Why Movement is Essential for Trauma Recovery
When healing from trauma, grounding and reconnecting with your center is not the only thing that matters in order to move forward. Stillness and settling within yourself is really important, because mostly what caused trauma was something overwhelming that happened too soon, too fast, too much. Reconnecting with yourself and your body is part of this process that reinstates trust and a sense of safety in yourself and the world. A long process.
However, from a bodywork perspective, releasing the energy from traumatic stress is also essential: to free yourself from the energetic charge of traumatic stress. If you only ground yourself, the experience can linger and stay stuck in your body. It is somehow like covering it with a rug on the surface.
The context of this mechanism goes back to a part of us that is linked to our instincts. The fight or flight response initiated by your reptilian brain, a deeply instinctual response, is similar to what you can observe in animals reacting to an attack or threat. They are shaking strongly after a threatening incident has passed. Why? This is how they release the tension from the threat and fear from their bodies.
Humans aren’t too different. If you can’t move, or release the stress from a perceived or existing threat and the resulting trauma, that energy and stress is stored in your body. This is why moving the energy is an essential part of healing and trauma recovery.
A good place to start is disengaging from a situation or conflict or stop focusing on it and then move that energy, whenever you find yourself particularly stressed, triggered or angry.
Movement in this sense means involving your whole body. You can go for a walk, swim, run, dance or engage in functional training. There are many different types of exercise that engage the whole body - which is great, because this allows for your individuality. Exceptions would be the types of movement that do not make your entire body move for at least 20 consecutive minutes, e.g. ping pong, golf or bowling. Yoga, meditation, tai chi or qigong are beautiful tools for grounding, relaxation and stretching, but they do not lead to a discharge of the energy. Instead, the energy is gathered.
(Western) African Dance accompanied by drums and singing is especially healing, because it is a very expressive way of dancing. Dancing to the rhythm of drums can realign you with your own rhythm and dancing in a group with others to this music harmonizes not only your own body, but within the context of a community. This may not be something you can do daily, but you can join a weekly class in your city or town or find online tutorials to being by dancing by yourself.
For some people, especially if the traumatic experience has involved physical attacks, martial arts, kickboxing or Krav Maga (self-defense) are of great benefit. Apart from serving as a tool for stress release, they also support you in building up confidence in your body and your ability to protect yourself again, feeling safer in this world.
Movement and exercise also stimulate the immune system. And if you get a chance to move outdoors, being surrounded by nature adds an extra benefit, as it has been found to improve mental health and have calming effects, even if you just go for a walk in the forest (“forest bathing”).
If you are open to working with a practitioner or prefer an app for the movement, you can also try out Tension Release Exercises (TRE) which is essentially a sequence of movements that initiates light tremors (shaking out the tension just like animals do) to release the (traumatic) stress, especially from the psoas muscle (the muscle that stores tension and trauma from the sympathetic nervous system). I recommend practicing TRE exercises with a practitioner at least for a couple of times in a safe space, before practicing the tension release by yourself with the TRE app.
Here are some helpful questions to ask if you feel inspired to integrate movement into your healing regimen:
What kind of movement feels doable for you to practice regularly?
What kind of sports (if any) have you done in the past? Can you imagine picking any of them up again?
What kind of sports or movement have you always wanted to try?
What steps can you take to get active and start moving? (i.e. look for classes online or in person, get yourself new sneakers for running etc.)