Brainspotting and Somatic Healing: How the Body Heals Trauma for Good

Somatic healing is key to trauma recovery. Learn how brainspotting and the Alexander Technique help release trauma stored in the body for lasting healing.

When you have lived through betrayal, abuse, or other trauma, you know the experience does not just stay in your mind. You feel it in your body. Tight shoulders, a clenched jaw, gut pain that never seems to go away. These are not random symptoms. This is your body keeping the score.

For years trauma recovery focused mainly on cognitive therapies. The idea was that if you could reframe your thinking or challenge distorted beliefs, you could heal. While these tools have value, they often do not reach the deeper layers where trauma is actually stored. Trauma is not just a story in your head. It is an imprint in your nervous system, in your muscles, and in the way you breathe. This is why somatic healing practices like brainspotting and the Alexander Technique are so powerful.

Why cognitive therapy alone is not enough

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy focuses on thoughts and beliefs, but trauma happens before thought. It is pre-verbal and pre-cognitive. Before your mind can even process what is happening, your body has already absorbed the shock.

In moments of trauma your body first goes into shock. That comes before fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Shock residue can stay locked in the body for years and it silently shapes your reactions to life. You may not connect your chronic tension, hypervigilance, or inability to rest with the trauma you lived through, but your body has not forgotten.

This is why so many survivors say, “I know in my head that I am safe now, but my body does not feel it.” Until the body can release what it is holding, healing will not feel complete.

How brainspotting supports somatic healing

Brainspotting is a somatic therapy that uses your visual field as a doorway into the nervous system. Specific eye positions connect to unprocessed trauma, and by holding attention there, your body begins to access and release what has been buried outside of awareness.

Clients often describe brainspotting as their body finally telling the truth. Words are not required. Instead of bypassing the trauma or talking around it, brainspotting meets the body right where the trauma is stored. This allows for deep release and long-lasting healing.

How the Alexander Technique supports body healing

Alongside brainspotting, the Alexander Technique helps release the unconscious body patterns that trauma leaves behind. Trauma often shows up in the body as bracing and holding. Shoulders hunch, breath becomes shallow, and the body stays tense and guarded. These are survival postures.

The Alexander Technique brings awareness to those patterns and teaches the nervous system a new way of being. Clients learn how to soften into openness and restore ease. When combined with brainspotting, this work creates profound changes. Clients often say they feel a spaciousness in their bodies that they have not felt in years. They describe feeling more at home in themselves, more free, more connected.

Why somatic healing creates lasting trauma recovery

Healing through the body is essential because trauma lives in the body. Somatic healing allows you to complete the survival responses that were interrupted, release shock residue, and reset your nervous system. Cognitive awareness alone cannot do that.

This is why brainspotting and the Alexander Technique are not just helpful but necessary for trauma recovery. They integrate body and mind, creating long-lasting change. Clients who work with these modalities often say they finally feel safe again, not just informed. It is the difference between surviving and truly living.

Final thoughts

If you have tried cognitive therapy and still feel stuck, it is not because you are failing. It is because your body is holding what your mind cannot resolve. Somatic healing practices such as brainspotting and the Alexander Technique are designed to meet the body where it is and release what has been deeply buried.

Healing is not about pushing trauma away. It is about allowing the body to process and let go so you can reconnect with yourself. This is the work that makes recovery lasting. This is what brings you from simply surviving into feeling whole again.

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