How Trauma Gets Stored in the Body and How We Heal It

Trauma doesn’t just live in the past. It lives in the body.

And for many of us, no amount of talking about it — or even understanding it — fully resolves the symptoms we’re carrying.

That’s because trauma is more than a story. It’s a physiological state.

The Body Stores Trauma as Pattern, Not Narrative

Trauma that hasn’t been integrated shows up in what we feel — not what we think. It lingers in shallow breathing, clenched jaws, tight shoulders. In chronic illness. In anxiety, shutdown, or constant overdrive. In the parts of us that feel hypervigilant even in safe places, or frozen when we want to speak.

This is why trauma healing can’t be fully cognitive. We can’t talk our way out of a survival response that lives in the tissue, fascia, and autonomic pathways of the body.

Instead, we need to work with the body in the language it remembers: sensation, rhythm, and presence.

Where is Trauma “In the Body”?

I’ve heard clients say they want to “get the trauma out of their bodies.” It’s often spoken as if trauma is a kind of energy embedded in their physical tissues.

While some healing traditions do conceptualize trauma that way — as an energetic imprint lodged in the body — in the somatic field, we understand it through a neurobiological lens.

Unresolved trauma impacts the body not because trauma itself is stored in our tissues, but because the body holds patterns — muscular, emotional, postural — that are associated with unintegrated trauma memories.

When these memories are triggered, our nervous system sends us back into those original somatic states: the pain, the tension, the shutdown, the shame.

And the brain doesn’t know the difference between a memory and a threat that’s happening right now.

Somatic Therapy Heals Through Our Neurobiology

Trauma memory is not literally stored in our bones, muscles, or organs — it’s stored in the brain. But when a traumatic memory is unintegrated and gets reactivated, the body responds as if the event is happening now.

The amygdala, the brain’s alarm center, stores memories associated with threat. These memories can become reactivated when something — often unconsciously — reminds us of the original traumatic event. In that moment, the brain pulls up the old neuro-circuitry and sends a signal of alarm to the body. When this happens, it’s a sign that the memory has not been fully processed by the hippocampus and moved into long-term storage. It remains “unintegrated.”

This can occur for a few reasons. One is that the event happened during a time of overwhelm or high activation, when the brain bypassed the prefrontal cortex (responsible for context and regulation) and instead routed the experience straight to the amygdala. Another is that the trauma occurred during a pre-verbal period, when the prefrontal cortex wasn’t yet developed — meaning the brain had no option but to store the experience in the threat detection system.

The way we felt in our bodies during those moments — the tension, the fear, the shutdown — becomes encoded into the memory. So when that memory is reactivated later in life, our body re-experiences those exact somatic states, even if the threat is no longer present.

With pre-verbal or developmental trauma, we process the world primarily through sensation and emotion. So it’s those sensations and emotions that get paired with themes or relational dynamics that resemble the original trauma. This is how our body becomes a storehouse of implicit memory — not because trauma is embedded in the tissue, but because the body learned to associate certain states with survival.

Because the brain keeps pulling up these unintegrated memories — and because those memories come with physical holding patterns — we may feel ongoing tension or strain in the body. These patterns can manifest as chronic pain, digestive issues, fatigue, or other symptoms of dysregulation. When emotions are linked to the somatic memory, emotional triggers can also reactivate the physical state.

In Somatic Therapy, we gently work with these body-based memories as doorways into the original trauma. By accessing the felt sense — the somatic imprint of what happened — we support the nervous system to integrate the experience. This happens through a process called memory reconsolidation, in which the brain is supported to update the old memory with new present-moment information.

Once the brain has properly integrated a traumatic memory and filed it into long-term memory storage, encountering a similar situation no longer reactivates the original somatic imprint. The nervous system doesn’t interpret it as the same threat — it understands that this is a new experience.

As a result, the body stops responding with outdated survival strategies. There’s no longer a need to armor, brace, or collapse in response to cues from the past. The body can relax. The present can finally feel like the present.

That’s what people often mean when they talk about “getting trauma out of the body.” It’s not about purging something foreign — it’s about helping your body finally return to present time.

Bodywork Offers a Pathway to Deep Somatic Integration

In my practice, I see bodywork support nervous system regulation and trauma integration in several distinct and powerful ways:

1. Co-regulation through attuned touch

One of the most important is co-regulation through safe, present-moment contact. Touch — when attuned and trustworthy — is a biological cue of safety. It helps the nervous system shift out of survival mode.

In Craniosacral Therapy, this parasympathetic support often creates the conditions for someone to begin emerging from a long-term freeze response. It can also help interrupt the chronic looping of low-level fight/flight signaling, allowing the system to reestablish a baseline of safety.

2. Discharge and integration of implicit trauma memory

When we are finally safe enough to feel, our body may begin to release what it’s been holding. This can look like trembling, crying, or even subtle flashes of memory. These are signs that the threat response is discharging — and in those moments, I support clients with Somatic Experiencing and trauma-tracking skills to help them stay present and integrate what’s surfacing.

3. Movement of cerebrospinal fluid and nervous system detox

Another way trauma release can occur is through movement in the cranial bones and cerebrospinal fluid. As the nervous system regulates, the glymphatic and lymphatic systems are better able to move stagnant debris. Because unresolved trauma often shows up as emotional or physical congestion, this process can lead to a feeling of “letting go” — or even to a spontaneous resurfacing of sensation, image, or memory.

4. Accessing implicit memory and emotional holding patterns

We store emotional associations in specific parts of the body — often outside of conscious awareness. When those areas are met with steady, non-invasive presence, the body may begin to bring stored emotion to the surface. This is what we call accessing implicit memory systems, and in the right environment, it can be a deeply corrective somatic experience.

Why Bodywork Matters

Bodywork supports trauma integration by working in the language of the nervous system. It doesn’t force a story or dig for memory — it offers the conditions that let memory resolve on its own terms. And when combined with somatic therapy, this approach allows trauma to be processed not just cognitively, but on a cellular, felt level.

I’ve now supported many clients through this process. Most don’t have the emotional flashbacks I did — but many experience a slow, steady reentry into their bodies after years of numbness or shutdown. For clients with strong freeze patterns or those who never received attuned touch as children, bodywork is often the bridge that makes somatic therapy possible.

This is why I believe bodywork should be part of the conversation around trauma healing. It’s not just a modality — it’s a way of speaking to the body in its own language. And sometimes, that’s the only language the trauma will answer to.

My Lived Experience Healing Through Bodywork and Trauma Integration

In my personal journey healing from early trauma and active PTSD, it wasn’t until I began receiving trauma-informed Craniosacral Therapy that I finally started to come out of the freeze state I had been stuck in for years.

Despite working with multiple kinds of practitioners and excellent therapists, my body had shut down into a collapse state I couldn’t shift through talking alone.

In those first sessions, I would feel electrical heat run down my legs. I’d have flashbacks, or cry and gently shake as my body began to release what it had been holding. My practitioner helped me integrate what was surfacing with gentle somatic tracking and present-time support. That made all the difference.

Most of my clients don’t have emotional releases like mine — but it’s not uncommon. And for those with strong freeze patterns or early relational trauma, bodywork can be the bridge into the emotional experiences that have felt unreachable through talk-based somatics alone.

It’s why I became trained in both bodywork and trauma integration — and why I believe this work is essential.

Restoring Safety From the Inside Out

Ultimately, both somatic therapy and bodywork help us return to a state of presence — where the body no longer feels stuck in the past. Somatic therapy offers a container to safely explore and integrate trauma memories, while bodywork supports the physiological shifts that make that integration possible. Together, they create the conditions for deep nervous system healing: not by overriding the body’s story, but by helping it be heard, held, and finally resolved. This is the essence of embodied trauma healing — where memory becomes metabolized, the body comes back online, and a sense of safety can be restored from the inside out.