Trauma is not just a memory in your head. It is a chemistry stored throughout your entire body.
In this clip from Know Thyself, the conversation explores the emerging serotonin hypothesis, which suggests that up to 95% of your serotonin is actually produced in the gut, not the brain. And because serotonin cannot cross the blood-brain barrier, much of its impact happens at the cellular level, in your muscles, your fascia, and your nervous system.
When someone is traumatized, serotonin constricts the vessels of the body, which is part of why trauma feels so physical. It tightens, it locks, it lingers. At the same time, research from Bessel van der Kolk has shown that during traumatic moments, Broca’s area, the speech center of the brain, actually shuts down. Which is why talking about trauma is often not enough to release it.
This is why practices like yoga, breathwork, and somatic movement can reach places that words simply cannot. The body remembers what the mind cannot always say.
Where in your body do you think you might be holding something words have never been able to reach?
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