Why trauma processing and healing works best with movement and dance

By Orit Krug  |  July 27th, 2020

Trauma processing can be heavy, frustrating, and painful, OR it can be light and enjoyable.

Trauma processing becomes unbearable after spending YEARS going over the same old stories. You may have had little moments of clarity and breakthrough over time, but ultimately you feel stuck, hopeless, and on the edge of giving up. 

You’ve done so much work.

You’re so aware of everything that’s happened to you in the past. You’ve recalled old memories and stories about the way people abandoned you, rejected you, or didn’t meet your needs. You can even draw a map from all those events in the past to the behaviors and patterns you’re struggling within yourself and your relationship today. 

That’s how insightful you are. You have an amazing awareness about why you are the way you are today.

This is exactly how I was for the longest time before I processed my trauma through dance and movement. It was the biggest mind f*ck because I KNEW all the reasons why I kept pushing away my amazing partner but I just couldn’t stop.

Having this deep level of awareness can be a blessing but it can also be a curse. It feels like we’re successfully processing our trauma when we’re doing things like reading, reflecting, and journaling, but these approaches can actually block us from the real trauma processing that needs to happen in order to finally move forward.

Movement and dance create new neural pathways that help us move past the old trauma.

When we keep talking about the same old stories in therapy or to our friends, we only create deeper neural pathways that reinforces the trauma in our minds and bodies. The more we talk about the trauma, the more we hang on to it. It’s the opposite of releasing it.

Trauma gets stored in our bodies because our “talking brain” goes offline when we experience trauma. We don’t remember most of the trauma in our minds, but that doesn’t mean it disappears into thin air. Our bodies remember instead. There’s massive amounts of research that shows this to be true.

You can probably already sense that trauma is stored in YOUR body, in one way or another. You might feel tension ALL the time in your shoulders or neck. Or, maybe you feel totally numb and disconnected from your body as a way to avoid feeling any old trauma (which often comes back to haunt us in anxiety attacks, explosive anger, etc).

The only way to fully, deeply access trauma is through the body and gently releasing it through movement, because movement is what helps us move it OUT and change our patterns.

Movement is the quickest way to change unhealthy behavior patterns and create new ones.

Have you spent years talking about how you want to act differently with your partner? Perhaps you’ve even gone to couples counseling and created some SOLID plans together about how you’ll behave differently. 

Maybe the plan is to stay calm and present the next time you get into an argument. Or to speak up when something about the relationship is bothering you. But when the moment comes, all of that goes out the window and your nervous system & body hijacks you again. You react before you can even think. You shut down even though you intended to stand your ground.

That’s because it was your MIND that planned on doing these things differently, but it’s your physical body that’s doing the same old behavior because it doesn’t know how to do it differently. 

Movement is action. Movement is behavior. So many experts preach that you need to change your thoughts to change your behavior. But you are here because you’ve already tried that and it hasn’t worked. If you want to finally experience a lasting change and stop reacting based on the past, you need to change your physical behavior through your body and movement.

Stop talking about it! Words are not enough for trauma processing. 

There is no amount of talking that can release body-stored trauma. We need to connect to the body through movement to break out of the trauma-prison that’s blocking you from being more open, free, and able to give & receive healthy love.

If telling the same old trauma story was enough to fully release it, wouldn’t it have already been gone after the 10th, 20th or even 77th time? Talking about it may have even helped you make some amazing intellectual connections between your childhood and why you’re sabotaging your relationship now (I know it did for me!). But even after THAT, if you’re still stuck, then you already know it’s not enough.

You already know you have to do this a totally different way. Bottom up, baby! (bottom up = body first, mind second).

You deserve to find peace in your body & let love in without fear.

The latest trauma research shows that cognitive-based therapies cannot fully access trauma stored in the non-verbal brain and body. Even alternative approaches, such as EMDR and Brain-Mapping, are often not enough to fully heal trauma from the physical body or nervous system.

This makes trauma healing a very frustrating journey for many people. They end up feeling stuck, even after spending decades of therapy and gaining so much self-awareness.

If you relate, you might’ve considered giving up on your healing. You might wonder if a fully integrated healing is not possible for you.

Every human being is 100% neurophysiologically capable of healing deeply & wholly, because we all have neural pathways that can be rewired from fear and overprotection to love, joy, and openness.

But even with an effective neuroscience-backed Somatic approach, going to weekly sessions could still require many more months or years until you feel that “click” in your body that finally makes you feel WHOLE.

That’s why I run Somatic Trauma Healing Retreats where many people experience accelerated, integrated, and lasting healing in just a few days.

(Disclaimer: each attendee must go through an application process that ensures this accelerated healing is possible for them).

If this sounds like something you might be interested in, I’d love to invite you to check out my retreats! There are several options from women’s healing, plant-assisted, 1:1, and more.