The stress response, nervous system and the benefits of somatic movement.

Movement is one of the most direct and accessible tools we have for influencing our nervous system. Long before we had language and the capacity to reflect on our experiences or make meaning of them, we had the body and its instinctive capacity to move, shake, rock, breathe, and restore itself to equilibrium. Modern life has largely disconnected us from this capacity, we sit still, we override physical impulses, we think rather than feel our way through difficulty. The body's intelligence is waiting, patiently, for permission to do what it has always known how to do. Somatic movement therapy works with this intelligence directly using breath, gentle movement, and body awareness to create the conditions in which the nervous system can begin to settle, regulate, and find its way back to ease.

Understanding your nervous system is crucial in understanding how to work with it. Your nervous system governs not just your physical responses like heart rate, breath, muscle tension, digestion, but also your emotional landscape, your capacity for connection, your ability to rest, to feel safe, to experience joy, and to recover from difficulty. It operates largely below the level of conscious awareness, constantly scanning your internal and external environment and making rapid, automatic adjustments to keep you safe and functioning. For most of us, this extraordinary system hums quietly in the background, until life asks too much of it for too long. Chronic stress, trauma, loss, and prolonged uncertainty can push the nervous system beyond its capacity to self-regulate, leaving us stuck in states of activation, exhaustion, or disconnection that can feel permanent but are not. Understanding how your nervous system works, and learning to work with it rather than against it, is one of the most empowering things you can do for your health, your relationships, your quality of life and is at the core of what I teach and practice.

Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) – "Fight or Flight"

When the brain perceives a threat which could be real or imagined , the sympathetic nervous system triggers an immediate cascade of physiological responses. Adrenaline and cortisol flood the body, heart rate surges, muscles tense and prepare for action, and breathing becomes faster and shallower to maximise oxygen intake. At the same time systems the body considers non-essential in a crisis like digestion, immune function and repair are put on hold. The body mobilises with every resource focussed on survival. This fight or flight response is designed to keep us alive in moments of genuine danger.

Problems arise when this response never fully switches off. In the presence of chronic stress, unresolved trauma, or prolonged difficulty the nervous system can become stuck in a state of low-grade activation. The adrenaline and cortisol keep flowing. The muscles stay braced. The breath remains shallow. The body continues to scan for threat even when the immediate danger has long passed. Over time this becomes the baseline, so familiar that it no longer feels like a stress response at all, just the way life feels, the constant background hum.

This is where so many people find themselves, not in the aftermath of a single dramatic event, but ground down by the accumulation of a nervous system that never quite got the message that it was safe to stand down. Somatic therapy works directly with this state by meeting the nervous system in the language it understands: sensation, breath, movement, and the slow, patient restoration of felt safety in the body.

Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS) – "Rest and Digest"

The parasympathetic nervous system is your body's counterbalance the equivalent of a long, slow exhale. Where the sympathetic system mobilises and accelerates, the parasympathetic settles and restores. When this system is active, heart rate slows, breathing deepens and lengthens, muscles soften their grip, and the body's restorative functions like digestion, immune response and cellular repair all come back online. This is the state in which genuine rest becomes possible, in which the body can process and integrate experience rather than simply survive it. It is sometimes called rest and digest, but it is more than that, it is the state in which we can think clearly, connect genuinely with others, feel pleasure, and access the kind of quiet, embodied presence that chronic stress makes almost impossible. The parasympathetic system is where health lives.

What we are doing in somatic therapy, breathwork and somatic movement is deliberately and gently activating the parasympathetic nervous system. The exhale breath, slow rhythmic movement, orienting to safety in the environment, grounding through the feet, the warmth of a hand on the heart are not merely comforting gestures. They are direct physiological interventions, sending signals of safety through the vagus nerve to the brain stem, gradually guiding a dysregulated nervous system back toward its natural capacity for rest, restoration, and ease. With consistent, gentle practice this capacity can be rebuilt, even in a nervous system that has spent years, or decades, in survival mode.

The Freeze or Shutdown Response (Dorsal Vagal)

There is a third state one that is less commonly talked about but deeply important, particularly for anyone who has experienced overwhelming or inescapable threat. When the nervous system perceives that fight or flight is no longer possible, danger is too close or inescapable, it can drop into what is known as the dorsal vagal response. This is the most primitive branch of the autonomic nervous system, and its response is shutdown. The body conserves energy by collapsing inward, heart rate drops, breathing slows, muscles lose their tone, and a profound numbness or disconnection descends. This is the freeze and collapse response, a deeper, older response. A going away. A disappearing inside oneself.

This state is often misunderstood, both by the people experiencing it and by the practitioners trying to support them. It can look like depression, laziness, or emotional flatness. It can feel like an inability to care, to feel, or to engage with life. For many people who have experienced developmental trauma, chronic abuse, or overwhelming and inescapable circumstances, dorsal vagal shutdown becomes a habitual state, an adaptation pattern that was once genuinely necessary but has outlived its usefulness. The body learned to disappear because disappearing was once the safest option available.

Somatic therapy approaches this state with particular gentleness and care, working slowly and carefully to build enough felt safety in the nervous system that the body can gradually risk coming back, emerging from shutdown at its own pace, and finding its way toward the aliveness and connection that have been waiting on the other side

A note on Polyvagal Theory: These three states - sympathetic activation, parasympathetic restoration, and dorsal vagal shutdown - form the foundation of Stephen Porges' Polyvagal Theory, which is one of the most significant contributions to trauma-informed care of the last thirty years.

The benefits of movement

Movement like yoga, breathwork, shaking or grounding can help to signal safety in the body and release stress hormones. Movement plays a powerful role in regulating the nervous system, especially when done with awareness. Whether it's yoga, somatic movement, walking, or gentle shaking, movement helps shift us out of stress responses and into more balanced states. Stress and trauma often create muscular holding patterns, tight jaws, clenched shoulders, braced bellies. Movement helps discharge that stored energy from the body, creating space for relaxation and ease.

Somatic movement works by bringing gentle, conscious attention to the body in motion, not to perform or push, but to notice, explore, and listen. Unlike conventional exercise, which is largely goal-oriented and externally directed, somatic movement is an inward practice. It asks us to question what the body is doing, what are the patterns of holding, bracing, or compensation have become habitual, and what might begin to shift when those patterns are met with curiosity rather than effort. Through slow, intentional movement, breath, and present-moment body awareness, somatic movement can support the nervous system to move out of chronic activation and toward a more regulated, easeful state. With regular consistent practice, the body can begin to remember what it feels like to move without bracing, to breathe without restriction, to exist without the constant background hum of threat.

What makes somatic movement particularly valuable is its accessibility and its immediacy. You do not need to be fit, flexible, experienced, or well. You do not need to push through discomfort or override what your body is telling you. Some of the most profound shifts happen in the smallest movements, a slow rotation of the spine, a conscious softening of the jaw, a breath that finally reaches the belly. Over time and with consistent practice, somatic movement can help rebuild the body's capacity for self-regulation, gradually expanding what is called the window of tolerance, the range within which we can meet life's challenges without being overwhelmed or shutting down. It is gentle work, but it is not small work. It reaches places that nothing else quite reaches.

If any of this resonates with you, please reach out for a chat, no obligations, no rush.