Addiction is an extreme disconnection from self. It does not start in the mind, it starts in the body. When trauma, stress and emotional discomfort gets lodged in the physical self, the substance seems like giving the only relief. However, recovery is not just about willpower or understanding intellectually. Recovery will require listening to what the body has been trying to say to us the whole time.
Body Based Therapy opens up a new option. Rather than evaluating addiction simply as a psychological or behavioral concern, somatic methods honor the potential of healing all parts of the organism; the nervous system, body, heart and mind working together. At Embodywise, we believe that real change will happen when we rediscover the inherent wisdom that sits in our body.
This article will review how somatic methods and body-centered practices work with the root cause of addiction to help people experiment beyond abstinence for a fullness of self.
Understanding Addiction: More Than a Brain Problem
Addiction is frequently characterized as a brain condition or disorder. While neurobiology is an important aspect of the addiction process, this perspective misses a critical point: addiction is a whole-body process that arises through our history of our relationship with ourselves, our environment, and our ability to self-regulate our physiology.
Most people who experience addiction have developed this deadly habit. They have experienced trauma, chronic stress, or enormous emotional pain. When the internal states become unbearable, drugs provide a temporary solution to stressful feelings. Alcohol calms anxiety. Opioids take away pain. Stimulants provide energy when depression is overwhelming. They work, for a moment, to regulate what appears to be unregulated.
The problem is what is happening below the surface. Repeated use of drugs, particularly illicit and strong substances, deregulate the body’s ability to regulate itself. The nervous system becomes dysregulated. The person becomes part of a cycle of needing to use a drug to feel normal. This is important because the person has lost touch with their own body’s wisdom about what it really requires.
This is the importance of using body-based therapy. Rather than fight, somatic therapies can work with the person directly in their body.
The Nervous System and Addiction: A Critical Connection
Your nervous system is the body’s stress response system: it operates in two primary states: the sympathetic nervous system (the system that activates fight-or-flight responses) and the parasympathetic nervous system (the brake that maintains a state of rest, recovery, and healing).
In the state of addiction, the system becomes stuck. Trauma, chronic stress, or perceived trauma, whether experienced briefly or in multiple ways, shifts the nervous system into a state of hyperarousal – the body remains in a fight or flight state, perceiving threat and danger despite looking safe. Along the way, dysregulated and stuck become painful. Substances offer an immediate (dis)comfort and physiologically and chemically shift the nervous system in a calmer state – even if it is temporary.
When someone enters recovery, there is the challenge of the nervous system learning to self-regulate again. Withdrawal is not merely about physical withdrawal – it is about the nervous system learning to function or flourish without any chemical components. This is why many people relapse during early recovery; they can’t tolerate the internal discomfort.
Body-based therapy is a direct intervention for nervous system dysregulation. Somatic practices train people to notice tension held in the body, awareness of stress triggers, and a systematic retraining of the nervous system back to a baseline of calm. This is not relaxing the body in a forced way. It’s the body relearning through experience that safety is possible.
How Trauma Fuels Addiction
Studies have shown an overwhelming connection between trauma and addiction. Individuals subjected to abuse, loss, violence, or other overwhelming events are considerably more likely to develop substance use disorders later in life.
Trauma doesn’t just impact the mind. It gets stored in the body. When something overwhelming happens, the body’s natural response is activated: either fight, flight, or freeze. In the typical recovery process, the nervous system is able to complete these responses and return itself to a baseline. When trauma is too overwhelming or repeated, the responses become incomplete. The nervous system becomes stuck in activation.
Years after the person may not even consciously recall the trauma, but the body recalls it. For example, a sound similar to the one encountered during the trauma triggers an automatic stress response. Physically feeling something similar will trigger profound anxiety. The body is attempting to protect itself from a threat that no longer exists.
Substances can act as a means to quiet these bodily responses. However, the primary dysregulation is still present. True healing requires returning to the point of where trauma is held: the body.
Somatic therapy provides a safe container to work directly with trauma through the nervous system. By working slowly with the sensations in the body and nonverbal movements, breath, and body positioning, the individual can finish the responses their body did not finish when the trauma occurred; the nervous system can learn, “Oh, I’m safe now!” The activation can be resolved.
Body-Based Therapy: Core Principles
1. The Body Holds Wisdom
Conventional addiction treatment typically addresses the mind: identifying triggers, challenging thoughts, and learning coping skills. These are valuable, but they ignore the body’s own intelligence.
Body-based therapy is based on a different premise: the body is not a problem to be managed through will alone. The body is a source of inherent wisdom. Symptoms such as cravings, anxiety, or numbness are not arbitrary. They are signals that relay information about what the person needs.
By engaging in somatic practice, the individual learns to listen to the signals in their body, rather than reacting by instantly reaching for a substance to relieve the discomfort. They pause and ask: What is my body saying? What does this anxiety mean? What would be beneficial to my nervous system in this moment?
The transition from fighting the body to listening to the body is transformational.
2. Sensation as the Primary Tool
Talk therapy is primarily concerned with language and thought, while somatic work places a premium on direct bodily sensation. The therapist invites the client to observe their physical experience: Where is there tension? Is there heat or coldness? Is there movement or stillness? How is the breath moving or not moving in the body?
By increasing their awareness of their internal sensations, individuals are newly connected to their body. Many people who use substances have learned to disassociate from their body so they can numb out. To reconnect with sensation is to reconnect with life itself.
3. Mindfulness and Presence
Body-based therapy focuses on training to be in the present, without necessarily attempting to alter or avoid what is. This is especially relevant in the recovery of addicts, where the habitual reaction to discomfort is avoidance or numbing.
Mindfulness practice enables people to learn how to be in uncomfortable sensations without automatic response. They get to know that a craving is a physical experience that will go away as long as they remain with it. Anxiety is a condition of the nervous system, which slowly subsides under the influence of compassionate attention, rather than additional dysregulation.
This ability to sit with pain without taking action on it is among the strongest skills recovery provides.
4. The Therapeutic Relationship
In somatic work, the therapeutic relationship itself is curative. The therapist offers what is often referred to as loving presence: a manner of being with the client that conveys a sense of safety, acceptance, and actual care.
This can be the first experience of unconditional positive regard to many people in recovery. The therapist does not criticize the desire, the humiliation, or the mixed emotions. They encounter the client as they are, as they are in their body, in their experience.
This association becomes a tool of regulation of the nervous system by itself. The ability to self-regulate starts to increase as the nervous system of the client gets to know that it is safe when in the presence of another person.
Specific Somatic Methods for Addiction
Hakomi Method of Assisted Self-Discovery
Hakomi is a somatic awareness approach that is combined with compassionate inquiry created by Ron Kurtz. The Hakomi practitioner engages with the body and breath of the client, observing the slightest changes in posture, tension or facial expression. Such minor variations are doors to the knowledge of fundamental beliefs and patterns.
When applied to the addiction context, Hakomi assists people in finding out the beliefs that form the basis of their substance use. Maybe, one consumes stimulants thinking that they are not good without chemical boost. Alcohol is perhaps the only license they grant themselves to unwind. Individuals can explore these core beliefs gently and possibly change them by giving them compassionate attention as they live in the body.
Hakomi is specifically useful in that it respects the inner wisdom of the client. Instead of the therapist dictating meanings, Hakomi assists the client to find his/her own meanings. The body knows what it needs. Hakomi assists in reaching that knowledge.
Somatic Experiencing
Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a model created by Peter Levine, which is specifically focused on the issue of trauma being trapped in the nervous system. SE acknowledges that in the wild, animals finish their survival reactions once the danger has been overcome. The activation is done by a deer that runs away and shakes and tremors. Human beings tend to disrupt this process because of the social conditioning or the intensity of the threat.
SE assists in filling these incomplete answers. By means of careful titration (acting with small portions of activation) and pendulation (altering awareness between resourced and dysregulated states), the nervous system slowly discharges the stored activation. The freeze response thaws. The fight reflex is finished.
In individuals in addiction recovery who have a history of trauma, SE offers a direct route to the solution of the dysregulation of the nervous system that frequently leads to substance use.
Breathwork and Vagal Regulation
The vagus nerve, a nerve that passes through the body down to the brain is very important in the regulation of the nervous system. When the vagus nerve is stimulated normally (so-called vagal tone), the nervous system is able to change the sympathetic stimulation to parasympathetic relaxation.
Basic breathing exercises are capable of stimulating the vagus nerve and altering the state of the nervous system. Box breathing (breathing in four counts, holding four counts, exhaling four counts) or longer exhales than inhales trigger the parasympathetic response. To a person who feels craving, anxious, or otherwise irritated activation, these devices provide direct control of the nervous system without drugs.
Movement and Dance
Sensation is not only stored in the body but also in movement. Trauma is usually characterized by frozen or partial movements. Supportive, gentle movement practices are beneficial to the body as they allow the body to complete what was disrupted.
Dance/movement therapy within the addiction recovery context assists people in communicating feelings that they may not be able to articulate, releasing nervous system stimulation into the body, and re-engaging with physical pleasure and agency in healthy ways.
Grounding Techniques
When the nervous system is out of control, people become out of touch with their body and the present. Grounding methods remind us of the direct physical experience: the feet touching the floor, the water on the hands, the feel of the things in the immediate environment.
These basic habits break the cycle of craving and get the individual back to the present, out of the internal suffering or expectation that fuels substance consumption.
The Science Behind Body-Based Recovery
Nervous System Rebalancing
Research shows that substance use dysregulates the brain’s reward system and disrupts the autonomic nervous system. Studies examining somatic therapy for addiction reveal that these approaches help restore nervous system balance.
Individuals practicing somatic techniques show measurable improvements in:
- Heart rate variability (a marker of nervous system flexibility)
- Stress hormone levels (cortisol and other markers of dysregulation)
- Sleep quality and duration
- Emotional regulation capacity
- Reduced craving intensity
Interoceptive Awareness
Interoception refers to the ability to detect and interpret internal states in the body. Addiction research indicates that individuals diagnosed with substance use disorders generally have deficits in interoceptive processing. They don’t accurately experience what is happening in the body until they reach a state of complete crisis.
Somatic therapy engages interoceptive awareness directly. By practicing human experiences that pay particular attention to bodily sensations, the neural pathways that support interoceptive awareness become strengthened. As interoceptive awareness raises, individuals can identify cravings, emotional dysregulation or stress earlier and take action, before the point of needing to use substances or engage in alternative response behaviors.
Prefrontal Cortex Activation
The brain’s primary executive area is the prefrontal cortex, which plays an important role in impulse control, decision-making, and behavior. Chronic use of substances will diminish the prefrontal area’s function. Any type of recovery will require the prefrontal area to rebuild these circuits.
Somatic practices that focus on being in the moment, being mindful, and making conscious choices ignite and strengthen the functioning of the prefrontal cortex. Eventually the neural networks that underlie healthy regulation will be rebuilt.
Integrating Body-Based Therapy Into Comprehensive Recovery
Body-based therapy is most effective as part of comprehensive recovery that includes medical support where needed, peer community, cognitive and emotional work, and life skills development. Here’s how somatic approaches complement a full recovery program:
Week One and Beyond: Establishing Safety
Recovery begins with establishing safety in the nervous system. Before processing trauma or developing new skills, the person needs to feel grounded. Somatic techniques like grounding exercises, breathwork, and safe container creation help establish this foundation.
Early Recovery: Building Awareness
As the person stabilizes, body-based therapy helps them develop awareness of their patterns. What does a craving feel like in the body? What physical sensations precede relapse thinking? By developing this awareness, individuals can intervene earlier in the cycle.
Deeper Work: Processing Trauma
Once stabilized, somatic therapy provides tools for processing the trauma that often underlies addiction. Working directly with nervous system activation, allowing completion of incomplete responses, and releasing stored trauma at the body level.
Long-Term Integration: Building Resilience
As recovery progresses, somatic practices help build resilience. Individuals learn to recognize dysregulation earlier, apply self-regulation techniques confidently, and maintain nervous system balance even during life stressors.
What Recovery Through Body-Based Therapy Actually Looks Like
Healing by means of somatic does not imply that the individual does not have cravings or painful feelings. Rather, they form a changed relationship with their inner experience.
One may still experience anxiety, but instead of reaching out to a substance at once, he or she becomes aware of the anxiety in his or her body. They are aware of the tightness in the chest, the rapid breathing. They pause. They breathe consciously. They are based on the here and now. They contract or extend to release the activation. The nervous system becomes relaxed, the desire to use decreases.
Grief, anger, or shame may be felt by someone during the recovery work. Instead of these emotions being unbearable, they are information. The mourning signifies that something was important. The anger implies that there was a boundary that was crossed. The shame is painful but can be observed and worked on instead of being subdued by using drugs.
Above all, people in the body-based recovery start to feel at home in their own skin. They re-unite with their body as a source of pleasure, wisdom and connection instead of something to avoid. This radical change of dissociation to embodiment is what renders recovery sustainable.
Common Challenges in Body-Based Recovery
Resistance to Sensation
To a person whose major coping style was numbing or dissociation, it can be initially overwhelming to be back in touch with sensation. The art of the therapist is to titrate this process, to start with a small piece of sensation awareness and to increase the window of tolerance.
Trauma Activation
As the body starts to work on the stored trauma, temporary rise in symptoms such as anxiety, intrusive memories or nightmares may take place. It is a natural process of processing and needs the expertise of a professional. A good somatic practitioner understands how to take his time in this work.
Grief
As the nervous system heals and the person becomes more present, they often encounter genuine grief about what the addiction cost them. Time lost, relationships damaged, health compromised. This grief, while painful, is actually a sign of healing. It means the person is finally feeling what they’ve been avoiding.
Patience with Process
When the nervous system is recovering and the individual is more in the present, they tend to face the actual sorrow of what the addiction took away. Lost time, broken relationships, and health. This sorrow, though aching, is in fact a healing process. It is the individual experiencing what he/she has been evading.
Building Your Somatic Recovery Practice
If you’re interested in exploring body-based approaches to addiction recovery, consider these elements:
Find a Qualified Practitioner
Somatic approaches are not known to all therapists. Seek out a person who has been trained in Hakomi, Somatic Experiencing, or other well-known somatic modalities. Credential checks and inquire about their addiction experience in particular.
Start with Simple Practices
You do not have to start with hard work. Basic grounding practices, mindful breathing, and awareness of physical sensation can be life-changing. There are apps, books, and online resources that provide instructions on how to start practices.
Create Safety First
Safety should be established before going deep. This could be by establishing a physical environment in which you feel safe, finding a person whom you can trust to help you recover, or by using grounding techniques until they become a habit.
Be Patient with Your Body
Something painful has happened to your body. It learnt to defend itself by dissociation or numbing. Reconnecting is a slow process, and it is done with compassion and patience.
Connect to Community
Somatic practices are strong, yet they are most viable in community. Connection with other people on the same path gives mutual support and accountability whether through group classes, support groups, or a recovery program.
The Path Forward: Embodiment as Recovery
Recovery does not only mean not taking substances. It is about getting used to living in your body once more. To know your feet on the ground. To feel the breath coming in and out. To feel pleasure, togetherness, and security with oneself and others.
Body-based therapy provides a way of achieving true wholeness since it recognizes a basic fact: we cannot reason ourselves out of addiction. Our will cannot drag us into sobriety. The healing process involves encountering ourselves at the place where we are: in the body, in the nervous system, in the present moment.
We have faith in somatic wisdom at Embodywise. We are convinced that you have in your body the power of healing which no material thing can offer. The task is to re-establish contact with that wisdom, to hear what your body has been attempting to say to you, and to learn to trust yourself once again.
We welcome you to contact us in case you are willing to learn more about body-based approaches to recovery. Embodywise is available to help you on your path to embodied healing, whether it is through our Hakomi training programs or specialized addiction professional workshops, or by individual referrals to qualified somatic practitioners.
It is the journey of liberation that is not about escaping but returning home to oneself. Your body is waiting. It is about to show you what a real recovery is like.
Resources and Next Steps
Embodywise has programs and training to meet the needs of an individual seeking recovery options, a mental health professional wishing to enhance your practice with somatic approaches, or an organization wishing to incorporate body-based approaches into addiction treatment.
Become part of our community of somatic practitioners and discover how body-based therapy can change the addiction recovery process. Reach out to us to get to know more about training programs, special resources, and where to locate qualified somatic practitioners in your locality.
