When we think of trauma, we often imagine memories, stories, or psychological imprints. Yet trauma is not only held in the mind—it lives in the body. Every contraction, every pattern of tension, every instinct to withdraw or brace is the body’s way of remembering. This is the essence of somatic intelligence: the body’s innate wisdom to protect, regulate, and eventually guide us back to wholeness.
In truth, our bodies have never forgotten how to heal—they’ve simply organized themselves around survival. The same systems that once protected us from overwhelm now hold the keys to our liberation. When we slow down and listen deeply, the body reveals what the mind cannot yet name.
Dysregulation as a Survival Strategy
In a recent episode of The Awakened Therapist Podcast, I explore how dysregulation is not a failure, but an adaptive response. It is the body’s best attempt to manage what once felt too much. The nervous system doesn’t make mistakes—it does what it must to stay safe.
Our stories, beliefs, and personality strategies often emerge from this same survival wisdom. They are the psyche’s creative attempts at regulation—ways of organizing experience when safety is out of reach. By understanding these patterns as intelligent rather than broken, we meet both body and mind with compassion, rather than judgment.
A Clinical Pitfall: Bypassing the Mind
While somatic awareness is essential to trauma healing, it can be tempting for therapists to overcorrect by focusing only on the body and dismissing the client’s thoughts or narratives. But our mental stories are part of how the nervous system makes sense of experience. They are orientation points in an often chaotic internal world.
If a therapist bypasses or disregards a client’s cognition, it can recreate the very dynamic that caused dysregulation in the first place—feeling unseen or unsafe. The work is not to silence the mind but to bring it into dialogue with the body, allowing both to participate in the process of remembering.
Meeting Clients in the Present Moment
In both my teaching and my clinical practice, I emphasize that the way through is always the present moment. Healing cannot be forced or directed; it must be allowed. Rather than telling someone to “just take a deep breath,” we follow what is already happening—the sensations, emotions, and energetic movements arising right now—and we stay close to them with awareness.
This moment-to-moment contact is the heart of transformation. As clients deepen into what is true in the present, their system naturally begins to regulate, release, and reorganize. Awareness itself becomes the healing agent. When we meet what is here—not what we wish were here—the body begins to remember safety.
A Progression for Therapists
The therapist’s role in co-regulation and attunement can be understood as a natural progression: Attune → Increase Awareness → Respond → Integrate.
We begin by attuning to the client’s energy, breath, and tone—mirroring safety through our own regulation. From this grounded connection, we support increased awareness of the client’s sensations and emotions without trying to change them. As awareness grows, the system spontaneously responds—through a breath, a tremor, a tear, a sigh—and begins to integrate.
This is not about imposing change; it’s about creating the conditions in which the client’s body and being remember how to heal. In this way, therapy becomes a dance between presence and emergence rather than effort and control.
Remembering Wholeness
Somatic intelligence teaches us that the body already carries the blueprint for healing. When we slow down and listen, we discover that everything we need to know is already communicating through sensation, emotion, and energy.
As therapists, our task is not to fix, interpret, or direct. It is to attune deeply, follow the client’s living experience, and hold space for what is ready to emerge. Healing unfolds as the nervous system rediscovers its natural rhythm, and awareness returns to the places that were once cut off from presence.
This is what it means to remember wholeness: to allow every part of ourselves—mind, body, and spirit—to come back into harmony. In the sacred space of attuned awareness, therapy becomes less about doing and more about being; less about repair and more about remembrance.
Explore these themes more deeply in the full episode here: The Awakened Therapist Podcast
Learn more about our upcoming trainings here: The Awakened Therapist Trainings