10 Key Insights from The Body Keeps the Score for Trauma Healing

Trauma Lives in the Body

A Deep Dive into The Body Keeps the Score and How It Aligns with Embodied Healing

“The body keeps the score: it remembers everything, even when the mind forgets.” — Bessel van der Kolk

Trauma isn't just a psychological wound—it’s a full-body experience. If you've ever felt hijacked by old patterns, stuck in hypervigilance, or disconnected from your physical self—you’re not alone. And you’re not broken. The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk reveals why that happens, and how true healing must happen through the body.

As a trauma-informed bodyworker and de-armouring practitioner, I meet people every week who carry invisible stories in their tissues. In this article, I offer a deep summary of the 10 most powerful insights from van der Kolk’s work—and reflect on how these findings align with the healing work I offer. If you’re on a journey of embodiment, healing, or reconnection, this is for you.

1. Trauma Reshapes the Nervous System

Trauma doesn’t just change how we think—it changes how our brain is wired. The amygdala becomes hyperactive, keeping us stuck in survival mode. The prefrontal cortex—our rational brain—gets impaired, making it harder to calm down or respond with clarity. The hippocampus, which helps form coherent memories, may malfunction, creating a looping sense that the danger is still happening.

Insight: In body-based work, we begin by helping the nervous system shift out of survival. Through slow breathing, grounding touch, and a steady relational field, the body learns that it is no longer in danger. This shift—however small—can be life-changing. You can’t think your way out of trauma, but you can feel your way into safety.

2. The Body Stores What the Mind Can’t Process

When overwhelming experiences bypass mental processing, they lodge in the body as tension, rigidity, or numbness. This is why someone who “understands” their trauma may still suffer from chronic pain, digestive issues, or emotional detachment. The body literally holds the score.

Insight: De-armouring gently explores areas of tension or disconnection. With attuned, respectful touch and co-regulated breath, we invite the body to release what it’s been holding. Sometimes the shift is subtle—a deep sigh, a tear, a new softness. Other times, emotions long trapped in silence finally rise to the surface.

3. Words Aren’t Enough

Trauma often bypasses the language centers of the brain. Many people can’t articulate what happened—or they do, but feel unchanged. Van der Kolk emphasizes that healing must involve non-verbal expression: through breath, movement, sound, and embodied sensation.

Insight: In my work, we use the body’s natural languages: breath, tone, posture, and movement. A trembling leg or clenched jaw may speak louder than a paragraph. You don’t have to explain what arises—your body already knows.

4. Safety Is Everything

Healing cannot happen in a state of fear or defense. For trauma survivors, the sense of threat often lingers—even in safe environments. The body must be shown, not told, that it’s safe.

Insight: Every session I offer begins with establishing genuine safety. We work with clear boundaries, mutual agreement, and deep respect. We go slow. We don’t push or pry. Only when the nervous system feels safe can it begin to release.

5. Dissociation Is Protection

When the body is overwhelmed, it often disconnects from sensation or awareness to survive. This coping mechanism becomes a barrier over time, cutting us off from both pain and pleasure.

Insight: Re-entering the body after dissociation is a gradual process. We begin with small, tolerable sensations—feet on the ground, breath in the belly. I guide this gently, supporting your return to the present without forcing it.

6. Trauma Happens in Relationship—and Heals There Too

Most trauma involves relational rupture. Neglect, abuse, or abandonment from others wounds our basic trust. Healing requires a new kind of relationship—one that offers presence, care, and consistency.

Insight: I offer a relational space of attunement, without expectation or pressure. Touch is offered without agenda. For many, this is the first time they experience being held in true safety and sovereignty.

7. The Vagus Nerve Is a Path to Safety

The vagus nerve plays a critical role in regulating stress, digestion, and social connection. When it's dysregulated, we experience anxiety, freeze states, or emotional shutdown.

Insight: Simple practices like humming, sighing, or slow exhalation activate the vagus nerve. These tools are embedded into sessions—and easy to continue at home—to help your body access calm more reliably.

8. Movement Restores Flow

Trauma can lock us into stillness or rigidity. Movement helps complete the body’s stress response and restore agency. It brings energy, circulation, and release.

Insight: In sessions, I support the body’s instinct to move—whether through stretching, trembling, or subtle shifts. Movement isn’t directed; it’s welcomed. This reclaims your body’s freedom and flow.

9. Integration, Not Erasure

Healing is not about forgetting. It’s about making peace with what happened, so it no longer controls your life. Integration means holding the past with compassion, without being defined by it.

Insight: After deep release, we anchor the experience through reflection and grounding. I often suggest simple tools—journaling, nature walks, or placing a hand on the heart—to help integrate what arose in session.

10. The Body Wants to Heal

The body is innately self-healing. When trauma blocks that flow, symptoms appear. But beneath it all is a powerful intelligence seeking balance, aliveness, and wholeness.

Insight: I see this every day. The “stuckness” is never your failure—it’s your brilliance. And when the body feels supported and respected, it begins to heal in ways the mind never thought possible.

Final Reflection: What I’ve Learned

Reading The Body Keeps the Score affirmed what I’ve sensed and witnessed in my work for years: the body is not the enemy - it’s our guide. Trauma is not just a memory. It’s a current pattern, waiting to be met—not solved, but held.

I occasionally integrate elements inspired by the Gaia Method—known for its holistic, body-based principles—but the foundation of my work is this: your body already knows. It remembers. And it wants to come home.

If you’re ready to reconnect, to release, and to return to your body, I invite you to explore my work.

Click here to learn more or book a session.

Let this be your reminder:
Healing isn’t something you force.
It’s something you allow.
And your body already knows the way.