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Through somatic grief healing and neuroscience, we now know that emotions are not merely mental events—they are deeply embodied physical experiences. Grief, trauma, love, and joy all have somatic signatures. Learning to recognize and safely feel these sensations in the body can move stuck energy and support true emotional release. This reference brings together work from neuroscience, trauma therapy, and spiritual teachings that affirm the body's role in healing.
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In My Stroke of Insight, neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor describes her experience of losing and regaining cognitive function after a stroke, offering profound insights into how emotions are experienced somatically and how conscious attention to the body can support healing.
Taylor, J. B. (2006). My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey. Viking.
Taylor, J. B. (2008, March). My Stroke of Insight [Video]. TEDx Bloomington.
In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk outlines how traumatic memories are stored in the body, not just the brain. He emphasizes the importance of body-based approaches like movement, breathwork, and touch to restore a sense of safety and release suppressed trauma.
Van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking.
Peter Levine’s The Emotional Body and Waking the Tiger explore how the nervous system can discharge trapped energy from trauma through natural bodily responses like trembling, crying, or spontaneous movement—processes often stifled in modern life.
Levine, P. (2021). The Emotional Body: A Somatic Guide to the Mind-Body Connection. Sounds True.
Lisa Feldman Barrett, in How Emotions Are Made, argues that emotions are constructed in the brain but shaped by bodily sensations, challenging older models that treat emotions as hard-wired. Her work supports the idea that interoception—our ability to feel internal bodily states—is central to emotional awareness and regulation.
Barrett, L. F. (2017). How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now adds a spiritual dimension, encouraging us to anchor in the present moment through conscious awareness of the body as a doorway to inner peace and transformation.
Tolle, E. (1997). The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment. New World Library.
Gabor Maté’s When the Body Says No offers a compelling case that repressed emotion contributes to chronic illness, showing that the body literally “keeps score” when emotional expression is stifled.
Maté, G. (2011). When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress. Wiley.
Pat Ogden’s Trauma and the Body details a sensorimotor approach to therapy that integrates body awareness with emotional processing, showing how healing occurs when we learn to safely attend to bodily sensations without judgment.
Ogden, P., Minton, K., & Pain, C. (2006). Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy. W. W. Norton & Company.
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The path to emotional healing runs through the body. When we learn to listen to its messages, we begin to truly release and transform pain.
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