Mind-Body Dualism & Somatic Trauma Healing

What is somatic healing exactly? What about mind-body dualism? Was Rene Descartes wrong? And is trauma really stored in the body?

Let’s discuss…

The word “somatic” has its origins, like all English words of lore, in the Greek word “soma” which means “body.” In ancient Greek philosophy, when materialism and idealism could humor each other, the word “soma” referred to the physical body with separate words for “psyche” (mind or soul) and “pneuma” (unconscious mind or spirit). In New Latin, “soma” further solidified its meaning of the physical body.

Importantly, let’s not confuse distinct words and etymologies with distinct as in separate entities that are not connected altogether. Enter the psychological materialism of Rene Descartes…

Mathematician and philosopher René Descartes proposed the concept of mind-body dualism, arguing that the mind and body are fundamentally distinct entities. He believed the mind was a non-material, thinking substance (“res cogitans”), while the body was a physical, extended substance (“res extensa”). This mind-body dualism isn’t entirely wrong nor is it entirely correct.

The mind and body are indeed distinct. They represent the ultimate dualism: spirit and matter. In this understanding, Descartes was right and proposed intriguing and powerful thoughts for philosophy, psychology, and science.

That this distinction means and implies a lack of connection among mind-body dualism, however, has been proven wildly incorrect. With modern neuroscience, we now know the mind and body are connected.

Neuroscience is forever a few thousand years behind mysticism though, in which case of course they are connected. The spirit and matter duality is but an illusion. The distinction is prevalent, but they are dependent on each other. Spirit embodies matter giving matter meaning, a life force. Matter bodies spirit giving spirit meaning, a describable force.

The accepted belief that the mind and body are distinct with no connection has led to hundreds of years of materialist understandings that have held back psychology significantly. Psychologists and scientists, without even being able to coherently define “the mind” had convinced themselves that mental matters were not relevant to the body and vice versa. And don’t even think about emotions as psychologists had no idea what to do with that little concept for some time.

Importantly, you do not need a neuroscientist or a scholarly researcher to prove this connection to you. The highest form of intelligence and your greatest source of wisdom is always your own contemplation. When my dad died a couple of months ago, I had the worst digestive system I’ve ever experienced for weeks. My gut was a wreck in ways I’ll leave out of this article, but I think you can pick up what I’m putting down. My bodily reaction to psychological shock and deep emotional grief is not unique, nor is it unique to grief or death specially. We’ve all had experiences of butterflies in the stomach when we’re excited, a rumbling stomach when we’re nervous, a flushed face when embarrassed, sweaty palms when scared, goosebumps down the skin of your arms when you hear a powerful singer or song that moves you, etc. Even in the way we describe something as “moving you” when it’s emotionally and psychologically powerful…

The body, matter, is the vehicle for spirit, the mind, to know itself by having experiences through sensations.

We heal trauma or just heal generally through the body, because it’s about feeling. We need to feel to express, to be fully here now. Most of us are not here now, in the present where we are now safe or where we have the ability to make a new choice that’s better for us, because the present moment is too frightening, so we get stuck in the past or future. This is the root of all trauma. We lose parts of us, our souls or our psyches, to the past.

William Reich shaped the birth of somatic psychology in the west in the early 20th century. He proposed that psychological trauma is stored in the body, not just the mind, and developed techniques to release emotional tension through physical movement and breathwork. Reich’s work with the seven belts of tension in particular, at least in my opinion, is so important but often overlooked in most somatic therapy spaces. I’ll explore those belts in a separate blog post but I work closely with these! His work laid the foundation for body-oriented psychotherapy, which later evolved into somatic psychology. In the 70s and 80s, this mind-body connection (rather than separatism) was explored further, particularly in the context of trauma healing.

During that period in the 70s, Somatic Experiencing (SE) was developed by Peter Levine. SE is a pioneering process that focuses on resolving trauma by working with the body's natural ability to regulate stress responses. SE has helped somatic healing become mainstream and has evidential support in its effectiveness in treating PTSD symptoms, emotional distress, and physical tension.

Levine was inspired by observing how animals recover from life-threatening situations without developing chronic trauma symptoms. Our fight-flight-freeze responses are not unique amongst the animal kindgom. What’s unique is that humans get stuck in these responses, which is a topic I’ll explore further in another blog.

Trauma is stress that overloads the nervous system. But it is a normal survival strategy as our bodies adapt or react to situations or environments to best help us at that time. When our mind rationally knows that we are no longer in a threatening situation though, our bodies do not know this. Thus, the best of somatic healing, work with an individual to heal trauma by engaging the body and the trauma response cycles that were never completed. Somatic healing is importantly unique to each individual as these impulses that were never completed and are “stuck” in the autonomic nervous system are going to be unique. So many of the cookie cutter “somatic poses” on Instagram Reels are not super helpful for true healing.

Importantly, trauma cannot be healed by just talking about it and that is often actually a form of re-traumatization that keeps us stuck in its cycles. Where somatic healing that works with the body first is a bottom-up approach, talk therapy that works with the mind first is a top-down approach and has many limitations in healing trauma or encouraging true long lasting change for this very reason, along with the fact that most therapists wildly receive no training in trauma, somatics, the latest in neuroscience, or even crisis intervention (which is important for those whose trauma is acute and recent, not just developmental and from the past).

I believe narrative coherence is an important part of healing so I do not dismiss top-down approaches or mind-first modalities, which I believe many in the somatic healing space foolishly do. That take is also one of mind-body dualism or disconnection, which is what we should be avoiding and the true revelation of the somatic trauma healing renaissance we’re in! The mind and body are connected, they are united… Never trust someone who just swaps one foolish view for its opposite.

It’s the mind and body connecting with each other that engage the whole, the spirit. And the spirit is healing. It’s the life force that flows and releases all those defensive layers, emotional blocks, and compensation patterns we layer onto our identities and our hearts.

I weave in somatic healing in almost everything I offer, even if it’s not an explicit somatic session, as it’s in engaging the body’s sensations, the “felt sense,” that we can get closer to how we feel (our inner world), build our capacity to be compassionately present with our emotions and experiences, and become more open to life. And that’s healing.

-Susan Reis