01/30/2026
Where the body holds trauma & emotions
🧠 Brain & Nervous System
• Trauma lives heavily in the nervous system
• Chronic stress keeps the body in fight, flight, or freeze
• Results: anxiety, hyper-vigilance, dissociation, burnout
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💗 Heart & Chest
• Grief, heartbreak, sadness, emotional loss
• Tight chest, shallow breathing, heaviness
• “Broken heart” isn’t just poetic—it’s real physiology
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😮💨 Throat & Neck
• Suppressed emotions, unspoken truth, people-pleasing
• Common with those who felt unsafe expressing themselves
• Symptoms: stiff neck, sore throat, jaw clenching, TMJ
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🤍 Shoulders
• Carrying responsibility, pressure, emotional labor
• “The weight of the world on your shoulders”
• Chronic knots, tension, limited range of motion
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🌪 Upper Back
• Emotional defense, guarding the heart
• Often shows up in people who had to “be strong” too early
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🔥 Lower Back
• Fear, insecurity, lack of support (emotional or financial)
• Closely tied to survival stress
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🫀 Stomach & Gut
• Anxiety, fear, intuition, unresolved stress
• The gut is called the second brain
• Symptoms: IBS, nausea, tightness, bloating
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🍑 Hips & Pelvis
• One of the biggest trauma storage areas
• Holds fear, sexual trauma, grief, suppressed emotions
• Hips = emotional memory + survival
• Tight hips often signal long-held emotional protection
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🦵 Legs
• Forward movement, stability, life direction
• Trauma can show up as heaviness, weakness, or restlessness
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✋ Hands & Arms
• Control, giving, receiving, boundaries
• Numbness or tension can reflect feeling powerless or over-giving
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Why this happens
Trauma that isn’t processed gets stored as muscle tension, posture patterns, and nervous system responses.
The body keeps the score even when the mind tries to move on.
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Gentle ways trauma releases
• Massage therapy (especially slow, intentional work)
• Breathwork
• Stretching & yoga (hip-openers are powerful)
• Somatic therapy
• Crying, shaking, yawning, deep sighs (these are releases!)
• Feeling safe enough to rest
Make your appointment today❤️🙏🏾
