“I feel like I can see with my whole body,” I said to my peer after our last session exchange.
As part of my ongoing growth and development as a practitioner, I regularly participate in somatic therapy exchanges with a small group of peers.
On completion of our last session, I found myself sitting with a sense of a quiet, steady seeing, almost like sitting on the top of a mountain, rooted to the earth, not a breath of wind, and a 360-degree view of not just the world around me but of it within me, and me within it.
It felt as though I had stepped into a deeper dimension of perception, where sight wasn’t limited to my eyes but woven into my body’s knowing.
It was unfamiliar, but a place where I felt a deep sense of being able to rest. Completely.
I came to her that morning wanting to work on the shock I felt I was still carrying from the day—twelve years ago—when I learned my partner had taken his life. I’ve done a lot of work over the years, but the impact of this moment in time was still untouched.
As we prepared for our session, I felt a fluttering in my chest and a mild contraction behind my heart and upper torso.
“I feel a little fear…” I shared with her, knowing that this was normal and the very reason I had yet to touch how my body had stored the impact of this day.
Often the places we fear the most are exactly where we need to go.
I recalled the memory of traveling down the small bitumen road leading to the gravel driveway of our family home. We lived on two acres in a beautiful community in semirural NSW. My dear friend, who unbeknownst to me had already been informed of what had happened, was driving, as I was five months pregnant and overwhelmed with emotion.
That morning, we had gone to the local police station to report him missing. He had not been answering his phone and had not turned up at work that day. His closest friend had not heard from him, and neither had I.
We all knew something was amiss.
As we turned onto our property, we were met with a row of cars scattered outside the entrance. My breath caught in my chest, my eyes widened and darted, taking in the cars and the close friends walking toward me through the front door. The moment felt so surreal; I knew something was terribly wrong.
There is a moment in time where our nervous system perceives what the eyes have yet to see. A deeper knowing that, much like an animal in the wild who can feel the storm before it arrives, braces itself against the danger afoot.
I don’t know when that initial moment was for me. Whether it was when I spoke to his work and was advised he hadn’t turned up, when I went to the police, when my friend stood to take a private call while we were waiting for the police to contact us, or when we turned the car to drive down the little bitumen road, right before the tree canopy parted to expose the cars scattered outside my home.
When it comes to shock trauma, the brainstem registers the shock before it has even happened. And the body, in response, braces.
I was already bracing as I exited the car, tightening further as I met the eyes of my friend walking out of the front door, and then at the nod of his head, my world stopped and my body locked.
I had shared with my colleague that morning that I felt like I was bracing. That in my deepest moments of meditation, I could feel a very deep clench. That sometimes I wake with a very subtle but palpable internal holding, a contraction deeper than I could touch on my own. I also shared that I felt this bracing was impacting my health.
For many years, I have worked diligently on restoring my health. Spending thousands upon thousands. Recovering from severe biotoxin poisoning, chronic fatigue, and burnout from the trauma of the relationship, the trauma of his death, and all of the survival stress beyond.
Though I have come a very long way, I know there is still a way to go. Peeling away layer by layer.
Our session met one of those layers.
Releasing trauma can often appear as a tremor. A tremble. It can show up in the arms, hands, legs, feet, or anywhere in the body, visible to another in its release. And it can also be held deep inside, in tissues that never see the light of day.
Twenty-five minutes into our session, I felt a subtle internal tremble. It felt almost like an electric shock. A tremor that started in my cervical spine, just under the occiput, the back part of the skull at the base of the head where the skull meets the spine, and rippled to the bones protecting the back of my heart, and there it stopped.
I had been sitting in silence with myself, noticing sensations in my body and allowing my body to direct me to where the bracing was. Sensing, feeling, and ‘being with’ all that arose. Offering simple, loving presence.
It took all of three seconds from start to finish for this seismic ripple to initiate a wave through my body that was literally like a soul-level shudder—a deep unwinding pulse—reaching into the very fabric of stored experience so that it may unravel.
It was sudden, potent, and gone in an instant. And then something unlocked, I took a deep breath, and I wept.
I grieved in a way I had not yet done for what was lost that day. For him. For me. For my children. For his family. For the ripple effect of his choice.
I cried an ocean of tears for days. Tears that were locked within the fortress of my body, held in place by years of survival, tension, and bracing.
In my own attempt to manage the intensity of the event, my own vulnerability of being pregnant at the time, and all that came after it, I had braced against the news of his death and the aftermath. I had braced against the reality of mothering alone. I had braced against my breath. I had braced against all of it.
Over the years, I thought I had worked through all of that, but deep down inside, I was still bracing.
As I cried, I softened.
The walls that once held so firm began to melt a little, and in their place, there was space. A vast, quiet openness where my breath could move freely, where my body no longer clenched against itself or life.
I felt lighter. Not in the way of something missing but in the way of something finally released.
I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I could finally exhale.
This is what I was holding. This is what I was not feeling. What I was unable to feel at the time because my body was primed to protect my unborn child. This was what my body had been orienting around for the last decade.
Holding in these tears, holding in the shock, holding in the fear.
This is where deep unraveling happens. This is why we work with the body.
I can’t say that all was released in that session, but I can say that the earth cracked open enough for me to feel a space within my being that is unfamiliar and yet also feels very much like what a deeper part of me knows as home.
In the days that followed, I moved differently. I breathed differently. I noticed the absence of a tension I had carried so long it had become invisible, woven into the fabric of my being. And with its release, even more presence to be with what is, rather than bracing against what was.
This is what the body holds.
Not just the stories, not just the memories, but the impact of them, the ways we shape ourselves around survival. And this is why we must listen, not just with the mind, but with the body itself.
Because healing isn’t about erasing the past. It’s about unwinding from it.
It’s about reclaiming the space within us that trauma occupied. It’s about finding breath where there was constriction, movement where there was rigidity, presence where there was absence.
And ultimately, it’s about coming back to ourselves. Whole. Embodied. Free.
As I continue on this journey, I find myself increasingly aware of how much of our lives—the obstacles we face and the emotional, health, and relational challenges we experience—are shaped by the events we have yet to truly feel.
Trauma, shock, old wounds, and all that we hold in our tissues don’t disappear because we ignore them; they settle into our body, like dust gathering on the shelves of a forgotten room, firing the lens through which we see, live, and breathe, waiting for the moment when we are courageous enough to turn towards them instead of away.
I recognize that the path of healing is not linear, nor a one-time fix or a quick release. It’s a constant process of coming back to the body, coming back to the breath, and coming back to ourselves. The layers that we peel back, slowly, patiently, hold not just pain but also possibility in their wake; and in the space after each unraveling, we move closer to the wholeness that resides within us all, buried beneath years of survival, and the quiet, fertile ground of presence.
By listening deeply to our body and holding space for ourselves with compassion and presence, we give ourselves permission to unravel and heal. We make room for the truth of what happened, and in doing so, we make room for the truth of who we are beyond the trauma.
I don’t know what the future holds or how many more layers I’ll uncover, but I do know this: A part of me is no longer bracing. That part is here. Present. With all of it. And in this presence, I find the gift of peace.
And maybe, just maybe, that is where true freedom begins.
About Maraya Rodostianos
Maraya is an integrative somatic therapist offering in-person sessions in Melbourne and online worldwide. Blending modern neuroscience on trauma and the nervous system with psychotherapeutic tools and ancient wisdom traditions, she takes a holistic approach that integrates mind, body, spirit, and the nervous system. She works at the intersection of trauma, authenticity, embodied spirituality, and well-being, guiding clients to release what blocks them from living as their most authentic, whole, and embodied selves. You can find her at http://marayarae.com. Facebook / Substack / Instagram
