My somatic method for emotional release!

[Puer Aeternus]

So- through reading books and experimenting, I've accidentally created my own method for releasing trauma, emotions, etc. The method and my discoveries that I will be sharing here! 

 

MY STORY IN BRIEF

Shalom, most of my life I've been one dysfunctional boy! I have 23 years experience of absolute dissociation and 24 of being a totally nervous bitch. Most of my time living I've spent been absolutely petrified, and not in a cute let's put you in a mueseum display case with mood lighting way.

Deconstruction began when I discovered self-message to soothe my anxiety. I couldn't really feel into my body then, so I was surprised to realize literally everything was tense and in pain. I continued the massage, but realized after a few hours the tension would snap back to similar levels again.

This led to me delving into many theories/books (particularly somatic experiencing, internal family systems). I used body scanning and found thoughts, memories, emotions stored latent in different parts of my body that were HIGHLY consistent. Through this awareness I could witness and work all these not just as abstract floating thoughts or general emotional feelings. But rather as concrete areas of dissociation/tension in my body, knowing exactly when I'd fully released them.

I kept learning and rinse repeated this process. After only a few years, I feel completely transformed. I can maintain awareness of my whole body and relax/process what arises easily, save for a few problems areas/triggers that are tricky/still being worked on! This methods truly changed my life and I hope there's something useful here you can apply for your own use. 

 

GETTING STARTED

Get somewhere you can be comfortable (and preferably alone) and sit quietly with yourself. It's important that you're as relaxed and at ease as possible, though sometimes you'll only partially be able to chill out. You can do a meditation technique or breath work, experiment with what works for you.

Begin to settle into the body. Notice generally where inside of you feels good, what's uncomfortable, and what you cannot really feel. At this point, you're ready to begin using your conscious awareness as a magnifying glass to more precisely scan what's there inside you.

 

THREE MAIN SENSATIONS

Through experience, I've noticed three main categories of sensation and a general pattern for working through them. 

1. Frozen parts~ Often feels like a literal block of ice, the contents held within unreachable. These are the areas you cannot feel into, they hold a certain dull/empty quality. These parts are holding repressed contents (emotions, pain, memories, thoughts, etc).

2. Tense parts~ Tense parts tend to consist of unfrozen contents run amock. You may be possessed by it as an emotion or thought loop without connecting it to the body at first. Once you narrow in on its location in the body, the contents will likely intensify. It may also feel rigid and gaunt, painful even.

3. Relaxed parts~ Relaxed parts are healthy and open. The sensations feel at ease, peaceful even.. without any of the prior sensation feelings. These parts will literally be more attuned to sensation. Touching something soft or listening music will feel more alive with vibrant texture. 

 

TARGET PARTS

Often, there is one or a few parts that are causing the majority of the discomfort and pain in your body at any given time. By releasing these parts, you will relax significantly and become so much more at ease. 

Your goal is to find the targets parts causing the most pain and work through them to release. In time you will be triggered again by new/the same target parts. But as you work through these parts, your wellbeing will improve and triggers will fall off, eventually to extinction.

 

WORKING THROUGH PARTS 

 

Freeze->Tension->Relaxed

I take two approaches to working with frozen parts. If a frozen part has VERY intense content and my whole body is dissociated, I'll begin relaxing the auxillary parts of my body first. You'll know what to release intuitively, because the parts in auxiliary tension will release more freely and with less intensity. You can do this by 1. Using physical massage or yoga 2. Directly body scanning to different parts, tensing them up, and then releasing them to relaxation. 

If you cannot immediately sense where the dissociated target part is, you want to release until you can. Then, I will surround the isolated part with conscious awareness. It's important that this presence be loving and accepting of whatever is to arise. Hold it with your awareness and love, melting the ice until the contents begin to spill out. The frozen part will transition to a tense part, stay with it and witness the contents. Take a break if you need to! Continue until you become too tired to continue or the part relaxed completely.

 

Tension->Relaxed

For working with target tension parts it's important to separate enough from it, so that you can zoom in to its location and contain it within your awareness. You can use various techniques for this like journaling. But often I will just go somewhere safe and let the emotion/thought pattern run until separation arises naturally and I can find it.

Use that same loving awareness once you're holding the physical sensation directly in your body. Make sure you're continuing to contain it and aren't becoming possessed/overwhelmed, this can happen if you push it too hard. Try to establish contact and don't feel like you necessarily need to push for a release. Witness this part and let it decide what to do, when it is ready it will release naturally to a relaxed state.

 

UNDERSTANDING YOUR EMOTIONAL GEOGRAPHY

As you practice this process of healing/self-exploration, you will begin to notice emotionally consistent areas in your body where groups of your parts/triggers reside. Knowledge of this will give you clues as to where to look when searching for target parts.

To give a personal example: There's lots of fear in my throat/stomach, anger in my back/nape of my neck, judgement around my nose and forehead. 

 

BE PREPARED FOR THE CATHARSIS

Expect the unexpected and be sure you're in a safe environment. During catharsis you may have any number of unpredictable reactions. Be ready to embrace them to your greatest ability without judgement or you may block it's release to completion. You may want to scream, cry, throw hands or break something, or experience full body tremors. I like to keep a pillow on hand for intense releases/anger. You may also experience strange flowing energetic shifts in your body, tingles, tremors, or be naturally guided to carry out movements in a trance like state. Try to just let them happen without freaking out, trust that it's something you will work through and will pass.

 

STOP WHEN ITS TOO MUCH, REST AFTER

If you've got a lot to work through this will be quite tiring. Not so much if you're already pretty healthy, then you can get away with more! But after a release it's important to take some down time to rest because things can get very exhausting. Don't push yourself, this will backfire on you and land you in a tangled mess of overwhelming sensations that will just take even more time to sort through. 

If you're in the middle of working with a part and it feels too overwhelming. Take a breather. Collect yourself and comfort yourself, you can try returning in a few moments. But it's very important not to force these parts to do anything. If you try to whatever you're working on WILL blow up in your face and temporarily possess/destabilize you. 

 

ENERGY SHIFTING

Quick technique I've realized- sometimes when I'm trying to relax auxillary parts or soothe a target part, I'll push energy from relaxed parts into the territory of my target part. I'll rest my awareness in the relaxed part, building warm sensation. Then I begin physically guiding my awareness through the body with that warm sensation held to the target part and releasing it at it's borders. 

 

RECOMMENDED READING

Below are my recommendations for reading relating directly to this topic. May not be directly somatic but can be interesting and apply directly/be useful in this working through things process.

Important theories for your further research may be: Somatic experiencing, internal family systems, bioenergetics, primal therapy, the hakomi method, the feldenkrais method, polyvagal theory, TRE.

 

In an Unspoken Voice ~ Peter Levine

My number one recommend book for this work. Not super practical, but lays out a lot of theory behind the processes at play here and their origins.

 

No Bad Parts ~ Richard Schwartz

Simple, short book that lays out the core ideas of internal family systems, parts classifications, and how to work with them.

 

The Primal Wound ~ John Foreman and Ann Gila

Summarizes the core of much of our wounding, many common malaise, and gives interesting models/ideas to understand trauma.

 

Embracing Your Inner Critic ~ Hal and Sidra Stone

Focuses on understanding/working through self-critical/judging parts 

 

The Voice of the Body/The Betrayal of the Body ~ Alexander Lowen

Lowen is a bit of a crackpot genius, lots of his ideas are very related to raw somatic sensation and posture of trauma.

 

The New Primal Scream ~ Arthur Janov 

Useful for understanding the raw experience of pain/trauma and it's accumulation.

 

[Sandhu]

@Puer Aeternus Thanks for sharing.

[Vercingetorix]

@Puer Aeternus Cool!

What are the underlying therapy principles that your technique is based on?

[Puer Aeternus]

Oh shit, actual responses! 

On 7/7/2025 at 1:56 AM, Vercingetorix said:

What are the underlying therapy principles that your technique is based on?

Ultimately, it's primary focus is subjective sensate experience.

Therapies and theories have pointed me to the source, but none of them quite touch on what I actually experience. It's a buncha pointers mishmashed together with my own learnings from working on this level over some years. 

You won't find some scientific framework to explain this. But there are few ones I've found useful-

Polyvagal theory basically is all about safety. You need to feel safe in order to process things in a healthy way, if your nervous system is overloaded you will dissociate automatically and the trauma will hide from you and leave an imprint. I had to learn a routine of safety, build an environment of safety, and establish/cut off people to really feel this.

 

Internal family systems gave me a loose framework for thinking about these different parts inside me.

Burdens are parts that hold a trauma and are emotionally loaded with varying amounts of anger/sadness/intense pain, etc. Protectors are a parts category whose behaviors and emotions compensate for burdens, but in less than healthy ways. Can be something like intense anger/judgementalism. Finally, firefighter parts take over when a disaster is out of control and you need to numb the pain. Think of self-destructive habits and addictions. Gives suggestions on how to work with these parts. 

Although, I don't really use the framework much anyway. I've got my own sloppy way that works. But it was very useful on the beginning.

 

The most interesting I think is Peter Levine's research in Etiology. Very interesting, can't find much of it immediately online. But much of it is detailed in his book In An Unspoken Voice. Worth checking out if you've got it at your local library.

It connects fight/flight/freeze response to animal behaviors. Discovered a forgotten mechanism animals use to release stored anxiety that most people don't experience anymore. Tremors. Today I saw it in action. I was out walking and saw a squirrel rush a busy intersection and nearly get run-over. After this near death experience, rather than needing to go get psychoanalyzed I watched it shake silently on the sidewalk for thirty seconds before scampering off on its own way. The book includes animal studies of when this ISN'T allowed to happen and the consequences, connecting them to humans.