Gentle Ways to Reconnect with a Traumatised Body

As a child I used to wish I didn’t have a body. It was inconvenient as that is where I felt things, and feelings were hard. Growing up I stopped noticing it.

I could notice everyone else. Their moods, their needs, whether they were comfortable, uncomfortable, irritated, tired. I could read what mood my mother was in before she uttered a word. As I grew up that turned into being able to read a room within seconds. Useful skill in community work, terrible skill if it comes at the expense of noticing yourself.

One day a girl was crying on the school bus. I was around 14 years old. I remember feeling sorry for her. I thought ‘it must be awful to feel sad, I am so lucky I don’t feel that sort of thing.’ I could sense her emotions easily, noticed the concerned voices, the lurch of the bus in the traffic.

Inside my body, though, there was almost nothing.

Just numbness and a faint buzzing under the skin.

Trauma often gets spoken about as though it only lives in memory. A thing that happened in the past. But many traumatised bodies are not living primarily in the past at all. They are living in protection. Bracing. Numbing. Staying busy. Staying alert. Staying useful. Staying anywhere except fully here.

The body learns quickly when being fully present has felt unsafe.

For some people, reconnecting with the body sounds appealing right up until they actually try it. Then they sit quietly for thirty seconds and immediately feel restless, irritated, emotional, sleepy, or desperate to check their phone. That reaction makes perfect sense. If your nervous system has spent years avoiding certain feelings or sensations, slowing down can initially feel unsettling rather than calming.

I sometimes laugh gently with clients about this because people imagine reconnection as some serene experience involving candles and instant inner peace. Meanwhile, many bodies react to stillness like toddlers being told it is bedtime.

The goal is not to force yourself into overwhelming sensations. The body responds far better to gentleness than force. Small moments of contact, repeated consistently, tend to create more change than grand emotional excavations on a yoga retreat in Byron Bay.

One of the first things that helped me was walking without headphones.

I resisted this embarrassingly hard for someone who talks professionally about embodiment. There was always a podcast I should listen to or a message I should reply to. Silence felt oddly exposed. The first few walks were deeply uncomfortable. My mind sped up immediately, searching for stimulation.

Then slowly, other things started coming into focus.

The feeling of my feet hitting the ground. The cold air against my face in the mornings. The way my shoulders softened slightly about twenty minutes in. Tiny things, really. But traumatised bodies often reconnect through tiny things.

Safety arrives gradually.

Another gentle place to begin is noticing where your body contacts the world. Right now, there are probably at least three points of physical support holding you up — the chair beneath you, the floor under your feet, the fabric against your skin. Trauma can create a sense of floating slightly outside yourself, disconnected from physical reality. Feeling contact helps the nervous system orient again.

You do not need to meditate for an hour.

Honestly, for many people meditation can be a terrible place to start.

Thirty seconds is enough sometimes. A brief pause before getting out of the car. Feeling warm water on your hands while washing dishes. Standing outside for a minute at night and noticing the temperature of the air against your face instead of immediately reaching for your phone again.

The body responds to these moments more than people realise.

Connection with other living things also helps. I have seen people soften simply by sitting quietly with a dog resting against their legs. There is something about steady, uncomplicated presence that regulates the nervous system. In India, I noticed this constantly in village life — people rarely processed distress completely alone. There was touch, proximity, shared space. Someone nearby peeling vegetables while another person shared what was troubling them. The body settled because connection was ordinary.

Western culture can make healing feel strangely individualised. As though you are meant to fix yourself privately and efficiently, preferably while remaining productive.

Bodies do not work that way.

Research around trauma increasingly supports the role of body awareness and safe connection in healing. Trauma specialist Peter Levine describes how nervous systems can become stuck in survival states when stress responses are interrupted or overwhelmed. Gentle awareness, movement, breath, and physical grounding help the body complete some of the responses it could not complete at the time.

I find that reassuring because it removes some of the pressure people place on themselves to heal through sheer insight.

It is OK if your body still reacts.

It is adapting.

And adaptation can shift slowly when there is enough safety and repetition.

One practice I often return to myself is incredibly simple. I put one hand on my chest and one on my stomach for a few breaths, particularly when I notice myself becoming scattered or tense. Nothing mystical happens. Occasionally I feel slightly ridiculous. But the physical contact brings my attention back into my body rather than leaving it spinning around in thought.

That return is the important part.

Not perfection. Not constant calm. Just returning.

If your body has spent years protecting you through numbness, overthinking, busyness, or vigilance, reconnection may feel unfamiliar at first. Even uncomfortable. Go gently enough that your system does not experience the process itself as another threat.

Tonight, try something small.

When you brush your teeth or make a cup of tea or stand waiting for the kettle to boil, notice your body for one full breath longer than you usually would.

Nothing else needs to happen yet.

References

Levine, P. A. (1997). Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. North Atlantic Books.

van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking.

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