9 Signs Your Body Is Releasing Trauma – And What To Do Next

Something happens when the body finally starts letting go of trauma. And for a lot of people, it doesn’t feel like healing — it feels like something going wrong.

The shaking, the unexpected crying, the exhaustion that hits out of nowhere — these aren’t signs you’re falling apart. They’re signs your nervous system is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do. Trauma gets stored in the body, not just the mind. And releasing it is a physical process, not just an emotional one.

If you’ve been wondering whether what you’re experiencing is part of healing, this article will help you recognize what’s actually happening — and what to do with it. According to the American Psychological Association, trauma responses are the nervous system’s normal reaction to abnormal events, and the release of those responses follows predictable patterns in the body.

Here are nine signs to look for.

Common Questions About How the Body Releases Trauma

What are the signs your body is releasing trauma?

The most common signs are spontaneous emotional surges, physical trembling or shaking, sudden fatigue, temporary digestive upset, vivid or intense dreams, heightened sensitivity to sound or light, and a strong urge to move or stretch. These are your nervous system discharging stored stress — a process that’s natural, healthy, and necessary for real healing to happen.

What does trauma release feel like in the body?

It’s different for everyone. Some people feel it as a wave of emotion — crying without knowing why, or an unexpected sense of relief after a session. Others feel it physically: warmth in the chest, shaking in the legs, or a deep exhale that seems to come from somewhere they didn’t know they were holding. It can feel strange at first, especially if you’ve spent years keeping those sensations at arm’s length. Our post on what emotional purging looks like somatically goes deeper on this.

What are somatic signs of trauma releasing?

Somatic signs are the ones you feel in the body rather than think about — shaking or trembling, involuntary deep sighs, muscle twitching, sudden temperature changes, tingling, or a heaviness that gradually lifts. These point to the nervous system moving out of a chronic stress or shutdown state.

Can trauma be released without you knowing it?

Yes. It can happen during sleep, during bodywork, or in moments when you unexpectedly feel safe. You might not recognize it while it’s happening — only after, when you notice something has shifted. Learning to recognize these signs in retrospect can help you understand and support what your body is already doing.

How long does it take the nervous system to heal from trauma?

There’s no set timeline, and anyone who tells you otherwise is oversimplifying. The nervous system heals in waves — better for a while, then harder, then better again. That’s not backsliding; that’s how this works. Research published in Psychological Medicine confirms that recovery varies substantially by individual, trauma type, and access to support. Working consistently with a licensed trauma therapist makes a real difference in how that process unfolds.

What can I do to support my body during trauma release?

Gentle movement, rest, hydration, grounding practices, and working with a trauma therapist are the most well-supported approaches. The somatic exercises later in this article are a good starting point for the time between sessions. For broader self-support strategies, our guide to restful healing for trauma recovery is worth reading alongside this one.

The 9 Signs Your Body Is Releasing Trauma

1. Emotional Surges You Can’t Explain

You’re driving, or cooking, or sitting in a meeting — and suddenly you’re crying. Or furious. Or inexplicably lighter than you’ve felt in months. There’s no obvious trigger, and that’s what’s so disorienting about it.

What’s happening is that stored emotional charges are surfacing as the nervous system works through stress cycles it couldn’t complete before. Dr. Jaak Panksepp’s research in affective neuroscience established that emotional responses are generated in subcortical brain structures — below the level of conscious control — which is why these surges can feel so sudden and sourceless. They’re not a sign that something’s wrong with you. They’re a sign that something that was stuck is moving. Let it.

2. Physical Shaking or Trembling

This one surprises people. The legs start shaking, the hands tremble, the jaw quivers — and the instinct is to clamp down and stop it. Don’t.

Animals shake after escaping a threat. It’s how their nervous systems reset. We have the same mechanism; we’ve just been taught to override it. Peter Levine, PhD, who developed Somatic Experiencing, identified this tremor response as one of the primary ways the nervous system discharges survival energy that got locked in during trauma.

When the shaking happens — in a therapy session, during bodywork, after a hard conversation — let it run its course. It usually passes in a few minutes, and what follows is often a noticeable calm.

3. Sudden Exhaustion

Healing takes energy. A lot of it. You might crash after a therapy session, sleep ten hours and still wake up tired, or hit a wall in the middle of the day for no obvious reason.

This isn’t laziness or depression (though it can look similar). In polyvagal terms, this is the dorsal vagal state — the nervous system’s recovery mode, where the parasympathetic branch takes over to consolidate processing and repair. Pushing through it tends to slow things down. Resting through it is part of the work. Our post on restful healing for trauma recovery covers what that looks like practically.

4. Temporary Aches and Pains

The neck. The shoulders. The jaw. The hips. These are where people carry trauma in their bodies — the areas that brace, guard, and hold during threat. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s neuroimaging research, detailed in The Body Keeps the Score, showed that trauma is encoded in the brain regions that govern physical sensation, which is why so many survivors deal with chronic pain that has no clear medical cause.

As the body releases, that held tension has to go somewhere. You may feel soreness, dull aches, or pressure in areas you weren’t consciously aware of holding. It’s usually temporary. If it persists or is severe, get it checked out medically — but if it comes and goes in tandem with emotional processing, that’s a familiar pattern.

5. Feeling Lighter or “Freer”

After a meaningful session, a hard cry, time outside, or a somatic exercise, something shifts. Your chest feels less tight. Your breath comes easier. The baseline hum of tension you’d stopped noticing is quieter.

Clinicians call this a return to the window of tolerance — the range of nervous system activation where a person can think, feel, and function without being overwhelmed or shut down. Most people who’ve been carrying unprocessed trauma don’t know what this feels like until they start to experience it. A lot of clients describe it as the first time they actually believe healing is possible.

6. Digestive Changes

The gut and the brain talk to each other constantly through the vagus nerve, and that conversation runs both ways. The gut-brain axis is real and well-researched — the enteric nervous system processes emotional experience in parallel with the central nervous system, which is why stress lives in the stomach as much as the head.

When the body starts releasing stored stress, the digestive system often reflects it. Nausea, cramping, changes in appetite, loose stools — these can show up during periods of active emotional processing and then resolve just as quickly. If digestive symptoms are severe or don’t pass, see your physician. If anxiety is part of the picture, the gut symptoms and the anxiety are often connected and respond well to being treated together.

7. Intense or Vivid Dreams

The brain processes emotional memory during REM sleep. A 2019 study in Current Biology found that REM sleep strips the emotional charge from difficult memories while keeping the factual content intact — essentially filing them as “past” rather than “present threat.” Trauma disrupts that process. Healing gradually restores it.

What this looks like in practice: as you get deeper into recovery, your dreams often get louder before they get quieter. More vivid, more emotionally intense, sometimes revisiting old events in strange forms. That’s the mind catching up. Keeping a rough dream journal can help you notice patterns worth bringing to individual therapy.

If your dreams involve reexperiencing traumatic events directly, that’s worth discussing with your therapist — it may be part of the PTSD picture, which we explore in our post on why PTSD isn’t just about having flashbacks.

8. Heightened Sensory Sensitivity

Sounds are louder. Lights are brighter. Crowds feel like too much. Smells you used to ignore now bother you. If this started happening around the time you began working on trauma, it’s probably not a coincidence.

As the nervous system comes out of chronic hyperarousal or numbness, the senses recalibrate. Things that were being filtered out start coming through again. The National Institute of Mental Health identifies hyperarousal — including this kind of sensory sensitivity — as one of the most common features of trauma response, and it typically improves as treatment progresses. For now: reduce unnecessary stimulation where you can, and don’t interpret this phase as getting worse. It’s the system coming back online.

9. The Urge to Move or Stretch

Something in you needs to shake out your arms, or stretch until you feel something release, or just walk. Not as exercise — as necessity.

That urge is biological. Motor activity and stress hormones are tightly coupled in the body, and movement is one of the primary ways cortisol and adrenaline get metabolized after a stress response. When trauma is stored, those hormones stay elevated. Movement helps complete the cycle. Our post on exercises for anxiety and depression covers specific movement approaches in more detail.

Follow the urge, even briefly. And if you’re also noticing uncomfortable signs of emotional healing alongside the physical restlessness — the two tend to travel together.

What These Signs Are Telling You

The question I come back to with clients, and with myself, is: what is this trying to tell me?

Every surge, every shaking spell, every dream that wakes you up at 3am — your body is communicating. Trauma release isn’t something happening to you against your will. It’s your nervous system doing work it’s been waiting to do. The most useful thing you can bring to that process isn’t control — it’s curiosity.

Why You Shouldn’t Try to Push Through It

Suppressing these signs doesn’t make them go away. It makes them louder, or stranger, or more physical. The American Institute of Stress links unresolved trauma to chronic stress burden, physical health decline, and compounding mental health difficulties. The body will find another way to carry what it hasn’t been allowed to release — often through chronic pain, anxiety, emotional shutdown, or sleep disruption.

Naming what’s happening is itself a first step. For a deeper look at how emotional processing and physical release overlap, our post on emotional purging and somatic release explains the mechanism in plain terms.

5 Somatic Reset Exercises to Support Trauma Release

These draw from Somatic Experiencing (Peter Levine, PhD), polyvagal-informed practice (Dr. Stephen Porges), and trauma-sensitive movement. They’re appropriate for use between therapy sessions — not as a replacement for treatment. If any exercise brings up overwhelming emotion or a sense of disconnection, stop, put both feet flat on the floor, and look slowly around the room before continuing.

At our Albuquerque practice, we introduce these as between-session tools for clients in trauma therapy. They work best alongside professional support, not instead of it.

Exercise 1: Neurogenic Shaking

Why it works: Your body already knows how to do this — the tremor response is built in. Dr. David Berceli’s Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) work by allowing that mechanism rather than suppressing it. A 2015 review in the Journal of Military and Veterans’ Health found TRE reduced PTSD symptoms in both military and civilian populations.

How to do it:

1. Stand with feet hip-width apart, knees slightly bent — not locked.
2. Shift your weight gently side to side in small movements, releasing the muscular bracing in your thighs and calves. Don’t force the shaking. Just stop holding it back.
3. Once tremoring starts on its own, let it move through the legs, hips, and torso for 5–10 minutes. Afterward, lie down for 2–3 minutes and notice what you feel.

How often: 2–3 times a week. Start with 5 minutes and build from there.

Exercise 2: Extended Exhale Breathing

Why it works: A slow exhale — longer than your inhale — activates the vagus nerve and shifts the nervous system toward parasympathetic regulation. Dr. Stephen Porges’ polyvagal theory identifies this as one of the most direct, accessible ways to downregulate outside a clinical setting. A 2017 randomized controlled trial in Frontiers in Psychology found slow paced breathing significantly reduced anxiety and autonomic arousal.

How to do it:

1. Sit or lie comfortably. One hand on your chest, one on your belly.
2. Inhale through the nose for 4 counts, letting the belly rise more than the chest.
3. Exhale through the mouth for 6–8 counts, letting the belly fall completely. That longer exhale is the whole point — don’t rush it.

How often: 5–10 breath cycles, 2–3 times a day. Especially useful right after noticing any of the nine signs above. Our meditation techniques for stress relief has complementary practices if you want to go further.

Exercise 3: Pendulation

Why it works: Pendulation is a core Somatic Experiencing technique. The idea is simple: you teach the nervous system that it can move between activation and calm without getting stuck in either. Over time, this builds what clinicians call window of tolerance — the capacity to feel difficult things without being overwhelmed. Peter Levine describes the approach in detail in In an Unspoken Voice.

How to do it:

1. Find a place in your body that feels neutral or okay right now — maybe warmth in your hands, or the weight of your feet on the floor. Sit with that for 30–60 seconds.
2. Gently bring your attention to somewhere that holds mild tension — your jaw, your chest, your shoulders. Stay 20–30 seconds. Notice it without trying to fix it.
3. Come back to the neutral place. Stay until something settles a little.

Move back and forth 3–5 times. You’re not trying to get rid of the difficult sensation — you’re showing your nervous system there’s an exit ramp.

How often: Once a day, or anytime you’re in the middle of a release and want to work with it rather than white-knuckle through it.

Exercise 4: Butterfly Hug

Why it works: The butterfly hug uses bilateral stimulation — alternating taps across the midline of the body — which is also a core mechanism in EMDR therapy. The EMDR Institute describes bilateral stimulation as facilitating the brain’s natural processing of distressing material. A 2017 study in Frontiers in Psychology found it associated with reduced emotional distress and better affect regulation. It’s particularly useful when you’re emotionally flooded.

How to do it:

1. Cross your arms over your chest, fingertips near each collarbone — like folded wings.
2. Tap alternately — right, left, right, left — at a slow, calm rhythm. Around the pace of a resting heartbeat.
3. While tapping, hold a mental image of something that feels safe or steady — a person, a place, a memory, a quality. Keep tapping for 1–2 minutes.

How often: Use it as needed. It’s especially helpful in the immediate aftermath of an emotional wave.

Exercise 5: Orienting

Why it works: After a threat, mammals scan their environment before relaxing — confirming that the danger has passed. This visual scan signals safety to the brainstem and interrupts the trauma loop at a physiological level. It’s one of the simplest interventions in Somatic Experiencing, and research on defensive arousal and the nervous system supports why it works.

How to do it:

1. Sit or stand. Let your gaze move slowly around the room — not scanning anxiously, but resting on things for a few seconds at a time.
2. Name what you see, silently: chair. window. plant. light. The naming engages the prefrontal cortex and brings you back into the present moment.
3. Keep going for 2–3 minutes at an unhurried pace. Notice if your breath changes, your shoulders drop, or your jaw softens.

How often: Use this at the start of any somatic practice, or anytime you feel flooded, dissociated, or like the ground has shifted under you.

One thing to keep in mind: These exercises help. But they work best when they’re part of a larger treatment relationship — not as a substitute for one. If what you’re experiencing is significant or getting more intense, please connect with a licensed trauma therapist who can build these tools into a real plan. Our Albuquerque team also offers group therapy for people who find healing in community.

2026 Clinical Perspective: Where Trauma Science Has Moved

By Erika Martínez-Gonzales, LPCC

When I started doing trauma work in our Albuquerque practice, cognitive approaches were still the default. Understand the story. Challenge the belief. Build coping skills through insight. I was trained in that model, and it helps — we still use it. But the field has shifted in ways that matter a lot to how I practice now.

What changed my thinking, and a lot of the field’s: van der Kolk’s research showing that trauma isn’t stored as a narrative. It’s stored as sensation, posture, breath pattern, startle response. His 2014 PLOS ONE study demonstrated that yoga — a body-based intervention — reduced PTSD symptoms significantly compared to a control condition. That’s not a trivial finding. The implication is that the body itself has to be part of treatment.

Stephen Porges’ polyvagal theory gave the field a more precise map for why. The autonomic nervous system governs our capacity for safety and connection, and the brain structures most involved in trauma responses aren’t accessible through language or rational thought. You can’t think your way out of a dysregulated nervous system. You work with it directly — through breath, movement, touch, and the felt sense of safety in relationship.

The evidence base keeps building. A 2021 scoping review in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology found solid support for Somatic Experiencing in reducing trauma symptoms. The ISTSS treatment guidelines now include body-based approaches alongside EMDR and trauma-focused CBT. The World Health Organization recommends EMDR as a first-line PTSD treatment.

For clients across New Mexico — many carrying intergenerational trauma, historical losses, and layered grief that doesn’t respond to a single modality — this matters. Talking about what happened is part of it. Working with what the body is still holding is the other part.

If you’re recognizing yourself in this article, particularly if the symptoms are persistent or intensifying, please don’t try to manage it alone. Working with a trauma therapist changes what’s possible. And if childhood experiences are part of what’s surfacing, our post on healing from childhood emotional neglect addresses patterns that often underlie what comes up in somatic release work.

How to Support Your Body During Trauma Release

1. Rest without guilt. Not “rest when you’ve earned it” — just rest when you need it. The nervous system does its repair work in stillness. Our guide to restful healing for trauma recovery has specific guidance on what that looks like.
2. Work with a trauma therapist. These signs mean something, and navigating them with support is safer and faster than going it alone. Our trauma team in Albuquerque sees clients in-person and via telehealth across New Mexico.
3. Move consistently, not just reactively. The somatic exercises above do more when they’re a regular practice than when you only reach for them in crisis. Our guide to exercise and stress reduction fits well alongside these.
4. Stay hydrated. Processing trauma is physiologically demanding. The Mayo Clinic recommends roughly 3.7 liters of fluid daily for men and 2.7 liters for women. It’s basic, and it matters.
5. Keep a journal. Not for posterity — for pattern recognition. Physical sensations, emotional shifts, dream content: written down over time, they reveal things that would otherwise stay invisible. Bring that material into your sessions.

Moving Forward

Healing from trauma doesn’t mean forgetting what happened. It means the past stops running the present.

The nine signs in this article are evidence that your nervous system is capable of exactly that. It’s not broken. It’s doing what it was built to do — completing cycles that got interrupted, discharging what it couldn’t discharge before, reorganizing toward something steadier.

That process is messy and nonlinear and sometimes exhausting. But it’s happening. And every wave that rises and passes, every tremor that completes, every night of vivid dreams that moves through — that’s not suffering for nothing. That’s the body healing itself.

You don’t need to be fixed. You need support, and the understanding that you’re not as far from okay as it might feel right now.

Schedule a free consultation with our trauma therapy team →

References and Resources

1. Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking.
2. Van der Kolk, B., et al. (2014). Yoga as an adjunctive treatment for PTSD. PLOS ONE, 9(11).
3. Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory. Norton. stephenporges.com
4. Kuhfuß, M., et al. (2021). Somatic experiencing — effectiveness and key factors of a trauma therapy. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 12(1).
5. Zaccaro, A., et al. (2018). How breath-control can change your life: A systematic review. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 12.
6. Schubert, S., et al. (2016). Tapping as a complement to EMDR: A randomized clinical trial. Frontiers in Psychology, 8.
7. ISTSS (2023). PTSD Prevention and Treatment Guidelines. International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
8. World Health Organization (2013). Guidelines for the Management of Conditions Specifically Related to Stress. WHO Press.
9. Carabotti, M., et al. (2015). The gut-brain axis. Annals of Gastroenterology, 28(2).
10. How to Release Trauma from the Body — Choosing Therapy
11. Releasing Trauma from the Body — Counseling Center Group

Erika Martínez-Gonzales, LPCC is the founder of Reclaiming Wellness Counseling & Medication Management in Albuquerque, NM. She specializes in trauma, EMDR, and somatic approaches to healing and has served the New Mexico community for over a decade. NPI: 1588928568.