Healing from the Inside Out: An Introduction to Somatic Therapy and Therapeutic Yoga
“Each body that you have lived in and will live in – your child body, your teen body, adult body, elder body, healthy body, ailing body – each one is sacred, sovereign, special, and deserving of support. The processes you go through to find ways to relate to your body, to manage pain, manage mobility, and in other ways live in your body, those processes are sacred too.”
– adrienne maree brown, Loving Corrections
Fascia is often described as the body’s connective web – a living network that surrounds, supports, and links every muscle, organ, and structure together. Though largely unseen, it is constantly receiving and transmitting information, responding to movement, stress, illness, rest, and relationship. Like fascia, our inner lives are woven together through countless connections: our thoughts, emotions, sensations, memories, relationships, and environments all influencing one another in ways that are often subtle yet profound.
Before reading further, I invite you to pause for a moment.
Notice where you are right now. Allow your attention to gently settle into the present. Perhaps you become aware of the sound of a bird outside your window, the temperature of the air on your skin, the support of the chair beneath you, or the natural rhythm of your breath moving in and out.
Imagine what it might feel like to be just a little more open, a little more attuned; not striving or fixing, simply noticing what is already here.
As we cultivate this kind of awareness, we begin to reconnect with the intricate web of information within and around us. In somatic and holistic practices, healing is often less about adding something new and more about remembering how to listen – to the body, to the nervous system, and to the wisdom that emerges when we slow down enough to notice.
A Different Way of Understanding Healing
For much of modern psychology, healing has focused on changing thoughts, understanding patterns, and making meaning through language. These “top-down” approaches remain incredibly valuable. Somatic approaches offer an additional pathway to healing.
Rather than beginning with thoughts, somatic approaches to healing begin with the body: our posture, breath, movement, muscle tension, heartbeat, and internal awareness. They begin with a question: What if the body holds information that words alone cannot fully access?
This perspective is not new. Long before neuroscience described interoception or autonomic regulation, cultures throughout the world understood healing as an embodied process, and many contemporary somatic approaches build on knowledge stewarded for generations by Indigenous, Eastern, and other traditional healing communities.
Across Indigenous communities, healing often occurred collectively through movement, rhythm, storytelling, ceremony, drumming, dance, sweat lodges, breath, and connection with the natural world. In India, yogic traditions described the relationship between breath, attention, and suffering thousands of years ago; references to contemplative movement and embodied awareness appear throughout the Vedas, among the oldest surviving written texts, while many of these practices likely existed through oral tradition long before they were ever written down. Today, neuroscience is beginning to offer language for observations that have been woven into traditional healing systems across time.
What Is Somatic Therapy?
Somatic therapy is an umbrella term for therapeutic approaches that intentionally include the body as part of psychological healing. It encompasses practices such as Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Trauma-Sensitive Yoga, Dance and Movement Therapy, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, breathwork, and EMDR (which incorporates bilateral stimulation alongside cognitive processing). These approaches differ in technique but share a common understanding: emotions are experienced through the body, and regulation occurs through ongoing communication between the brain, the body, and our broader ecosystems.
What Does the Research Tell Us?
Although the field continues to grow, there is increasing evidence that body-oriented interventions can improve emotional regulation, trauma symptoms, depression, anxiety, and chronic pain when integrated with evidence-based mental health care. Several mechanisms appear to contribute.
Interoception – learning to notice the body. Interoception refers to our ability to sense internal signals: breath, heartbeat, muscle tension, hunger, or the subtle shifts that accompany emotion. The insular cortex plays a central role in integrating these signals with emotional awareness (Craig, 2009). Many individuals who have experienced chronic stress or trauma describe feeling profoundly disconnected from their bodies. Practices that gradually increase interoceptive awareness may help people recognize emotional activation earlier and respond with greater flexibility and self-compassion.
Autonomic nervous system regulation. Our nervous system continuously shifts between states of mobilization, rest, connection, and protection. Therapeutic yoga, breathwork, mindfulness, and slow movement have each been associated with increased parasympathetic activity, improvements in heart rate variability, and reductions in perceived stress (Streeter et al., 2012). Many clinicians also draw on Polyvagal Theory (Porges, 2011) as a framework for understanding how cues of safety and connection influence physiological states. While aspects of this theory remain the subject of ongoing scientific discussion, its clinical emphases – safety, co-regulation, and social engagement – have been widely integrated into trauma-informed care.
Neuroplasticity and new patterns of responding. The brain remains capable of change throughout life. Repeated experiences of mindful movement, breathing, grounding, and self-regulation can strengthen neural pathways involved in attention, emotional regulation, and resilience (Davidson & McEwen, 2012). Healing is often less about eliminating difficult experiences and more about creating new ways of responding to them, including responses that arise below the level of conscious thought. Traumatic experiences are not stored solely as narratives; they may also be reflected in physiological patterns such as muscle tension, startle responses, GI distress, and altered breathing. Body-based interventions may allow individuals to process these patterns without requiring detailed retelling of every traumatic memory (van der Kolk et al., 2014).
Who Might Benefit?
Emerging evidence suggests somatic interventions may be particularly helpful for individuals navigating trauma and PTSD, complex and developmental trauma, interpersonal or sexual violence, depression, anxiety, chronic pain, stress-related disorders, and experiences of emotional dysregulation or disconnection from the body.
Importantly, somatic approaches are best understood as complements to other evidence-based care, combining well with cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, EMDR, medication (when indicated), and other psychotherapeutic modalities.
What Could This Look Like in Practice?
Somatic therapy is distinct from a general yoga class or other non-therapeutic somatic practices. Rather than following a set sequence, it is relational and responsive in nature. Somatic therapy attends to each person’s nervous system, history, and window of tolerance in any given moment.
Sessions may incorporate orienting to safety cues in the environment, breath awareness, grounding and resourcing exercises, gentle mindful movement, restorative yoga holds, journaling, creative expression, and mindfulness practices. Trauma-informed clinicians often emphasize titration and pendulation – that is, approaching activation gradually while repeatedly returning to experiences of safety and regulation. Rather than pushing through discomfort, the goal is to build greater capacity to remain present with internal experience, strengthening awareness of bodily sensation through safe, supported presence.
Beyond Embodiment: Moving Toward Alignment
The goal of somatic work is not simply to “feel more in your body.” Rather, it is to cultivate alignment between thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, values, relationships, and actions. Over time, many people find they become less reactive and more able to respond, meeting themselves and others with greater curiosity and compassion. Perhaps this is what healing often looks like: not becoming someone new but becoming more fully connected to who we have always been.
If this resonates, I invite you to explore my upcoming offerings at Chicago Psychotherapy, including trauma-informed therapeutic yoga and processing groups for teens and young adults – where movement, mindfulness, and meaningful connection are woven into evidence-based mental health care.
References
Craig, A. D. (2009). How do you feel — now? The anterior insula and human awareness. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(1), 59–70. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2555
Davidson, R. J., & McEwen, B. S. (2012). Social influences on neuroplasticity: Stress and interventions to promote well-being. Nature Neuroscience, 15(5), 689–695. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3093
Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.
Streeter, C. C., Gerbarg, P. L., Saper, R. B., Ciraulo, D. A., & Brown, R. P. (2012). Effects of yoga on the autonomic nervous system, gamma-aminobutyric-acid, and allostasis in epilepsy, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Medical Hypotheses, 78(5), 571–579. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2012.01.021
van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking/Penguin Books.
