Somatic opening allows what has been stored in the body to come forward and be felt. It allows what has been left incomplete, to complete, holistically. This aspect of transformation can feel disorganizing, unsettling, and often means we are touching our pain.

Mending safety, belonging, and dignity, somatically, and having them work in conjunction with each other, is the central purpose of healing.

These survival impulses get trapped, unexpressed, and stored in the tissues and somatic shape. They are there, still needing to be processed. It is like the soma “holding a punch” or wanting to kick someone off of you, and not being able to.

In this orientation we still hold the “self” as different from the body. The body is relevant yet not fully deobjectified.

When we are contracted through the lower body, the legs and/or feet may feel leaden and heavy, missing, and blank, or like you are floating just above the ground rather than being settled onto the earth.

For automatic increasing, the belief can be that the only way to be safe and seen is to show feelings and experiences a lot

At a profound level, two things are happening with trauma. First: We have an inherent instinct to mobilize to protect ourselves and often others. This is holistic and somatic; it engages all of us.

Three key principles in somatic opening are: supporting the contraction, or blending; connecting more resilient places in the soma with more stressed or numb places; and allowing more aliveness to move through the soma connected to purpose, which includes opening the tissues to allow for this aliveness and sensation to flow.

Healing shame asks us to distinguish somatically (not just mentally) what is and is not our fault, where we are over- or under-accountable, and how to forgive—especially ourselves.