervous system.
Grounding: Pressing the feet into the floor and noticing the solid support beneath you can help to anchor awareness in the present. The sensation of gravity and weight counters the dissociative pull of fear or anxiety. Grounding reconnects the body to its physical environment and reminds the nervous system that it is no longer in danger.
Orienting: Slowly looking around the room and consciously noticing colours, shapes, and light can help signal to the brain that the surroundings are safe. This simple sensory process engages the orienting reflex, which activates curiosity rather than fear, and gently re-establishes contact with the here and now.
Breathwork: Gentle, lengthened exhales are one of the most accessible ways to influence the vagus nerve, a key player in the body’s parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) system. Slow, rhythmic breathing helps reduce heart rate, lower cortisol levels, and restore equilibrium. Over time, the body learns that calmness is not only possible but sustainable.
Movement: Trauma often leaves energy trapped within the body, ready to mobilise but never discharged. Conscious movement practices such as stretching, walking, yoga, or dancing allow this energy to flow and resolve. Moving with awareness also restores agency. The body learns that it can act and respond, not only freeze and endure.
Cultivating safe embodiment is the foundation of somatic healing. It transforms the body from a site of distress into a resource for grounding and resilience.
b. Work with a Somatic Therapist
For those carrying the imprint of trauma, professional support is often essential. Somatic therapists are trained to recognise how the body communicates distress, even when words are unavailable. They observe physiological cues such as breath, posture, tension, or micro-movements, helping clients to notice and name their own sensations without being overwhelmed.
One of the therapist’s main tasks is to titrate emotional intensity, meaning to work in small, tolerable steps. This prevents re-traumatisation by keeping the client within their window of tolerance. Somatic practitioners often combine talking with gentle physical awareness, such as noticing where a feeling lives in the body or what happens when attention is placed there. Over time, clients learn that sensations can arise and pass without danger. This experience rewires the nervous system towards safety.
Therapies such as Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, and EMDR all work on these principles.
c. Integrate Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approaches
In contemporary psychology, there is a growing understanding that the most effective treatments for trauma and stress integrate both top-down (cognitive) and bottom-up (somatic) approaches.
Top-down approaches, such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) or narrative therapy, help individuals to identify and reframe unhelpful beliefs, memories, and interpretations. They bring insight and structure to the experience, allowing meaning to be made from chaos. However, cognitive understanding alone rarely resolves trauma because the body continues to react as if the danger were still present.
Bottom-up approaches, on the other hand, begin with the body’s sensations and physiological patterns. They focus on calming the autonomic nervous system, restoring balance through breath, movement, and sensory awareness. By changing the body’s state, the mind gains access to new emotional and cognitive possibilities.
When these two directions of healing are combined, the results are often transformative. The mind provides context and comprehension, while the body provides regulation and integration. Together, they restore coherence between thinking and feeling, allowing the individual to feel both safe and self-aware. This balance represents not the erasure of trauma, but the capacity to live alongside it without being ruled by it.
d. Embrace Curiosity, Not Judgement
Healing through the body requires a shift in attitude. Many people approach their bodily sensations with fear or frustration, especially when those sensations are linked to anxiety, tension, or pain. Yet every physical feeling is a form of communication. Tightness, heat, fluttering, or numbness are messages from the nervous system, not enemies to be conquered.
The key is curiosity. Instead of asking “How do I make this stop?”, one can ask, “What might my body be trying to tell me?” This gentle inquiry transforms resistance into relationship. Through curiosity, sensations become guides rather than threats, and the body is given permission to complete what it began long ago.
In therapeutic work, this attitude is cultivated gradually. Mindfulness practices, compassionate awareness, and self-reflective journaling can all help foster a stance of open observation. Over time, curiosity builds trust. The body begins to feel heard, and as it is listened to, it often softens its grip on pain or fear. Judgement tightens and alienates, whereas curiosity relaxes and connects.
Reclaiming the Body as Ally
The science of somatic memory reminds us that the body is not merely a vessel carrying the mind, but an intelligent participant in our emotional lives. Every heartbeat, every breath, every muscular contraction tells a story about how we have survived. The body remembers not through words but through patterns — the quickening of the pulse, the tightening of the chest, the instinct to withdraw or brace. These responses are not evidence of weakness or pathology, but of the body’s enduring effort to protect us.
Yet, as we have seen, the same mechanisms that once ensured survival can also become the source of long-term suffering. When vigilance never ceases or when numbness becomes a default state, the past continues to inhabit the present. Chronic stress, physical illness, and emotional disconnection are all signs of a nervous system that has not yet learned that the danger has passed.
Understanding this transforms the process of healing. Rather than trying to silence the body, we are invited to listen to it. Rather than striving to think our way free, we learn to feel our way home. Through grounding, breath, movement, and therapeutic guidance, we begin to rewrite the body’s memory from one of perpetual defence to one of safety and connection.
The integration of science and practice, of neuroscience, psychotherapy, and embodied awareness, offers a profoundly hopeful message. The patterns etched into our physiology are not permanent; they are adaptive and therefore capable of change. With compassion, curiosity, and consistency, the body can learn new ways of being. What was once a memory of fear can become a foundation of strength.
To remember through the body is, ultimately, to reclaim life itself. Healing does not erase what has been endured; it allows the body to tell a new story, one grounded not in survival but in presence. In listening to the wisdom beneath our skin, we rediscover what it means to be whole, to live fully, here, now, and embodied.
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