Yoga as an ancient somatic practice?
Yoga as an ancient somatic practice bridges modern somatic movement therapy with thousands of years of embodied wisdom. It is considered a somatic practice because it involves directly engaging and sensing the body to promote awareness, healing, and integration of bodily experiences. The term "somatic" relates to the body as experienced from within, emphasizing internal awareness and feeling.
Yoga teaches us to develop body awareness through direct experience. Rather than simply thinking about the body, we learn to notice physical sensations, breath patterns, posture, tension, and movement in real time. This mindful awareness strengthens the connection between mind and body and helps us become more attuned to how stress, emotions, and nervous system states are expressed physically.
In yoga, we learn through experiencing. We explore movement slowly and intentionally, observing sensations, breath, and internal responses with curiosity rather than judgment. Over time, this can cultivate greater interoception which is the ability to sense and understand what is happening inside the body. Interoceptive awareness is an important part of nervous system regulation, emotional wellbeing, and stress recovery.
When movement is integrated with breath, we begin to tune into both physical and emotional states more deeply. Practices such as pranayama (breathwork), mindful movement, restorative yoga, and somatic movement therapy can help calm the stress response, improve vagus nerve function, and support nervous system regulation. Slow breathing practices are especially helpful for activating the parasympathetic nervous system, the “rest and digest” state associated with relaxation, digestion, repair, and recovery.
As we become more familiar with the felt experience of a calm, regulated nervous system, we build greater capacity for self regulation during more challenging or stressful situations. This is one reason yoga therapy and somatic practices can be supportive for anxiety, chronic stress, burnout, trauma recovery, digestive issues, chronic tension, and symptoms associated with perimenopause and menopause.
Somatic movement and mindful breathing practices may also help release chronic holding patterns and stored tension in the body. Through gentle movement, breath awareness, and nervous system support, many people experience improved body awareness, emotional regulation, and a stronger sense of connection with themselves.
When we integrate movement with breath, we can tune into our physical and emotional states. Techniques like pranayama (breath practice) and gentle movement can help us to cultivate mindfulness, and a sense of deep relaxation. When we start to experience, and familiarise ourselves with a calm, regulated nervous system, we are better able to self regulate in more challenging situations.
I prefer to work in one-to-one sessions or small group classes because this allows practices to be adapted to individual needs and nervous system capacity. Slowing down the pace of practice creates more space for internal sensing, self awareness, and embodied experience to develop gently and safely.
In essence, yoga’s focus on mindfulness, embodiment, breath awareness, and nervous system regulation makes it a rich somatic practice — one that supports health and wellbeing through bodily awareness rather than performance or achievement.
Balāsana or Child’s Pose (pictured) is a foundational yoga posture that offers both physical and nervous system benefits, making it especially powerful as a somatic practice. Physically the posture encourages spinal decompression, and release for the hips and pelvis. The neck and shoulders are able to soften and release, and the digestive organs receive gentle stimulation. This posture activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the ‘rest and digest’ function. With gentle folding inwards, and resting the forehead, the inward, womb-like posture can soothe feelings of anxiety, overwhelm, or over stimulation. Like a lot of yoga postures, Balāsana supports interoception (Inner Awareness). We are literally, physically turning inwards and encouraged to tune into our breath, heartbeat, muscle tone and internal sensations
When we integrate movement with breath, we can tune into our physical and emotional states. Techniques like pranayama (breath practice) and gentle movements can help us to cultivate mindfulness, and a sense of deep relaxation. When we start to experience, and familiarise ourselves with a calm, regulated nervous system, we are better able to self regulate in more challenging situations.
Somatic movement, and mindful breathing can hep release stored tension, improve body-mind integration, and support nervous system regulation. I prefer to teach one to one sessions, or small group classes in order to adapt the practice to individual needs, and allow time and space for internal sensing and self awareness to develop.
Psychologist, trauma specialist, and yoga teacher Dr Arielle Schwartz has done significant work at the intersection of Polyvagal Theory, yoga, and psychotherapy which is deeply influential on how practitioners like myself understand the therapeutic potential of yoga as a somatic practice.
In her book Applied Polyvagal Theory in Yoga, Schwartz brings together the wisdom traditions of yoga with neuroscience, attachment theory, somatic psychology, and trauma research. Her central argument is that yoga, when understood through the lens of Polyvagal Theory, offers far more than physical benefit, it becomes a direct pathway for supporting the health of the autonomic nervous system, building vagal tone, and creating the conditions in which trauma recovery becomes possible.
Schwartz describes yoga as a practice that attends to the interrelationships between mind, emotions, physiology, and behaviour and works with the whole person rather than any single aspect of their experience. Through conscious breath, vagal toning practices, mindful movement, and meditation, she proposes that yoga can support the nervous system to gradually rewire itself and build greater capacity for regulation, resilience, and the felt sense of safety that trauma disrupts.
Schwartz insists that the mechanisms are physiological and measurable. The vagus nerve, as both Schwartz and Stephen Porges have described, is a bidirectional information highway between body and brain. Yoga practices that work with breath, movement, and present-moment awareness are not just relaxing, they are directly stimulating vagal pathways, shifting autonomic states, and supporting the nervous system's capacity to move between activation and ease with greater fluidity.
Schwartz describes this work as existing where science, soma, and soul meet, a phrase that resonates deeply with my own understanding of what somatic yoga therapy offers. The recognition that the ancient wisdom of the yogic tradition and the rigour of modern neuroscience have always been pointing toward the same thing.
Attribution: Schwartz, A. (2023). Applied Polyvagal Theory in Yoga: Therapeutic Practices for Emotional Health. W. W. Norton & Company.
Balasana - Child’s Pose.