Then I met a practitioner who didn't ask me to "talk it out." She asked me to feel my breath catch in my chest. That’s when the shift happened. Somatic experiencing completely rewired how I understand healing. Bessel van der Kolk documented this in The Body Keeps the Score, and my own experience tracks with it perfectly. Trauma isn't just a story you tell. It's a physiological state stuck in the nervous system. Your prefrontal cortex can't reason its way out of a freeze response.

I used to scoff at energy work. Look, I get it. I spent years defending reductionist biology. Now I sit in the weird tension between my old training and what I actually do. The science is finally catching up to what body-centric traditions have known for centuries. When I map a client's blocked energy, I'm literally watching their nervous system downregulate. Same mechanism, different vocabulary.

Tarot shows this beautifully. Pull the Four of Pentacles, and you're looking at someone clutching their own ribs, guarding their physical center. The mind wants to analyze the cards. The body just needs to release the grip. Carl Jung called the psyche and soma two sides of the same coin, and I've finally stopped fighting that. You can't intellectualize a nervous system regulation.

Talk therapy gave me context. Bodywork gave me my life back. If you're stuck in your head, try dropping into your diaphragm. The answers aren't in the narrative. They're in the breath.