Somatic Exercises to Release Emotions: Try Stillness First

One of the simplest somatic exercises to release emotions is stillness. A 15-minute exercise, step by step, and why lying still lets feelings move.

Rytis Violeta By Rytis & Violeta
Updated
A woman's hand resting on the knee of her jeans, her other hand resting beside it, in warm golden evening light.

You’ve watched the videos. Shaking it out. Tapping on your collarbone. Humming. Stretching your hips on a mat until something is supposed to let go. Some of it felt good. Some of it felt like one more thing you were doing wrong.

And the knot under your ribs is still there tonight.

Maybe you don’t need another exercise where you do more. Maybe you need the one where you finally stop.

What somatic exercises for emotions are really for

“Somatic” just means “of the body.” Any exercise that brings your attention out of your head and into your body is somatic.

And that’s the part that matters most. Not the shaking or the tapping. The attention.

A feeling is something physical. Pressure in the chest. A knot in the stomach. Heat rising into the face. The story about it comes a moment later, from the mind: who did this, what it means, how to get rid of it. As long as you are in the story, you’re not with the feeling.

A body exercise can get you out of the story and into the body. It can also, quietly, turn into another way of getting rid of the feeling fast, shaking it off or breathing it out until it’s gone, and that’s understandable. There’s a phrase for it in our book: “a cleverer way of pushing.” And we say the same about breathing: “Deep breathing can be a beautiful thing, and it can also become one more pacifier.”

Why stillness lets emotions move

Here is the paradox. The less you move, the more can move.

The form we teach was born in a small village in Bali, where Rytis spent a long time alone, studying what happened inside him. Every time he tried to turn his attention inward, the mind started to wriggle, and so did the body. He wanted to scratch, to shift, to move his eyes, to fiddle with something. All of it pulled him away from the feeling.

So he did the simplest thing he could think of. He lay down. He covered his eyes, so they wouldn’t blink or roll or catch the light. He laid his hands down, palms toward the floor. And he did not let his body move. Then he watched what rose.

That’s the whole idea. When you stop moving on purpose, nothing is left to cover the feeling. And when a feeling is allowed to move through the body, it does what everything in nature does. It rises, it changes, it moves.

Your body may still move on its own. A tremble in the jaw. A wave through the whole body. Tears. That’s different. You’re not making it happen. You’re letting it.

Body exercises to release emotions: the Feeling Session, step by step

This is the heart of what we teach in every Feeling Session, with fifty to a hundred people lying down in silence, each in their own place. Read it through once. Then put your phone face down and do it. Start with ten or fifteen minutes.

Practice15 min

The Feeling Session

  1. Find a place where nobody will need you for twenty minutes. Your bed is fine. The floor is better, with a blanket or a mat under you. Turn your phone face down, or put it in another room.
  2. Lie down on your back. Let the floor carry you. Legs straight or slightly apart. Nothing to arrange, nothing to get right.
  3. Cover your eyes. A scarf, a sleep mask, a folded T-shirt.
  4. Put your arms by your sides, palms down. Palms down tells the body there is nothing to grab and nothing to hold on to. You are not reaching for anything.
  5. Close your mouth and leave the breath alone. Don’t breathe deeply. Don’t count. Don’t use a technique. Whatever beats your heart can take care of your breathing too.
  6. Now stop moving. Completely. No scratching, no adjusting, no shifting the leg. When the body is still, the feelings that movement usually covers begin to rise.
  7. Ask one question: where is it heaviest in my body right now? Not yesterday. Not in general. Right now.
  8. Put all of your attention there, and keep it there. You are not trying to change it. You are not waiting for it to leave. You are simply with it, the way you would sit with a friend who is crying.
  9. Don’t follow the thoughts. They will come. Stories, memories, plans, opinions about this exercise. Let them pass like cars on a street. The moment you notice you are in a story, come back to the place in the body. No blame. Just come back.
  10. Don’t run. When it gets stronger, and it may, this is the moment everything in you will want to move, to open your eyes, to get up and do something useful. Stay. If you can, stay one more minute.

When you finish, don’t jump up. Take the cover off your eyes slowly. Feel the floor under you. Notice the room.

What you might notice: the pressure may grow, then shift, from the chest to the throat, hot then cold. Your jaw may tremble. Tears may come without a story. Some feel nothing the first time, or only boredom and an itchy nose. Boredom is a feeling too. Both are fine.

Somatic release: four traps that keep it stuck

We have fallen into every one of these ourselves.

  • Feeling it so that it goes away. You find the heavy place and secretly wait for it to leave. That’s still pushing. Feel it the way you would listen to someone you love, not the way you would wait for a bus.
  • Trying to relax. Relaxing is also a way of controlling. If tension rises, let it rise and watch it.
  • Naming it. “This is my abandonment issue from when I was six.” The moment you name it, you’re back in your head. A sensation in the chest is enough.
  • Breathing it away. In a session, the breath is left alone.

And you are always the one in charge. If it gets to be too much, stop: eyes open, sit up, look around the room, drink some water. If what you carry is very heavy, a trauma or a fresh loss, keep the sessions short.

If fifteen minutes on the floor moved something, our book holds this practice and everything we’ve learned around it, so that when it gets heavy again, you won’t have to run from it.

How to make it part of your week

  • Lie down once, with no goal. Do it when something hits you, and also sometimes when nothing does. That’s when older things have room to rise.
  • Come back for ten seconds at a time. In a shop queue. In the middle of an argument. On the edge of the bed before the day starts pulling. Close your eyes, find the strongest sensation, change nothing.
  • Wait with the big moves. Don’t send the message or quit the job while the feeling is still moving.

If the knot has been there for years, read how to release emotions trapped in your body. If you want the bigger picture, start with how to process emotions. And if your body seems to hold the tears back no matter what, this one is for you: I want to cry but I can’t. Other feelings have their own pages in Emotions.

A blanket on the floor. A scarf over your eyes. Hands resting at your sides. There’s nothing to perform here. Whatever has been waiting in you gets a quiet room, for as long as you choose to stay.

Keep reading

Emotions How to Release Emotions Trapped in Your Body and Let Them Move You don't push a trapped emotion out, you feel it, lying still. How to release emotions trapped in your body: the signs, why they stay, and how to begin. Emotions How to Process Emotions: Feel Them in Your Body, Not Your Head Thinking and talking haven't helped? How to process emotions without understanding them first: find where the feeling sits, and stay. A 10-minute start. Emotions Shame Stored in the Body: Where It Hides and How to Let It Move A hot face, a sinking belly, a wish to disappear. Where shame stored in the body hides, why running keeps it there, and how to stay with it instead. Emotions How to Release Anger Stored in the Body (Without Hurting Anyone) No screaming, no hitting pillows. How to release anger stored in the body: where swallowed anger hides as heat or trembling, and why it stays until felt. Emotions How to Let Go of Resentment: Feel It Instead of Replaying It Forgiving in your head hasn't worked and it keeps coming back. How to let go of resentment by going to where it sits: the jaw, the throat, the chest. Emotions Where Is Sadness Stored in the Body? How to Let It Move Where is sadness stored in the body? Often in the throat and behind the breastbone. Why it stays there, and a five-minute way to let it move.