What Is Somatic Release? Why Your Body Needs to Let Go to Truly Heal
When it comes to mental health, we often focus on thoughts: reframing negative beliefs, learning new coping strategies, and changing how we talk to ourselves. These tools are incredibly important—but what happens when your body is still holding on to the pain?
That’s where somatic release comes in.
What Is Somatic Release?
Somatic release refers to the process of gently releasing stored tension, emotion, and energy from the body—particularly the nervous system. The word somatic means “relating to the body,” and somatic work recognizes that mental health isn’t just in your mind. It’s felt—in your chest, your gut, your throat, your shoulders.
Somatic release techniques help the body discharge built-up stress, shame, or emotional overwhelm that the thinking brain alone can’t resolve. This might look like slow movement, breathwork, vocalization, shaking, crying, sighing, or even stillness—depending on what the body needs.
Why It Matters for Mental Health
Many people who live with anxiety, depression, or trauma feel like they’ve “done all the work” mentally—but still find themselves stuck. Maybe you've read the books, gone to therapy, learned the tools… but deep inside, there's still a heaviness, a tightness, or a sense of being not quite safe.
This is often because the nervous system hasn’t caught up to the healing.
Unresolved shame, chronic self-judgment, and old emotional patterns don’t just live in our thoughts. They’re stored in the body—tight in the chest, frozen in the throat, braced in the shoulders, collapsed in the belly. Somatic release creates space to gently let go of those protective patterns so real healing can happen.
The Shame-Tension Loop
If you’ve experienced shame—especially the kind that says “something’s wrong with me”—you know how physical it can feel. Warm cheeks, clenched stomach, caved-in posture, shallow breath. Shame lives in the body like armor. And over time, it can become your default state, even when you’re safe.
Somatic release helps interrupt the shame-tension loop by allowing the body to do what it couldn’t do during the original wounding: move, feel, express, and release.
This doesn’t mean re-living trauma. It means slowly helping your body find its way back to safety and self-compassion, one breath, shake, or sigh at a time.
How Somatic Release Works
Somatic release doesn’t have to be dramatic. Sometimes, it’s as simple as:
Letting out a deep sigh when you notice tension in your chest
Placing a hand on your heart during a moment of judgment
Noticing where shame lives in your body—and gently breathing into that space
Shaking out your hands after a difficult conversation
Humming or placing pressure on your upper chest to calm your nervous system
These small moments send cues of safety to your body, helping it release what it no longer needs to carry.
A Path to Self-Compassion
At its core, somatic release invites you to treat your body not as a problem to fix, but as a partner in healing. It helps you shift from control to curiosity, from judgment to care. And when you learn to feel instead of just think your way through pain, true transformation happens.
If you’ve been stuck in loops of shame, self-criticism, or emotional overwhelm—somatic work may be the missing piece. Your body remembers what your mind is still trying to make sense of. And when your body feels safe enough to let go, everything else starts to shift.
Ready to Begin?
Start small. Breathe. Soften your shoulders. Let your body exhale what it’s been holding.
✨ Want support in learning how to release stuck tension and create more inner safety?
Explore our Healing Tools Library to download our Somatic Release Worksheet or learn more about Somatic Healing Sessions.
