Gemma Spake

Putting them in your diary, great technique.

You know what also works?

Just freaking, just screaming.

Literally just screaming, crying, ripping something, punching something, dancing through something, chanting through something.

running through something, whatever it is, in a physical, expressive way.

Let me explain that because I know, like, how can you expressively run?

You're probably thinking, let me explain the whole principle behind this.

What we're basically talking about is somatic release.

Lots of us will know Wessel van der Boek's or Vandal Coke's famous book, The Body Keeps the Score.

Classic these days.

It's a classic.

If you haven't heard of it or if you want a summary, it basically shows that trauma and emotion and pain register within our bodies on a cellular level.

So your breakup, your self-doubt, your loneliness, your anger at your parents, your anxiety is as much physical as it is emotional.

And the tensions or the tension of those emotions not being released is

Impacts our muscles, impacts our limbs, impacts our cells in a dangerous way.

Somatic therapy is basically a way of processing that through kinetic movement and turning the tap back on and processing it through output and sensation and making like something, making a feeling tangible, putting it into a physical form when it normally sits in a very untouchable, unconscious form.

A really simple example of somatic healing is just shaking.

I don't know if you have a dog, you'll see animals do this.

Like after they experience a threat or they're stressed, they'll like shake.

That's the nervous system discharging excess energy.