How to Release Trauma From Your Body

Trauma isn’t only a person’s emotional and psychological reaction to an intense or overwhelming event, it can lead to physical manifestations that are felt in the body too.

“Those kinds of physiological symptoms are incredibly common in PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), but also just a more global trauma response,” explains Dr. Rubin Khoddam, clinical psychologist and founder of COPE Psychology. “And that (physical response) over time has a big impact on our body.”

But emerging body-first treatments, such as trauma-informed yoga, aim to help those struggling.”Tears can come up, emotions can come up. Sometimes memories can come up,” explains Jenn Turner, clinical mental health counselor and co-director and founder of the Center for Trauma and Embodiment. She has been working with the Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) approach for the last 20 years.

The best route for treating trauma depends on the severity and its impact, Khoddam says. With trauma that has progressed into PTSD symptoms, he recommends strong evidence-based practices like cognitive processing therapy or prolonged exposure.

These approaches help to “undo a lot of the learning that our body and mind did as a result of that trauma,” he says, but “on the most basic level, we want to create spaces where the body is able to down regulate.”

This could look like mindfulness practices such as setting time aside to not be stimulated by your surroundings or yoga and other body-first interventions, some of which have been shown to be beneficial towards treating trauma.No matter what treatment route is best for a trauma survivor, Khoddam says early intervention and prevention are key to managing trauma “so that chronic stress, that chronic arousal, that chronic impact on the body doesn’t have to be chronic.”