How to Release Trauma from the Nervous System in 5 Steps

Introduction: Understanding How Trauma Affects the Body & Mind

In order to learn how to release trauma from the nervous system, we must understand that trauma isn’t just a memory stored in the brain; it’s a powerful experience that leaves a deep imprint on the body and subconscious mind.

Healing trauma in the body means becoming familiar with body sensations and addressing both the conscious and subconscious levels of mind and memory.

We may assume trauma heals with time, but for many people, trauma continues to shape physical and emotional responses long after the event.

This is why understanding how to release trauma from the nervous system is essential for lasting healing.

Combining Modern & Ancient Science

Bessel Van Der Kolk’s groundbreaking book, The Body Keeps the Score, reveals how trauma affects the body’s stress response, leading to hyper-alertness, a heightened fight-or-flight reaction, and even physical pain.

Trauma disrupts the body’s natural healing abilities, leaving it on constant alert.

In contrast, The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation as Taught by S.N. Goenka offers a method for observing and releasing trauma through mindful awareness.

Together, these works illuminate how mindfulness practices like Vipassana can help release emotional trauma in the body.

The 4 Stages of Mind Perception: How Our Traumas Form

To understand how trauma becomes stored in the body, it’s helpful to look at the Buddha’s four processes of the mind, as explained in The Art of Living. These stages help us understand how thoughts and emotions influence our physical experience:

1. Consciousness (Vinnana): This is the receiving part of the mind. It takes in raw sensory data without judgment or attachment.
2. Perception (Sanna): This is the mind’s label-maker. It identifies and categorizes incoming sensory data, attaching meaning or value to it.
3. Sensation (Vedana): When we assign value to information, it becomes associated with a sensation. Positive associations create pleasant sensations, while negative ones create unpleasant sensations. Neutral information often goes unnoticed.
4. Reaction (Sankhara): Sensations trigger reactions. When something feels good, we want more of it; when it feels bad, we push it away. Over time, repeated reactions form habits and deep roots in the subconscious mind.

When we experience trauma, we react with intense negative emotions and sensations or even feel nothing at all, which may become embedded in the subconscious as protective responses.

These reactions shape not only our emotional state but also our physical responses. The aim of healing trauma in the body is to observe these sensations without reacting, allowing them to dissolve traumatic layers naturally over time like peeling an onion.

The Role of Sensations in Healing Trauma in the Body

Our bodies communicate unprocessed trauma through physical sensations. These sensations might manifest as tightness in the chest, knots in the stomach, or even chronic pain.

In fact, every thought and emotion can have a physical counterpart if we’re open to observing it. This connection between thought and sensation is a key concept in both The Body Keeps the Score and The Art of Living.

By becoming aware of these sensations, we begin the process of healing trauma in the body. Instead of ignoring or suppressing these sensations, we can bring them into conscious awareness.

This practice allows us to identify and process deep-seated emotions, gradually releasing trauma from the nervous system and subconscious mind.

How Trauma Affects the Nervous System: The Body’s Alarm Response

In The Body Keeps the Score, Van Der Kolk describes how the body responds to trauma through what he calls “the cook, smoke detector, and watchtower.”

This metaphor illustrates how trauma can override the body’s natural ability to distinguish between safe and unsafe situations. We will connect them with Buddha’s 4 precepts:

1. Thalamus (The Cook, Concsiousness): The thalamus receives sensory information from the environment, processing raw data without interpretation.
2. Amygdala (Smoke Detector, Perception): The amygdala assesses the sensory information and triggers a response if it detects a threat. When trauma is present, the amygdala becomes hypersensitive, leading to a state of constant vigilance.
3. Hippocampus and Brainstem (Low Road, Sensation/Reaction): If the amygdala detects danger, it signals the hippocampus and brainstem, activating the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). This leads to a cascade of hormonal responses, including the release of adrenaline and cortisol.
   
   These hormones prepare the body for fight, flight, or freeze responses, causing increased heart rate, rapid breathing, and muscle tension.
4. Frontal Lobe (Watchtower, Reaction or Equanimity): The frontal lobe assesses whether a situation is truly dangerous. In people without trauma, this “watchtower” calms the body’s alarm system when there is no real danger. But trauma can impair this function, making it difficult to “turn off” the stress response.

Through The Body Keeps the Score, we understand that trauma rewires the brain and body, often leaving the nervous system in a perpetual state of arousal. This heightened state can lead to chronic issues such as anxiety, depression, and physical ailments.

Learning how to release emotional trauma in the body requires retraining the brain to recognize safety and calm the body.

How to Release Emotional Trauma in the Body: Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approaches

Trauma healing involves both top-down and bottom-up approaches, which work together to re-establish equilibrium in the nervous system.

1. Top-Down Approach: This method involves strengthening the mind’s control over the body’s responses. Practices such as mindfulness meditation, Vipassana, and yoga help build awareness and allow the mind to regulate physical sensations and emotions more effectively.
   
   Top-down healing allows the frontal lobe, or “watchtower,” to reassert control over emotional responses, calming the amygdala and restoring a sense of safety.
2. Bottom-Up Approach: Bottom-up methods focus on recalibrating the Autonomic Nervous System directly. Techniques such as Pranayama (breathwork), movement, and touch release tension and reset the body’s responses.
   
   When the body learns to relax and let go of stored tensions, the nervous system naturally moves toward healing and balance.

Vipassana Meditation and Equanimity: The Path to Healing Trauma in the Subconscious Mind

In The Art of Living, Goenka teaches that Vipassana meditation allows us to observe sensations and thoughts with equanimity, cultivating a detached awareness.

By observing sensations without judgment, we let the subconscious mind bring trauma to the surface, enabling it to release.

Equanimous observation—the practice of non-reactive awareness—is key to healing trauma in the body.

In Vipassana, we are encouraged to feel sensations without labeling them as “good” or “bad.” This detachment disrupts the reactive patterns that cause trauma to remain stuck in the body.

Over time, these unprocessed emotions dissolve, allowing the nervous system to recalibrate and heal.

How Do You Release Trauma Trapped In Your Body?

Letting go of trauma and stress stored in the body is both simple and incredibly challenging.

The first step is learning to recognize and understand the sensations and emotions that come up day to day. It’s like reconnecting the mind and body, which may have felt disconnected for a long time.

In Vipassana Meditation, the Buddha used a method focused on bodily sensations to help the mind pull up buried reactions, past pains, and deeply held stresses.

Similarly, in our everyday lives, certain things we see or hear can trigger old, hidden traumas and feelings without us even realizing why.

Sometimes, we know exactly what’s bothering us, but other times, we feel a wave of emotion without a clear reason.

Think of trauma, painful feelings, and unsettling thoughts like unwelcome visitors who have taken up residence in your mind without an invitation.

By paying close attention to your body’s sensations, you start to rebuild your inner connection and find the courage to face these “uninvited guests” directly.

Release Trauma: Finding Equanimity

When these feelings or memories come up again, try not to push them away or react impulsively. Instead, hold yourself steady and calm—this is called equanimity.

It’s like practicing balance between two extremes: avoiding or ignoring these feelings and overreacting to them. Both avoidance and reaction only let them take deeper root in your subconscious.

The real challenge is to stay right in the middle. Observe these feelings without judgment.

Look at them as they are. If you can hold your ground and stay calm, over time, these difficult experiences, emotions, and thoughts will lose their hold and fade on their own.

While it can help to understand where these experiences come from, digging for the root alone doesn’t remove them. Instead, work on building the ability to stay steady and control your reactions in the present moment.

Steps to Release Emotional Trauma in the Body

If you’re interested in learning how to release trauma from the body through holistic and mindfulness practices, here are some steps that incorporate Vipassana, body awareness, and other tools:

1. Start with Body Scanning: Regularly practice a body scan meditation to become aware of sensations throughout the body. Focus on each part, noticing areas of tension, warmth, or tingling. This practice builds sensory awareness and helps the mind connect with the body.
2. Practice Vipassana Meditation: Sit comfortably, close your eyes, and bring your awareness to your breath. As thoughts, emotions, or memories arise, notice the physical sensations associated with them.
   
   Try to observe without reacting, cultivating a state of equanimity. The more you practice, the more you strengthen your concentration ability to face sensations calmly. Take a free course: Dhamma.org
3. Use Breathwork to Calm the Nervous System: Practicing Pranayama or deep-breathing exercises can relax the nervous system and reduce stress hormones. By slowing the breath, we signal the body that it’s safe to let go, releasing stored tension from the nervous system.
4. Fitness, Movement and Yoga: Movement and stretching allow the body to release pent-up energy and tension. Gentle yoga practices that focus on the mind-body connection can help you tune into your body’s needs, enhancing relaxation.
   
   If you believe in pushing the body through physical fitness, this is a great way to release trauma as the mind brings up negative thoughts, doubts and traumas once the body feels uncomfortable sensations.
   
   Observing and remaining equanimous with these body sensations connects mind and body releasing traumas as well as advancing in fitness capabilities.
5. Integrate Mindfulness into Daily Life: Bring awareness to everyday sensations, emotions, and thoughts without judgment. This helps build resilience and strengthens your ability to stay calm in the face of challenging situations, supporting the healing process.
   
   If it is difficult to identify what emotion you feel with each sensation, continue to observe the situation and sensation. Try your best to link the the sensation with the emotion that best identifies it. The mind and body connection will become stronger.

Healing The Subconscious Mind: A Transformative Journey

Healing trauma in the body and subconscious mind is not a quick fix; it’s a journey of self-discovery and compassion.

As we tune into our bodies and cultivate non-reactive awareness, we allow hidden traumas to surface and dissolve.

Over time, we gain the resilience to release emotional trauma in the body, resetting the nervous system.

Conclusion: Embracing the Healing Process

The journey of healing trauma in the body is transformative and a path you must walk alone.

Pharmaceutical drugs and therapy can help us relieve some of this stress and pain but, does not get to the root which is the key to healing and releasing trauma, stress, anxiety, and depression.

By understanding the processes of mind and body, and by cultivating a practice of observation, we can learn how to release trauma from the nervous system, subconscious mind, and body.

Tools like Vipassana meditation, breathwork, and mindful movement offer gentle but profound methods to reconnect with our inner sense of peace and safety.

With patience and compassion, we can heal trauma’s imprint on our nervous system, restoring balance in our bodies and minds.

Through dedicated practice, we not only free ourselves from past pain but also pave the way for a brighter, more resilient future.