Saed News: While modern medical science emphasizes more than ever the direct connection between mind and body, understanding methods of releasing emotional burdens from bodily tissues is considered the key to overcoming chronic pain and achieving a stable balance in mental health.
According to SAEDNEWS, citing Psychology Today, in today’s fast-paced world, we often believe that emotional wounds and painful past experiences will fade away on their own over time. However, recent findings in psychology and neuroscience have revealed a different and sometimes shocking truth: the body never forgets. Emotional suffering formed in the early stages of life often settles within the body’s tissues.
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a prominent psychiatrist and author of the famous book “The Body Keeps the Score” (2003), believes that unresolved trauma in the body can lead to serious mental health problems, chronic physical pain, and even severe medical conditions. However, encouraging scientific evidence shows that by returning to the body and consciously confronting these pains, not only can the progressive damage be stopped, but the path to healing can also be rebuilt.
On the path to well-being and mental health, we gradually learn to observe our more subtle and internal experiences. In the early stages, physical pain is easy to notice; for example, we all clearly feel the pain of a broken bone. But as awareness grows, we realize that our experiences have hidden layers. We may notice anxiety in the presence of certain people, or at more advanced stages, subtle concepts such as inner resistance, attachment, and excessive attempts to control situations.
Careful observation of these experiences allows us to move beyond them. But to reach that level of calm, we must first confront the “loud noises” within us. These loud noises are usually the accumulated emotional pains that stand like a large wall between us and happiness.
Progress toward psychological growth requires confronting aspects of ourselves that we have avoided all our lives—memories of abuse, being ignored in childhood, or emotional mistreatment. In this process, the presence of a trained therapist is often necessary, but alongside therapy, there are specific exercises that help release these pains from the body.
Important Warning: Confronting emotional pain is difficult. According to Schubiner and Betzold (2010), in order to release an emotion, it must be fully experienced. In other words, you must feel grief, anger, disappointment, and loneliness completely within your body without resistance or avoidance. The pain that remains in us is the pain that was never fully experienced—perhaps because we were too young or unable to face it at the time.
While writing and journaling are powerful tools for emotional processing, some emotions are so deeply embedded in muscles and the nervous system that words cannot express them. This is where physical release exercises become important.
Set aside 20 minutes in a quiet, private environment. Think of a small emotional wound or old trauma that you still carry—for example, an old anger toward a childhood friend—and follow these steps:
Returning to the Body: Start by contracting your muscles. Clench your fists, tighten your arms, then your legs. Finally, hug yourself tightly and contract your whole body while taking deep breaths.
Calling the Memory: Recall the situation that caused emotional pain. Visualize it and focus on how it feels in your body. Allow the emotions to flow fully through your senses.
Body Scanning: Scan your body. What sensations do you feel—tingling, heat, muscle tightness, trembling, or pressure? Name each sensation.
Allowing Release: Allow your body to express whatever it needs. If you need to cry, scream into a pillow, or hit something soft, do so safely. The body is trying to release stored emotional energy.
Compassion and Acceptance: Appreciate yourself for having the courage to face this pain. Send a message of love and acceptance to each difficult sensation so it knows it no longer needs to stay in your body.
Listening to Inner Wisdom: Calm down and see if these emotions have a message for you. What would they say if they had a voice?
Visualization of Release: Imagine the space once occupied by these emotions becoming empty. Picture the pain leaving your body like smoke or draining away like muddy water.
After the exercise, you may experience muscle trembling, eyelid twitching, or temporary tightness. Although these sensations may seem alarming, they are actually positive signs of trauma release. In somatic therapy, trembling and tingling are considered natural processes of the nervous system returning to balance.
Animals, after surviving danger or trauma, instinctively shake their bodies to release stress energy. Humans, through such exercises, reconnect with this natural mechanism of returning to calm. With repetition, you may feel lighter, freer, and better able to handle daily life challenges.
