6 Ways to Release Trauma From the Body [According to a Therapist]

Key Takeaway: If you’re wondering how to release trauma from the body, it starts with noticing how your lived experience shows up in sensations, reactions, and moments of truth your body has been carrying. Releasing trauma in the body is really about letting yourself exist with more honesty, presence, and connection. These six suggestions might just nudge you a little closer to yourself.

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Trauma is clever. It doesn’t always stay politely filed under “things that happened years ago.” Sometimes it shows up in your shoulders, which have apparently decided to live permanently two inches below your ears. Sometimes it hides in your jaw, which clenches like it’s trying to hold the whole world together. And sometimes it settles somewhere deeper—a heaviness you can’t name, but your body definitely feels.

So when people wonder how to release trauma from the body, the answer isn’t a checklist or a shiny wellness routine. It’s an existential return to yourself: slow, honest, sometimes uncomfortable, and entirely human. Less fixing. More witnessing. Less striving. More presence.

At Authentically Living Psychological Services, we know this territory from sitting with clients and from living in our own very human bodies—enough to know you can’t snap your fingers and make trauma evaporate. But you can begin noticing the patterns your body carries and gently explore what it’s like to reconnect with yourself in new ways.

With that spirit in mind, here are six ways of releasing trauma in the body. These are not instructions, not techniques, just invitations to reconnect with the place you live: yourself. Let’s begin.

How to release trauma stored in the body

So, you’re wondering what it might feel like to live in a body that isn’t carrying quite so much old tension, but the idea of releasing trauma in the body sounds enormous (maybe even a little mysterious). The encouraging news is that you don’t need to reinvent your entire life or transform into the most serene version of yourself to begin.

You can start by getting curious about the subtle ways your body communicates with you and noticing what shifts when those signals are finally given a moment of breathing room. Think of these invitations as gentle openings; places to explore what it means to inhabit yourself with a bit more honesty, presence, and humanity.

1. Notice what your body has been carrying

Before you try to make sense of your trauma with logic or timelines, take a moment to notice the places your body seems to tense, shut down, or hold something unspoken. Existentially speaking, we don’t just have bodies—we are bodies. And bodies tend to store the truths we weren’t able to name at the time.

• How to do it: Pay attention to the small shifts, like tight shoulders, a hollow feeling in the stomach, or a sudden heaviness in your chest. You don’t have to interpret them. Simply noticing them is enough.

• Why it matters: Your body often remembers the parts of the story your mind skipped, minimized, or forgot for survival reasons. When you give those sensations room to be noticed, you’re acknowledging the parts of your experience that never got witnessed.

• Therapist tip: Think of this like checking in on a roommate who’s been quietly doing all the emotional labor: “Oh wow, you’ve been holding all of that? My bad.” Simply try to recognize what’s already there without “fixing” anything.

2. Choose presence in small, ordinary moments

Trauma often pulls you out of the present and into the echo of what happened, or what could happen again. This makes the everyday moments of life feel slightly out of reach, as if you’re watching yourself from the next room. Choosing presence doesn’t have to mean forcing calm or white-knuckling—it’s returning to your existence in real time, even when it feels clumsy or uncomfortable.

• How to do it: Notice one ordinary moment today, like pouring your coffee, stepping outside, or closing your laptop, and simply acknowledge, “I’m here.” Not to do anything other than recognize your being-in-the-world as it is. Presence becomes less intimidating when it’s tied to the mundane.

• Why it matters: Trauma creates distance. Presence reduces that distance, not by changing your feelings, but by reminding you that your life is happening right now, not only in the past, where time seems to freeze.

• Therapist tip: Think of presence like showing up to a group chat you’ve been muted for months: “Hey, I’m back. Not sure how long I’ll stay, but I’m here.” No pressure, just an honest arrival.

3. Move in ways that feel like “you”

Trauma can make your body feel like unfamiliar territory, like you’re living in a rental where you never fully unpacked. Instead of thinking about burning calories or becoming “balanced,” consider movement as a way to reconnect with the contours of your own aliveness, even if that aliveness currently feels somewhere between “tired houseplant” and “creature emerging from hibernation.”

• How to do it: Let yourself move in small, intuitive ways that match your current state: stretching your neck, rolling your shoulders, pacing like a thoughtful Victorian poet, or swaying slightly while waiting for the kettle to boil. No goals. No optimizing. Just noticing what it feels like to inhabit a body that still wants to move.

• Why it matters: When trauma disconnects you from yourself, authentic movement becomes a quiet act of reclamation. Moving in ways that feel natural, not performative, reminds you that your body isn’t just a container for pain; it’s also a site of expression and possibility.

• Therapist tip: Approach movement like you’re improvising your way through life’s weird choreography: “Is this a stretch or a dramatic gesture? Who knows.” The point is presence, not precision. 

4. Make space for grief (because trauma rarely leaves without taking something with it)

Trauma is not only the event itself, but also what was lost in the process. Safety. Innocence. Trust. A former version of you who didn’t yet know certain things. Grief is the emotional gravity of all that absence, and the body often absorbs it long before the mind acknowledges it. Allowing grief to exist is a radical recognition of what your life has held.

• How to do it: When a wave of heaviness, sadness, or inexplicable ache rises, try letting it be there without bargaining with it or rushing it along. Think of it as giving the body a quiet corner to lay down some of what it’s been carrying; not forever, just for right now.

• Why it matters: Grief is part of the process of meaning-making. It reminds you that your pain didn't come from nowhere. It came from something valued, something human. Acknowledging that truth can soothe the body’s tension in ways that explanation alone can’t.

• Therapist tip: Picture your grief as a guest who shows up uninvited but somehow always brings a weirdly accurate takeaway about your life. You don’t have to love the visit, just don’t slam the door before you hear what it’s trying to say.

5. Let connection remind your body it doesn’t have to survive everything alone

Trauma often teaches the body a harsh lesson: You’re on your own. Even long after the danger has passed, your nervous system may still act as if you’re the lone astronaut floating through space with a half-functional oxygen tank. Connection (real, slow, imperfect connection) doesn’t “fix” trauma, but it does offer your body a different lesson: You get to exist with others now.

• How to do it: Notice the moments when someone’s presence eases you even a little, such as a friend who sits with you, a partner whose breathing steadies yours, a pet that plops its entire being onto your lap. You don’t have to perform intimacy or say anything profound. Simply being with another human (or animal) without armor is enough to shift something inside.

• Why it matters: When your body experiences connection, it begins to revise the old story that you’re fundamentally alone in your pain.

• Therapist tip: Think of connection like borrowing someone else’s emotional Wi-Fi. The signal doesn’t have to be perfect; just strong enough for your body to remember what it’s like to belong to the world again.

6. Let yourself be seen (not fixed, not analyzed, just seen)

One of trauma’s deepest wounds is the feeling of becoming invisible in your own life. Not just unseen by others, but unseen by yourself—your needs blurred, your experiences minimized, your truth swallowed. Being witnessed by another person, or even by yourself, isn’t about receiving solutions. It’s an existential recognition: I exist, and my experience is real.

• How to do it: Choose one small truth you’re willing to let be visible—not your whole story, not the dramatic plot twist, just a single honest detail of your experience. This might look like saying, “Today feels heavier than usual,” instead of defaulting to “I’m fine.” Or telling a friend, “I don’t have the right words, but something in me feels off.” 

• Why it matters: Being seen is a form of existential grounding. When your reality is recognized, without judgment or repair attempts, your body often softens, even if only slightly. It’s the softening that signals safety, not the storytelling.

• Therapist tip: Think of being seen like opening one window in a stuffy room: you don’t have to throw the whole house open, just enough to let a bit of air in. A single moment of recognition can shift the atmosphere inside you more than you’d expect.

Bringing it all together

If you arrived here looking for clear-cut instructions on how to release stored trauma in the body, you’ve probably already discovered the inconvenient truth: trauma doesn’t respond to step-by-step formulas. Trauma lives in meaning, memory, sensation, identity—and sometimes in the quiet corners of your life that don’t make it into the official narrative.

Releasing trauma in the body is less about “doing” and more about being with yourself in ways you weren’t able to before. It’s noticing the places that ache. It’s making space for grief that still has something to say. It’s letting connection dull the edges of your isolation. It’s choosing presence, even when presence feels like an awkward houseguest.

If any of these invitations stirred something in you, whether curiosity, recognition, or a faint inner exhale, you’re already engaging in the kind of existential unwinding that trauma often needs. And you don’t have to navigate it alone.

At Authentically Living Psychological Services, we walk with people through these deeper layers of embodiment and meaning, honoring the slow, nonlinear way healing unfolds.

Your body has carried so much. Let these invitations be a gentle reminder that you’re allowed to explore what it’s like to carry things differently. And if you’re feeling pulled to explore your own story more deeply, reach out to us to begin that conversation in a space where your experience can finally be witnessed with depth and care.