06/26/2025
People ask me all the time—can emotions really be stored in the body?
The short answer?
Yes.
Fascia isn’t just some connective tissue wrapping. It’s alive. It’s intelligent. It’s responsive. It holds the shape of your experiences—posture, tension, injury, and yes… trauma.
I’ve had clients move into the exact position their body froze in years ago—during a car accident, sports injury, or something they can’t even fully name. I don’t tell their body to do that. It just knows.
There’s even research now showing that emotional memory isn’t just metaphor—it’s biological. Scientists have identified proteins and cellular “marks” that store emotional states, especially fear, inside specific neurons (called engram cells). The body literally codes the experience into tissue. Wild, right?
But here’s what’s even more powerful:
Your body doesn’t just hold—it can release.
And when it feels safe enough to unwind, it doesn’t need your brain to explain it.
It just needs your presence.
You don’t have to force the story out of your body.
You just have to listen to the language it’s been speaking all along.
Sources:
•Tom Myers, Anatomy Trains
•Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score
•“Chromatin Remodeling and Memory Storage” – MIT, 2020
•Flores & Liester, 2024 – Narrative review on emotional memory and protein coding in engram cells
•Dr. Barry Gillespie, CFT and the fascial/craniosacral connection