What Your Body Already Knows: A Somatic Teaching and Practice

One Conscious Breath: Issue 02

We have a very sophisticated intelligence system within us. It is structured entirely in service of our survival. It runs beneath our conscious awareness and communicates in sensation. It has been detecting threats and safety, helping us feel safe, since before we had words for any of it. Most of us were never taught to listen to it or stay attuned to it. We were never taught that it is always, faithfully, working for us. And most of us were never taught that this same faithful system, without our conscious awareness, may be continuing to signal strategies that are no longer necessary nor useful for our safety and survival. Strategies installed for a world that no longer exists, in a body that now has far more resources than it did when they were first learned.

Eye-level view of a serene therapy room with comfortable seating and calming decor

Before we begin, let’s pause here for a moment and check in.

Right now, in this precise moment, bring your awareness to your breath. Feel it enter your nostrils. Follow it as deeply, or as shallow, as it goes. Just notice. There’s no judgement. No right or wrong. Simply be curious about something that is already happening within you, every second, without your conscious awareness.

What do you notice? Does your breath flow easily, in and out, in a flexible rhythm? Take another breath and check in with your jaw. Is it soft or rigid? How about your shoulders? Are they relaxed or braced? And your chest? Do you feel a quality of openness or maybe some constriction? Are you able to bring your breath all the way to your belly? Or does it stop somewhere before it gets all the way down?

Most of us, when we actually check in, find tension we didn’t know our body was storing. In our jaw, almost always. In our shoulders. Deep in our chest and belly. In the places the body holds energy that was never meant to be held, but released. And in the places the mind has agreed, consciously or unconsciously, not to think about.

This tension is not nothing. It is stuck energy, signaling for your attention. Constantly. In the only language available to it: sensation.

HERE IS WHY THIS MATTERS AND WHY OUR BODIES HAVE BEEN TRYING TO GET OUR ATTENTION FOR LONGER THAN WE REALIZE

It is important to remember that this sophisticated intelligence system is running beneath our conscious awareness. It’s structured entirely in service of our survival and began learning what was safe and what was threatening when we were very young. It started categorizing signals of threats and signals of safety before we had language, choice or any other resources than the ones our small bodies could generate. At that age, we required a caregiver to connect with us and help us return our bodies to a felt sense of safety. That connection, what we call co-regulation, is not meant to be a luxury. It is a biological need. If it didn’t happen consistently, our body protected us from feeling overwhelmed, by disconnecting us from it.

This paradox is striking: the very thing that protects us when we are little is the very thing that may be keeping us stuck as we get older. As we grow, we gain more insight, awareness and resources. What may have been an actual threat when we were little may not be a threat at all when we are older. But if our system continues to operate from its learned patterning, many of us are still receiving signals of threat and danger (as well as what is safe) that were absolutely true when we were smaller, but may not be accurate signals today.

The body doesn’t automatically update. That is up to us to do. And the first step is simply to notice. Bring awareness back to the body. Meeting what is stored there with curiosity rather than avoidance, with awareness rather than override.

Because when we illuminate what is hidden, stuck and unknown, it becomes more flexible and less frightening. Especially as adults, when we finally have the knowledge, the awareness, the safety and the choice to face what has been stored in a way we never could as children.

“Coming home to our bodies, meeting this tension with awareness, allows us to release it. And this release is an immediate update, from feeling stuck to more flexible, in the present moment.”

Here is something that changes everything once it truly lands: our body is not our enemy. At one point in time (or many), it may have felt this way. In service of our very survival, disconnecting from the body may have been the only way to feel safe. But the work now is to return. To reclaim connection. To our body. It is the most sophisticated, honest, real-time information system we have and it has been communicating with us our entire life.

We simply stopped trusting it.

Many of us were never taught this. We may have been taught to manage our body, override it, push past it’s signals in service of doing more. We may have been taught that feelings were inconveniences to be handled efficiently and then returned to the business of getting things done. Or perhaps, in a hundred wordless ways, that the body’s knowing was less important than the mind’s thinking.

What I have learned from over twenty years of being with people in their most undefended moments, and from my own reckoning with a body I spent much of my life overriding, is that we have it backwards and upside down.

The mind is brilliant at many things. But what it is not brilliant at is always telling the truth about the present moment. It is too busy trying to protect us from the past and the future. It constantly replays what happened, rehearsing what might happen and constructing narratives that make sense of both. The body, by contrast, has no capacity for narrative. It can only report what is actually happening, right now, in the field of sensation.

This is why we need to be able to discern: is the body signaling something true in the present moment? Or is it signaling stuck energy, a memory feeling, an echo of something over, long since survived?

The body is where healing happens. Not in the story about what happened, however accurate and important that story is. Or was. No matter what, the story is already over. No matter what, if you are reading this, you have survived it. The reclamation, the reconciliation, the healing happens in the felt, present-moment experience of being alive in your body, right now. Which is the only place where energy and emotion actually release.

This week, I want to offer you one practice. It takes less than two minutes. It can be done anywhere. One conscious breath at a time.

This week’s practice

In the morning or evening, or whenever you remember, pause and take one conscious breath. Bring your awareness to this breath. Follow it in through your nostrils, down your throat and into your chest. All the way to your belly, if it makes it there. Elongate the exhale, really allow more breath to release than you took in. Then do it again.

Notice this time where you might be holding any tension, tightness, constriction. There is no right or wrong. Simply notice with curiosity.

Is there tension in your jaw? Your throat? Your shoulders? Your chest? Your belly? Your hands? Notice what you find without immediately trying to fix it, move away from it or explain it. Just acknowledge it. This is sensation. This is stuck energy.

Then ask the question that begins to change everything:

Is this tension necessary and helpful, right now, in this present moment?

The answer is almost always no. Not because your experience isn’t real. But because the threat the body is bracing against is almost always historical, simply an echo of something survived, not something happening now. And when you recognize this, even briefly, something becomes possible that wasn’t possible a moment before.

Choice returns.

You can choose to release. Choose to soften your shoulders. Soften your jaw. Release your hands. For one conscious breath, send the signal to your body that it is safe to let go. Take one more conscious breath. Feel your feet on the ground. Continue with another elongated exhale. Repeat as necessary and needed.

That’s it. That’s the practice.

Small.

Specific.

Repeatable.

Whenever you remember.

Over time, with patience and compassion.

Without demanding dramatic results, your nervous system begins to rewire. You teach your body, one conscious breath at a time, that the present moment is safe. That there is no immediate threat to brace against. That it is safe to soften and remain open. At least for this one conscious breath. And then, hopefully, another.

This is not a small thing. This is, in fact, the whole work. One conscious breath begins to bring the body home to safety in the present moment, no longer running on outdated survival patterning. No longer bracing for impact when you are not actually under immediate threat. Notice what begins to shift as you continue. Not what you think should happen, but what actually happens. The body is always sending signals. It is up to us now to make sure it is signaling what is actually true in the present moment.

With love and one conscious breath,

Jody

P.S. — If you’re new here: I’m Jody Allen, a somatic psychotherapist in San Francisco and Berkeley. These letters are where neuroscience meets the heart, the foundation of a book in progress. If someone forwarded this to you and it resonated, you can subscribe at jodyallenlcsw.substack.com. It’s free. It always will be.