Somatic Healing for Women: Complete Guide

You've tried the journaling. You've downloaded the meditation apps. You've read the books about mindset and positive thinking. And yet — the anxiety is still there. The tension in your shoulders never fully releases. You wake up tired. You feel like you're one email away from falling apart.

Here's something that most wellness advice misses: you cannot think your way out of stress that lives in your body.

That's not a self-help platitude. It's neuroscience. When the body has been under sustained stress — from work, caregiving, relationships, trauma, or the relentless pressure of modern life — that stress doesn't just exist in your thoughts. It gets encoded in your muscles, your fascia, your breath patterns, your posture, your gut, your nervous system. It becomes physical.

This is why so many women feel stuck despite doing "all the right things." The mind is working hard to heal while the body is still holding the original wound.

Somatic healing addresses that gap. It works at the level where chronic stress actually lives — in the body — and it's one of the most evidence-supported, underused approaches to stress recovery and emotional healing available.

This guide gives you the complete picture: what somatic healing is, the science behind it, 15 practical exercises you can start today, and a 30-day plan to build it into your life in a way that actually holds.

What Is Somatic Healing?

The word somatic comes from the Greek soma, meaning body. Somatic healing is any therapeutic or self-care approach that works through the body — rather than exclusively through the mind — to process stress, trauma, and emotional dysregulation.

It emerged from the intersection of neuroscience, trauma research, and body-centered psychology. Foundational thinkers include Dr. Peter Levine (who developed Somatic Experiencing), Dr. Bessel van der Kolk (author of The Body Keeps the Score), and Dr. Pat Ogden (creator of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy). All three arrived at the same core insight through different paths: that trauma and chronic stress leave physical imprints in the body that cannot be fully resolved through cognitive or talk-based approaches alone.

The mind-body connection isn't mystical — it's anatomical. The brain and body communicate constantly through the nervous system, the vagus nerve, the endocrine system, and the enteric nervous system (sometimes called the "second brain" in the gut). What happens in your thoughts affects your body. What happens in your body affects your thoughts and emotions. Somatic healing works by engaging that bidirectional channel deliberately, using physical practices to create neurological and emotional change.

For women dealing with chronic stress, burnout, anxiety, or the accumulated weight of emotional labor, somatic practices offer something that mindset work often can't: a direct route to the nervous system, below the level of conscious thought.

How Stress Gets Stored in the Body

To understand why somatic healing works, you need to understand what stress actually does to your body — and why it doesn't always leave when the stressor does.

When you encounter a threat, your autonomic nervous system activates one of four survival responses:

• Fight — mobilizing to confront the threat. Physically: muscle tension, jaw clenching, elevated heart rate, heat in the chest and face.
• Flight — mobilizing to escape. Physically: restless legs, tight hips, shallow rapid breathing, the urge to move or flee.
• Freeze — immobilization when fight or flight isn't possible. Physically: heaviness, fatigue, numbness, dissociation, holding the breath, the sense of being stuck.
• Fawn — appeasing to neutralize the threat. Most prevalent in women with chronic stress from relational or social pressure. Physically: chronic tension in the throat and chest (from suppressed speech), gut distress, the physiological toll of continuous self-suppression.

In a healthy stress response, the body activates, the threat resolves, and the nervous system discharges the activation energy — through trembling, crying, shaking, movement, or deep breathing — before returning to baseline. This is what you see in animals after a threat passes: they physically shake off the stress response before grazing calmly again.

In humans, particularly women socialized to manage their emotional expression, this discharge often doesn't happen. The activation energy stays in the body — as chronic muscle tension, shallow breathing patterns, a gut that never fully relaxes, a jaw that's always slightly clenched. The threat may be long past but the body is still braced for it.

Over months and years, this incomplete stress response accumulates. It shows up as chronic pain, digestive issues, hormonal disruption, insomnia, and the specific kind of emotional dysregulation that no amount of positive thinking can fully touch.

Somatic healing works by completing those incomplete cycles — giving the body permission and tools to finish what the nervous system started.

The Science Behind Somatic Healing

The Nervous System

The autonomic nervous system governs your stress response through two primary branches: the sympathetic (fight-or-flight activation) and the parasympathetic (rest-and-digest recovery). Somatic practices work by directly stimulating the parasympathetic branch — particularly through the vagus nerve — to shift the body out of chronic activation and into genuine recovery.

Neuroplasticity

The nervous system is not fixed. Repeated physical practices create new neural pathways — literally rewiring how the brain processes stress, sensation, and emotional experience. This is why somatic healing requires consistency over time: each session is building new circuitry, weakening old stress-reactive patterns, and strengthening the body's capacity for regulation.

The Vagus Nerve

The vagus nerve is the primary highway of the parasympathetic nervous system, running from the brainstem through the heart, lungs, and digestive tract. It carries signals in both directions — from brain to body and body to brain. Many somatic practices (humming, slow breathing, gentle movement, cold water) directly stimulate vagal tone, which activates the rest-and-digest response and measurably reduces cortisol and heart rate variability.

Stress Hormones and the Body

Cortisol and adrenaline don't just affect mood — they affect tissue. Chronic cortisol exposure creates inflammation, disrupts hormonal balance, impairs immune function, and changes pain sensitivity. Somatic practices that reduce cortisol output — through breath, movement, and physical safety cues — have measurable effects on these downstream physiological markers.

Body Awareness (Interoception)

Interoception is the brain's ability to sense internal body states — tension, temperature, hunger, heart rate, gut feelings. Chronic stress suppresses interoception: women in burnout often describe being disconnected from their bodies, not realizing they're hungry until they're ravenous, not noticing tension until it's become pain. Somatic practices rebuild interoceptive awareness, which is foundational to both emotional regulation and self-care.

Signs Your Body May Be Holding Stress

Many of the signs that the body is holding chronic stress are mistaken for separate problems — digestive issues, skin conditions, sleep problems — rather than recognized as expressions of a single underlying pattern.

If you recognize the majority of these as ongoing patterns rather than occasional experiences, your body is carrying a significant stress load that is actively affecting your health and emotional functioning.

Somatic Healing vs. Traditional Self-Care

Understanding what makes somatic healing different from other wellness approaches helps clarify why it reaches places that other practices don't.

Meditation works primarily with the mind — observing thoughts, cultivating presence, reducing cognitive reactivity. For many women with significant body-held stress, seated meditation can actually increase anxiety initially, because stopping the busyness brings awareness to physical discomfort that was being outrun. Somatic practices complement meditation by working at the body level simultaneously.

Journaling is a powerful cognitive and emotional processing tool. It works through the prefrontal cortex — language, meaning-making, narrative. What it doesn't do is release the physical tension pattern in your neck, discharge the incomplete fight-or-flight response in your hips, or stimulate the vagus nerve. Somatic practices reach below language.

Positive thinking and cognitive reframing are useful for changing habitual thought patterns. But you cannot think your amygdala into a regulated state. The amygdala — your brain's threat center — responds to safety signals from the body (breath, posture, movement, tone of voice) far more readily than to rational arguments. Somatic practices create safety signals.

Somatic techniques work through sensation, movement, breath, and physical awareness. They bypass the thinking mind to communicate directly with the nervous system. This doesn't make them superior to other approaches — it makes them complementary, addressing a dimension that most other self-care practices don't reach.

The most effective healing approach for most women combines all of these: cognitive and emotional processing alongside body-based practices that address the physical dimension of stress.

15 Somatic Healing Exercises for Women

1. Grounding Through Barefoot Walking

Purpose: To reconnect with physical sensation and present-moment awareness through direct contact with the earth.

Benefits: Reduces cortisol, lowers physiological arousal, improves proprioception (body awareness), and stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system through sensory input.

How to practice:

• Remove shoes and socks.
• Walk slowly on grass, soil, sand, or even a textured indoor surface.
• With each step, notice the sensation: temperature, texture, pressure, the way your weight shifts.
• Take 10–15 slow steps, pausing after each to feel the contact fully.
• Breathe slowly throughout.

Best time: Morning or late afternoon, outside when possible.

2. Body Scanning

Purpose: To rebuild interoceptive awareness and identify where the body is holding tension.

Benefits: Reduces dissociation, increases body-mind connection, improves sleep when practiced before bed, and provides an early warning system for stress accumulation.

How to practice:

• Lie down or sit comfortably.
• Close your eyes and bring attention to the top of your head.
• Move attention slowly downward — scalp, forehead, eyes, jaw, throat, shoulders, chest, belly, hips, legs, feet.
• At each area, notice without judging: is there tension? Warmth? Numbness? Movement?
• Breathe into any area of tension without forcing it to release.
• Take 10–15 minutes for a complete scan.

Best time: Before sleep or after waking.

3. Vagus Nerve Stimulation

Purpose: To directly activate the parasympathetic nervous system through vagal pathways.

Benefits: Measurably reduces heart rate, lowers cortisol, improves digestion, reduces anxiety, and shifts the nervous system from sympathetic to parasympathetic state.

How to practice (choose one or combine):

• Extended exhale breathing: Inhale for 4 counts, exhale for 7–8 counts. Repeat 8–10 cycles.
• Cold water on face: Splash cold water on your face or hold a cold pack to your cheeks and forehead for 30–60 seconds. This activates the mammalian diving reflex, rapidly reducing heart rate.
• Gargling: Gargle water vigorously for 30–60 seconds. The muscles activated in gargling stimulate vagal branches in the throat.
• Humming: See Exercise 12.

Best time: Any acute stress moment, morning routine, or before sleep.

4. Trauma Release Shaking (TRE-Inspired)

Purpose: To discharge accumulated stress and activation energy through the body's natural tremoring mechanism.

Benefits: Releases deep muscular tension, particularly in the psoas and hip flexors where stress is commonly held. Reduces hypervigilance and chronic anxiety. Supports completion of incomplete stress responses.

How to practice:

• Lie on your back with knees bent, feet flat on the floor.
• Bring feet together and let knees fall outward in a butterfly position, then return knees to upright.
• Repeat until the legs begin to tremble naturally — this typically takes 3–10 minutes.
• Allow the trembling to happen without controlling it.
• After 10–15 minutes of tremoring, bring knees together, extend legs flat, and rest.
• Breathe slowly and notice what you feel.

Note: Start gently — 5–10 minutes maximum in the first few sessions. Some women feel emotional as tension releases. This is normal.

Best time: Evening, when you have 20–30 minutes of unhurried time afterward.

5. Progressive Muscle Relaxation

Purpose: To systematically release chronic muscle tension by deliberately cycling between contraction and release.

Benefits: Reduces physical manifestations of anxiety, improves sleep onset, lowers blood pressure, and teaches the body the felt sense of genuine relaxation (which many chronically stressed women have forgotten).

How to practice:

• Lie down or sit comfortably.
• Starting with your feet: tense all the muscles in your feet as hard as you can for 7 seconds. Then completely release for 20–30 seconds. Notice the difference.
• Move upward: calves, thighs, glutes, abdomen, hands, forearms, biceps, shoulders, face.
• At each area: 7-second tension, 20-second release, full attention on the sensation of letting go.
• Complete the full body sequence in 15–20 minutes.

Best time: Before sleep or during a midday reset.

6. Breath Regulation

Purpose: To use breath as the fastest available tool for shifting nervous system state.

Benefits: Directly activates the vagus nerve, reduces cortisol within minutes, slows heart rate, and improves emotional regulation by changing the physiological state that underpins emotional experience.

How to practice (choose based on need):

For acute anxiety — Physiological Sigh:

• Double inhale through the nose (short inhale, then top it up with a second inhale).
• Long, complete exhale through the mouth.
• Repeat 1–3 times. Works within 30–60 seconds.

For daily regulation — Extended Exhale Breathing:

• Inhale for 4 counts, exhale for 6–8 counts.
• 5–10 minutes daily builds vagal tone over time.

For deep rest — Box Breathing:

• Inhale 4, hold 4, exhale 4, hold 4.
• 5 complete cycles.

Best time: Morning, before sleep, or any moment of acute activation.

7. Somatic Stretching

Purpose: To release tension stored in connective tissue with breath and awareness — rather than forcing muscles into passive stretch.

Benefits: More effective than passive stretching for nervous system reset, because the awareness component engages the interoceptive system and the slow breath simultaneously stimulates vagal tone.

How to practice:

• Choose one area of chronic tension (common sites: hip flexors, upper trapezius, chest, jaw).
• Move into a gentle stretch — 60–70% of your maximum range, not more.
• Breathe slowly into the tight area: imagine the breath reaching the tissue.
• Stay for 60–90 seconds, noticing sensation without forcing change.
• On each exhale, allow — rather than push — a gentle softening.
• Move to the next area.

Best time: Morning or evening; especially valuable after long periods of sitting.

8. Emotional Mapping

Purpose: To locate emotions in the body as physical sensations rather than identifying them exclusively as thoughts.

Benefits: Builds emotional intelligence at the somatic level, reduces emotional suppression, and provides a body-based language for feelings that bypasses cognitive defenses.

How to practice:

• Sit quietly and bring to mind a recent situation that created stress or discomfort.
• Instead of analyzing the situation, ask: Where do I feel this in my body?
• Locate the sensation: chest? Throat? Gut? Temples?
• Describe it physically: tight, heavy, hollow, burning, sharp, numb?
• Breathe toward that location.
• Ask the sensation: What does this need? Don't analyze — notice whatever answer arises.
• Stay with the sensation for 3–5 minutes without trying to change or resolve it.

Best time: After a stressful event, or during a journaling session.

9. Safe Touch Practices

Purpose: To use self-administered touch to activate the oxytocin system and signal safety to the nervous system.

Benefits: Reduces cortisol, activates oxytocin (the bonding and safety hormone), reduces physiological anxiety, and provides nervous system co-regulation through the body's own touch receptors.

How to practice:

• Hand on heart: Place both hands on your chest. Feel your heartbeat. Breathe slowly. Say internally: I'm here. I'm safe. Hold for 1–2 minutes.
• Self-hold: Cross your arms over your chest in a self-embrace. Apply gentle pressure. Rock slightly if it feels natural. This activates C-tactile afferent nerve fibers associated with social touch.
• Face cradling: Cup your face gently in your hands. Breathe. Notice the warmth and contact.

Best time: During emotional distress, before difficult situations, or as a daily nervous system anchor.

10. Gentle Movement

Purpose: To use slow, non-goal-oriented movement to discharge stress hormones and restore body-mind connection.

Benefits: Metabolizes cortisol without spiking it further (unlike high-intensity exercise during burnout), improves proprioception, restores sense of agency in the body, and stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system.

How to practice:

• Put on music that feels safe and gentle (or use silence).
• Begin moving without choreography — let the body lead.
• Roll your shoulders, tilt your head, move your spine, sway your hips.
• Notice what feels good versus what feels braced or defended.
• Allow movement to be slow and exploratory rather than performative.
• 10–15 minutes is sufficient.

Best time: Morning, or as a transition between work and personal time in the evening.

11. Mindful Walking

Purpose: To use walking as a deliberate nervous system regulation practice rather than a means of locomotion.

Benefits: Combines the cortisol-reducing effects of movement and nature exposure with the body-awareness development of somatic practice. Particularly effective for breaking rumination cycles.

How to practice:

• Walk at a slower pace than usual.
• Bring attention to the physical sensations of walking: foot contact, leg movement, breath rhythm, air temperature.
• When the mind drifts to thinking, return attention to physical sensation.
• Notice five things you can hear, four you can see, three you can physically feel.
• Walk without headphones for at least part of each session.

Best time: Morning (combined with sunlight exposure for circadian benefit) or after meals.

12. Humming Techniques

Purpose: To directly stimulate the vagus nerve through vocal vibration.

Benefits: Vagal branches innervate the larynx — humming creates direct vibration at the nerve. Research shows this measurably increases heart rate variability (a marker of vagal tone and nervous system resilience) and activates the parasympathetic response within minutes.

How to practice:

• Sit comfortably, eyes closed.
• Take a deep breath and begin humming on the exhale at a comfortable pitch.
• Feel the vibration in your chest, throat, and lips.
• Continue for 5–10 minutes, varying pitch to find what feels most resonant.
• Extended humming works better than brief attempts — commit to the full 5 minutes.

Variation: humming a familiar song, or extended "mmmmm" sounds during breathing exercises.

Best time: Morning, before sleep, or any moment of acute nervous system activation.

13. Self-Compassion Exercises

Purpose: To interrupt the self-critical internal voice that sustains the physiological stress response.

Benefits: Self-compassion practices have been shown in Dr. Kristin Neff's research to reduce cortisol, lower self-reported anxiety, and increase emotional resilience — with effects mediated by a shift in nervous system state, not just cognitive reframing.

How to practice (Mindful Self-Compassion Pause):

• Acknowledge: This is a moment of difficulty. Name what's hard without minimizing it.
• Common humanity: I'm not alone in this. Many people feel this way.
• Kindness: Place a hand on your heart and offer yourself the words you'd offer a close friend in the same situation.
• Hold this combination for 2–3 minutes, breathing slowly.

Best time: After making a mistake, during self-critical spirals, or after any experience of shame or inadequacy.

14. Nervous System Reset Pause

Purpose: A brief, deliberately scheduled pause mid-day to interrupt chronic sympathetic activation before it accumulates.

Benefits: Prevents the afternoon cortisol buildup that makes evenings and nights harder. Breaks the momentum of the stress cycle. Functions as a daily "circuit breaker" for the nervous system.

How to practice:

• Schedule 5 minutes at the same time each day (mid-morning or early afternoon works well).
• Stop all tasks completely.
• Take 3 slow breaths.
• Do a 60-second body scan: shoulders, jaw, belly.
• Consciously release any obvious tension.
• Look away from screens and focus on something in the distance for 30 seconds (this activates peripheral vision, which is associated with parasympathetic state).
• Return to work.

Best time: 10–11 AM or 2–3 PM — before the stress accumulation becomes entrenched.

15. Evening Body Release Routine

Purpose: To systematically transition the nervous system from the day's activation into genuine recovery before sleep.

Benefits: Improves sleep onset, reduces cortisol before bed, and teaches the body to associate specific physical practices with safety and rest — building a conditioned relaxation response over time.

How to practice (20-minute sequence):

• 5 min — Somatic stretching (hip flexors, chest, shoulders): slow, breath-led.
• 5 min — Progressive muscle relaxation (full body, quick cycle).
• 5 min — Humming or extended exhale breathing (lying down).
• 5 min — Body scan with hand on heart, finishing with the words: Today is complete. I am safe. I can rest.

Best time: 30–60 minutes before sleep, after screens are off.

How Somatic Healing Supports Burnout Recovery

Burnout is not just mental exhaustion — it's a physiological state involving dysregulated stress hormones, impaired nervous system function, and chronic somatic tension. This is why recovery strategies that address only the cognitive or behavioral dimensions often produce incomplete results.

Somatic practices accelerate burnout recovery by directly targeting the body-level component: releasing stored tension, restoring parasympathetic nervous system function, and rebuilding the interoceptive awareness that burnout suppresses. Many women find that somatic work breaks through plateaus that therapy, rest, or behavioral change alone couldn't shift — precisely because it works at the physical level where burnout is encoded.

Women experiencing emotional exhaustion, energy depletion, and the flattening of motivation that characterizes deep burnout may find significant benefit in reading our complete guide to Burnout Recovery for Women — which covers the full recovery framework, 30-day plan, and the science of why women burn out differently.

How Somatic Healing Helps Regulate the Nervous System

Every somatic practice in this guide works — ultimately — by influencing the autonomic nervous system. Breath, movement, touch, sound, and body awareness all provide bottom-up input to the brain's regulatory systems, creating physiological shifts that then affect emotions, cognition, and behavior.

Consistent somatic practice builds what researchers call vagal tone — the nervous system's capacity to shift fluidly between activation and recovery. High vagal tone is associated with better emotional regulation, lower baseline anxiety, improved sleep quality, and greater stress resilience. It's the physiological foundation of what we call calm.

Understanding how the nervous system works — and why it gets stuck — makes somatic practices dramatically more effective. If you're new to this area, our complete guide on Nervous System Regulation for Women covers the science, the symptoms of dysregulation, and a full toolkit of evidence-based regulation techniques to complement the somatic work in this guide.

30-Day Somatic Healing Plan

Week 1: Body Awareness

The goal this week is not healing — it's listening. Many women have spent years overriding their body's signals. Week 1 is about rebuilding the connection.

Daily:

• Morning body scan (10 min) — before getting out of bed
• One grounding practice (barefoot walking or mindful walking, 10 min)
• Brief body check-in at midday: Where am I holding tension right now? Shoulders? Jaw? Gut?
• Evening: hand-on-heart practice (3 min) before sleep

Focus: Don't try to fix anything. Just notice. The act of noticing is itself a somatic practice that begins to shift the pattern.

Week 2: Nervous System Support

This week introduces active practices that directly engage the parasympathetic nervous system.

Continue all Week 1 practices, and add:

• Daily breathwork: 5 min extended exhale breathing (morning or before sleep)
• One vagus nerve stimulation practice daily (cold water, humming, or gargling)
• Nervous system reset pause (5 min, scheduled mid-day)
• Progressive muscle relaxation before sleep (3x this week)

Focus: Notice how your body feels after each practice. Building awareness of the before-and-after experience reinforces the neural pathways you're developing.

Week 3: Emotional Release

This week deepens the work by inviting the emotional dimension of somatic practice.

Continue all previous practices, and add:

• Emotional mapping exercise (2x this week, 10–15 min)
• Trauma release shaking (2x this week, starting with 10 min sessions)
• Self-compassion pause after any difficult experience
• Evening body release routine (3x this week — the full 20-min sequence)

Note: Emotional release can be uncomfortable. Some women cry unexpectedly, feel irritable, or experience vivid dreams as the nervous system processes stored material. These are normal responses — not signs that something is wrong.

Week 4: Integration and Resilience

The goal of week four is weaving these practices into a sustainable daily rhythm — not as a temporary protocol, but as an ongoing relationship with your body.

Continue all previous practices, and:

• Design your personal morning somatic routine (15 min): choose the 2–3 practices that have had the most impact
• Design your personal evening somatic routine (15–20 min)
• Add gentle movement 3x this week as a midday or evening practice
• Reflect: which practices have created the most noticeable shift in how you feel?
• Choose 3–5 practices to maintain indefinitely, schedule them, and protect that time

Focus: The nervous system builds resilience through repetition over time. You're not finishing a program — you're beginning a relationship with your body that will compound in value over months and years.

Common Somatic Healing Mistakes

1. Expecting immediate results. Somatic healing works through neuroplasticity — new neural pathways built through repetition. Significant shifts typically emerge over 4–8 weeks of consistent practice, not after a single session.
2. Pushing through discomfort too aggressively. Somatic work should feel challenging but not overwhelming. If a practice creates intense distress, scale back — smaller doses practiced regularly are more effective than large doses that dysregulate.
3. Practicing only when in crisis. Like strength training, somatic practices build capacity when used consistently — not just when things are bad. Daily practice during calm periods creates the resilience that protects against future dysregulation.
4. Doing somatic exercises while distracted. Scrolling your phone during a body scan defeats the purpose entirely. The therapeutic mechanism is attention — without it, the practice is just stretching.
5. Confusing relaxation with regulation. A hot bath is relaxing. Somatic work is regulation — actively building the nervous system's capacity to shift states. Both have value, but they're not the same thing.
6. Skipping the body scan because "nothing is wrong." The body scan is not a diagnostic tool for emergencies. It's a daily check-in that reveals accumulation before it becomes crisis.
7. Treating emotional responses during practice as problems. Crying, trembling, yawning, sighing, or feeling sudden sadness during somatic work are signs of release — not breakdown. These are the responses you're trying to facilitate.
8. Doing too much at once. Starting with all 15 exercises on day one creates overwhelm, which is itself a dysregulating experience. Start with two or three and build gradually.
9. Doing somatic work immediately after eating. The digestive system requires parasympathetic activation to function — somatic work and digestion compete for the same physiological resources. Wait 30–60 minutes after meals.
10. Comparing your experience to descriptions of how it "should" feel. Everyone's somatic experience is different. Numbness, neutrality, and subtle sensations are all valid responses — especially early in practice, when interoception is still rebuilding.
11. Using somatic practices as the only intervention for clinical trauma. Somatic self-care practices are powerful, but significant trauma histories benefit from working with a trained somatic therapist alongside self-practice. These approaches support each other.
12. Ignoring the environment. The space where you practice matters. A safe, quiet, comfortable environment signals safety to the nervous system and enhances the effectiveness of every somatic practice.
13. Holding the breath during movement practices. Breath is the regulation mechanism — if you're holding it, you're activating rather than releasing. Slow, continuous breathing throughout movement is not optional.
14. Practicing only cognitive tools when emotional flooding occurs. When the amygdala is highly activated, cognitive tools have limited access. In those moments, body-based regulation (breath, cold water, self-hold) works faster than thinking or reframing.
15. Stopping practice when life gets busy. The moments when it feels hardest to maintain a somatic practice are precisely the moments when it's most needed. Building the habit during relatively calm periods means it's available when things get hard.

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