Mind and Body in Harmony: Somatic Approaches to Emotional Wellbeing

You’re invited to slow down, listen inward, and notice what your body is saying to you.

How the Body Holds and Releases Emotion

Your body is not just a vessel for thought. It is a repository of your experience, memory, and emotion. Tension in the shoulders, a tight jaw, shallow breathing, or restlessness in the stomach can all be physical manifestations of stress, unresolved grief, or anxiety. Many of us have learned to live “in our heads,” analyzing feelings, problem-solving, and pushing emotions aside. Yet when the body carries these experiences silently, you may feel ungrounded, reactive, or disconnected from yourself.

Somatic approaches to emotional wellbeing invite you to re-establish a dialogue with your body. By noticing sensations, movement patterns, and subtle shifts, you can access emotional states that words alone may not reach. This work is about learning to listen to your body and attuning to sensations as cues to your emotional life. Pain or discomfort can carry vital information to guide your choices while you approach your felt experience with curiosity and compassion.

How we Somaticize Emotions

Somatic therapy is rooted in the understanding that emotions do not live only in the mind. Anxiety may appear as tightness in the chest, anger as heat in the face, sadness as heaviness in the limbs. Trauma, especially, often embeds itself in the body, influencing posture, muscle tone, and often a residual presence long after the event.

When the body holds onto emotion, it can influence thoughts and behavior in ways we may not immediately recognize. You might notice recurring tension, sudden irritability, or fatigue without a clear source. Bringing mindful attention to these sensations allows you to acknowledge stored emotion and respond to it intentionally rather than reactively.

Gentle Somatic Practices

Several body-centered practices can help release and integrate emotion:

Breathwork: Conscious breathing can calm the nervous system, increase oxygen flow, and provide an anchor to the present moment. Simple exercises, such as deep abdominal breathing or extending the exhale slightly longer than the inhale, can reduce tension and enhance emotional regulation.

Movement and Stretching: Gentle movement, stretching, or yoga can support the release of tension held in muscles and connective tissue. Even slow, mindful walking can help reconnect the mind and body, allowing suppressed emotion to surface safely.

Sensory Awareness: Engaging the senses via touch, sound, or sight can ground you in the present and provide information about your internal state. Feeling the texture of a fabric, listening to subtle environmental sounds, or noticing temperature changes can cultivate embodiment and self-awareness.

Body Scan Exercises: Pausing to mentally scan the body from head to toe helps identify areas of tension or discomfort. Acknowledging these sensations with curiosity rather than judgment creates a supportive internal environment where emotion can be processed.

Integrating Body Awareness with Emotional Insight

Somatic practices work best when paired with reflection and emotional insight. Noticing where tension arises, how your breathing changes, or which movements feel freeing can illuminate emotional patterns and habitual reactions. For example, recognizing that anxiety manifests as shoulder tightness may help you intervene earlier, using movement or breath to release stress before it escalates.

Building this body-awareness does more than relieve physical discomfort. It fosters resilience, allowing the nervous system to regulate more effectively. The mind becomes less reactive, decisions feel more grounded, and emotional experiences are easier to navigate. Over time, a stronger connection between mind and body can reduce self-criticism, enhance empathy toward yourself, and deepen your sense of presence in daily life.

Practical Ways to Bring Somatic Awareness into Daily Life

• Start Small: Even one minute of focused breathwork or a short body scan can be beneficial. Consistency matters more than duration.

• Check In Frequently: Pause during the day to notice how your body feels. Are your shoulders tense? Is your jaw clenched? Observing these patterns without judgment is key.

• Move Mindfully: Simple stretches, walking, or gentle yoga can help release emotion. Focus on how your body feels rather than how it looks.

• Engage the Senses: Pay attention to textures, sounds, or smells as a grounding practice, particularly during stressful moments.

• Reflect: After somatic exercises, take a few moments to notice any thoughts or emotions that arise. Journaling can help integrate body awareness with emotional insight.

Bringing Somatic Practices into Therapy

Learning to notice how your body holds emotion can be a powerful beginning, but meaningful change often unfolds in relationship. In therapy, somatic awareness becomes more than a set of techniques. It becomes a way of listening more deeply to yourself, especially in moments of anxiety, overwhelm, or emotional shutdown.

I am a psychotherapist trained in depth-oriented and somatic approaches, and I work with adults who want to understand their emotional experience more fully, both mentally and physically.

In my work, we pay attention to the subtle signals your body offers, such as shifts in breath, tension, numbness, or movement. These physical cues often carry emotional meaning that words alone cannot access. By slowing down and staying curious, we can explore what your body has learned to hold and what it may be ready to release.

Somatic work is woven into depth-oriented psychotherapy, guided by your pace and sense of safety. Together, we explore how early experiences, relational patterns, and current stressors show up not only in your thoughts, but in your nervous system and body. This integrated approach can support emotional regulation, reduce self-criticism, and help you feel more grounded and connected in daily life.

If anxiety has been shaping how you move through the world, paying attention to the body can offer another way of understanding what you are carrying and how you respond under stress. I offer individual psychotherapy in San Francisco and online for California residents. You do not need to know exactly what you are feeling or where it lives in your body to begin. We can start with what is present and listen from there.

If any of this resonates, you may want to read my posts Simple Somatic Exercises to Soothe an Overwrought Nervous System, and Finding Calm within the Storm: Soothing Your Nervous System where I share gentle ways of responding to anxiety through the body.