Our Body Keeps the Score: Releasing Trauma Stored in the Body
Our Body Keeps the Score: Releasing Trauma Stored in the Body
When Emotional Pain Becomes Physical
We often hear that the body stores trauma. Years of research into stress, trauma, and the nervous system support the powerful relationship between emotional pain and physical symptoms. We’re told that stress not only contributes to but creates pain and illness. But until you’ve felt it inside your own skin, that connection can seem vague and abstract— like something meant for textbooks, not daily life.
For me, trauma didn’t show up as panic attacks or flashbacks.
It showed up as persistent, mysterious pain that no MRI could explain. Pain that sometimes made it impossible to walk. Pain that quietly, consistently pulled me out of my life. I cancelled dates with friends. I cancelled professional events. I began to drift toward depression.
It wasn’t until I surrendered to a moment of deep emotional release — one I never could have orchestrated — that the pain vanished and hope was restored.
This is the story of what my body held, how it communicated with me, and what happened when I was finally able to listen.
The Mystery Pain That Wouldn’t Leave
The pain began subtly — a dull ache, a strange tightness in my buttocks. I brushed it off. But over time, it grew louder, sharper, more disruptive. What began as a whisper became a scream. At its worst, I couldn’t walk, even with assistance.
Doctors found nothing. X-rays, MRIs, exams — all “normal.” But my body clearly communicated to me that I wasn’t ok.
Eventually, pelvic floor therapy gave me some relief. It allowed me to breathe again on some days. But even with those small improvements, the pain remained — like a shadow that wouldn’t step out of view.
I finally named it: chronic pain.
And in that naming, my body’s wisdom began to speak: This was not just physical. This was my body harboring a lifetime of holding emotions at bay, of putting everyone else and everyone else’s feelings first, of keeping on keeping on.
My body was storing something I hadn’t yet felt or acknowledged. What was my body saying to me?
France: My Soul’s Country, My Body’s Breaking Point
Last fall, I was set to guide a deeply meaningful retreat in the South of France — a lifelong dream. France is more than a location for me. It's a memory palace, a soul home.
My love affair with France had begun as a 6-year-old when I listened to my brother’s high school ALM records and recited the dialogs to him…way before I began my own French classes and dreamed of when I would visit. My first steps on the cobblestones of Paris, seeing the Metro sign for the Champs Elysee elicited tears of joy. I had studied in France, lived there, and even raised my sons there for a season. My voice has been mistaken for that of a native speaker. My love for this place runs deep, wide, and spiritual.
So when I was denied entry into my beloved country at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris— due to an emergency passport issued a couple of months earlier in Peru — I wasn’t just inconvenienced. I was gutted. This was a visceral dismantling of an essential thread of my identity, my being.
Escorted by French police. Sent back home. I’d never felt so powerless, so dismissed.
And yet, I didn’t let myself fall apart. No puddle of tears surrounded me. No victim’s mindset settled over my mind or heart.
I shifted into problem-solving mode. I pivoted. I reminded myself: I do hard things. I’ve completed the Mt. Everest Marathon, the Nanisivik Marathon, the Chicago Marathon. I’ve birthed babies. I’ve buried my parents. I’ve sent someone home from a retreat.
This? I could manage this.
So I did what I always do — I carried on.
I returned to France. I led the retreat. I held space for others, beautiful, transformational space for others.
The Unprocessed Grief That Followed Me
After the retreat, I didn’t stop moving. I traveled to Italy with my husband. I saw one son in Philadelphia, then another in Boise. I drove to Nashville for Thanksgiving. Almost flew to Honolulu. Eventually flew again for a recital and visited a friend in Florida.
I kept going. And going. And going.
What I didn’t realize was that my body was holding all of it and that this forward motion — this refusal to pause — was my body’s coping mechanism. A way of saying, We’re not safe yet. We’re not ready.
My nervous system was doing its best to protect me — to keep the trauma sealed in until I had the spaciousness to feel it.
And my pain? It was the reminder, the pressure valve, the signal flare that something remained and was waiting until the moment, until it was ready to release.
A Somatic Flashback in an Airport Terminal
It wasn’t until months later that my body spoke — loudly, clearly, unexpectedly and without permission.
I walked into the International Terminal at O’Hare Airport in Chicago — the exact place from which I’d stepped off into that nightmare journey to France.
And suddenly, without warning, my body froze.
Muscles clenched. Chest tightened. Throat locked.
No thoughts. Just sensation.
This wasn’t a panic attack. It was a somatic flashback — a moment when my body remembered what my mind had pushed away. I knew exactly where it was coming from. My body was crystal clear in this telling. I knew without words that part of me was traveling through all the trauma and grief around my having been sent home from my soul’s home.
And then came the tears.
First, quietly. Then in full sobs. I cried in my car. I let it all pour out. I didn’t narrate or analyze. I just let the visceral truth move through me. I let myself experience a full-body emotional release.
“Tears are truth,” I often say.
That day, the truth needed space. And I gave it all the space it cried out for.
What Happened Next Changed Everything
That evening, for the first time in two years, I felt no pain.
None.
Zero.
Nada.
Niente.
Rien de rien.
It wasn’t (and yet was) magic. It was release. My body had held on — fiercely, loyally, wisely — until it sensed that I was finally safe enough to feel.
This is what somatic healing looks like in real life. It’s messy. It’s inconvenient. And it’s real. The body heals according to its timeline and not according to our agenda.
Why the Body Holds Trauma — and How It Lets Go
Our bodies are not machines. They are storykeepers — vessels of memory, emotion, and energy. Each one in itself is a sacred weaving of the primal and the personal, where ancestral instincts and spiritual insight move in rhythm, guiding us toward healing. Together, they form a collaborative ecosystem of cells and soul.
When we experience trauma and don’t feel the support or safety to process it, the body tucks it away for later. This isn’t dysfunction. It’s intelligent survival. Our beautiful human nervous system does everything it knows to protect us and keep us safe and thriving.
We often think healing is about working harder, doing more. But the real invitation is subtler:
Slow down.
Create space.
Build safety.
Be willing to feel.
We can’t force trauma out.
We can only make space for it to leave.
A Daily Practice: Listening to the Body (Gently)
Here’s one of the most effective tools I use and share — a daily practice for connecting to your body’s wisdom, gently and consistently without trying to control or pre-determine anything.
5-Minute Somatic Writing Ritual
Sit or stand and take a few deep, grounding breaths.
Visualize your connection to the Earth — feel the floor beneath your feet or seat.
Imagine a color of Earth energy rising into your body. What color is it today?
Ask yourself: What am I feeling? Where am I feeling it?
Then ask: Which part of me wants to speak today?
Begin writing — no filters, no judgment. Let the body speak.
This may feel awkward at first — or surprisingly soothing. The key is to return to it without expectation. Some days, a word will come. Other days, a paragraph. Either way, your body will be grateful you asked. Your body will respond the way it’s ready to respond. Give yourself permission to get out of the way.
What If Healing Isn’t Linear?
As a longtime practitioner and teacher of mind-body modalities — yoga, movement, sound, metaphor, reiki — I know how tempting it can be to expect ourselves to “get over it already.” As a human, I know the temptation of believing that we are in charge of the body.
But the body isn’t interested in timelines. And the body is part of this trinity of body-mind-spirit that are inseparable from each other.
It doesn’t respond to force.
It responds to safety, slowness, and presence.
My pain wasn’t a punishment. It was communication.
And when I honored it, everything shifted. When I listened, the body gave forth with all that it needed to release in that moment. When I trusted its wisdom, it showed me in no uncertain terms where we were going and what needed to happen and how we would get there.
Reflection and Invitation
If your body has been speaking to you — with tightness, fatigue, chronic illness, or emotional overwhelm — I invite you to pause.
Instead of demanding answers, ask questions.
Instead of pushing through, listen in.
Instead of overriding, understand or at least appreciate.
Let your body speak its language. Let it grieve, release, exhale. Grant your body its wisdom, its timeline.
Gentle Questions to Sit With
What part of me has been holding too much, for too long?
Where in my body do I feel tight, hot, cold, or numb?
What would it feel like to let that part of me be heard — just for a moment?
How might I make room today for slowness, softness, or stillness?
These are not questions with answers. They are portals — openings to the kind of listening that transforms. They are windows to our soul and to the temple that houses this soul.
Final Thoughts
I didn’t heal all at once. I’m still healing.
But now I walk with more awareness, more respect, and more gentleness toward the sacred system that is my body as well as the sacred system that is my body-mind-spirit. I more deeply appreciate that, while I need to set intentions, I need at the same time to collaborate with my body-mind-spirit and allow it to express in its ways, on its time.
When we listen to our bodies, we don’t just feel better —
We come home to ourselves.
May your healing come not just in flashes —
But in waves.
Waves that carry you into deeper presence, peace, and possibility.
Blessings,
Paula
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Image by Kinzie at Empowerment Studio in Kansas City MO
