The body that grew up holding its breath

By Rawya El Gammal

When a child is born, the parent is on their own journey. They may be experiencing hormonal changes, health issues, grief, loss of a job or any number of things. These realities persist throughout all phases of raising a child with added challenges, and each child experiences a different version of their parent.

They are ideally brought into a home that offers safety and an environment capable of regulating their needs because their nervous system is underdeveloped.

Hopefully, the household is in a position to provide healthy attachments and communication, and parents are supported in a way that enables them to support the newborn. That is what parents strive to achieve, but even in the best homes, the difference between first, middle or youngest has an impact.

Children are incredibly perceptive. They pick up on tension, nuances, facial expressions. While they may not consciously remember what did or did not happen during early infancy, their bodies do.

Babies need eye contact for healthy attachment, and their development depends on it. If the household or family members become or are perceived as a source of danger, the environment starts to feel unsafe, and symptoms possibly of unidentified trauma begin to emerge.

As life unfolds, you grow up, might find yourself telling a story to close friends, and suddenly the room goes quiet. Their shocked expressions make you realize that what you experienced was actually traumatic. Or maybe (someone whether) a friend, family member, or stranger responds to someone’s pain with, “Why can’t you just see the positive side of things? You are so negative”, which is a heart wrenching modern toxic positivity response.

Sometimes you overreact to a situation, and later wonder why you responded that way. It didn’t seem justified, or maybe, while brushing your teeth with music playing, a sudden ripple goes through your body, your heart races, and you forget how you even got to the bathroom. These are all signs of unresolved trauma in the body.

Generally, people want to be surrounded by those who lift them up, but few take the time to understand, unless they too have been in that stuck place, where thoughts loop endlessly. The ‘stuck place’ life coaches claim they can fix, but often cannot. Then one day you look in the mirror and wonder, “Where have I been? When did this begin?”

At this point, I invite you to take a pause, take a breath, take off your shoes and wiggle your toes.
Rock your feet forward and backward.
If you have a pencil, small ball, or foam object nearby, place it under your feet, wake them up.
Find a position that feels toasty, warm, grounded, safe and place both feet on the floor to ground you.

In the heat of the moment during an event, we react either by fighting, fleeing, freezing or submitting.  Freezing is a state that holds us hostage without our awareness. We lose parts of the narrative or of ourselves. Based on our nervous system’s history, we can never fully prepare but eventually can do something about it.

It’s important to witness ourselves, to track our systems, and to learn self-regulation with deep awareness. This doesn’t mean reliving the trauma. 

Part of a therapist’s work is not only observing, but to self-sense and track the body’s movement from expansion to contraction finding that “still point” where healing can begin.

The body has a natural ability to recalibrate itself. Organs do this every second of every day, until something traumatic throws the nervous system off course.

Some people know how to self-regulate and bring themselves back to neutral. But for many juggling life’s stresses, they compartmentalize. The body freezes, creating what we in body work call an energy cyst (holding that emotion on a cellular level). With the help of a skilled therapist through dialogue, images, sensation, grounding, and movement that part can begin to unravel, piece by piece even when the origin of the trauma might lie elsewhere.

Somatic Experiencing focuses on biology, not our story. This kind of healing becomes accessible only through curiosity, rest, safety, and play not necessarily in that order, so as recommended in SE please pause for a moment, take a breath and look around the room, can you see something that can give you a sense of peace? Sit with it for a moment.

I would like you to imagine a boxer, shown in ultra-slow motion, getting punched.
The impact ripples down the body and stops somewhere along the kinetic chain, it can reside in the chest, under the knee, in a toe, the liver, the spine… anywhere.

If the boxer gets some physio and only gets neck treatment, and no one follows the impact down the chain, pain will persist and not necessarily in the neck.


This applies to emotional trauma as well. We often hold our breath in shock, lean into our stomachs, change posture, or scrunch our faces. Everyone is unique in stature and reaction.  If someone has poor posture, that emotional energy can get trapped at the weakest intersection. They might tell everyone they are “fine,” but over time, symptoms show up and they may end up being medicated for depression, or liver dysfunction or any other diagnosis, avoiding the energy cyst, where trauma has resided.

I have linked a 2-minute Youtube video and it can be a trigger for some.  So please be mindful with yourself and make a decision whether you would like to watch it.

This video illustrates how the body responds to impact and breath holding after a punch in slow motion.

I invite you again to take a moment, shake your body out and take a deep breath.

When a person visits a therapist or shares their story, they activate the sympathetic nervous system in narration and severe stress can trigger the dorsal vagal system to create a shut down, a sign that the body is in over load. When the nervous system is overwhelmed, we can freeze, fight, run or submit, and these are survival responses.

In somato-emotional bodywork, a therapist can feel the body and organs go into contraction and expansion, and when each organ’s motility/rhythm is off course.

Working with the body with miniscule nudges helps calibrate the system to increase capacity and stimulate the ventral vagal system.

Recovery from trauma isn’t easy. Some people don’t even realize that they are living with trauma because they are functional, but trauma shows up in daily life, in feelings of loneliness even when surrounded by loved ones, or by ignoring messages, wanting to disappear, anger, frustration, hopelessness, depression, irritability, anxiety, insomnia, chronic pain, overwhelm and more.

Triggers also come in all shapes and sizes, through scent, sound, touch and memories.


Sometimes we feel anxious or overwhelmed for no clear reason.
It doesn’t matter how much you analyze, it is just felt in the body.

How are you feeling right now? Still grounded? Are you holding your breath? Are you tensing your body reading about the symptoms? Pause for a minute and check into how you are feeling right now, and give permission to yourself to just breathe and look around your room.

Our bodies are designed to protect us. The amygdala (our internal smoke detector) activates the sympathetic nervous system, releasing adrenaline so we can survive. This raises heart rate and reroutes blood to muscles. Everything else including memory and decision-making shut down.  How we react depends on the situation and our capacity to withhold stress.

The hippocampus tries organizing the memory of an event but sometimes can’t and other times it can, just depends how the body perceives the event.

If someone lives in a chronic threatening environment, they become hypervigilant not by choice, but because that becomes their new normal. Sometimes the smallest thing can trigger a huge reaction, an adrenaline surge, an emotional wave, or even a physical symptom.

Those in therapy may learn to pause and observe their reactions but still not understand what triggered them. Trauma can live in dormant parts of us, waiting until we have the capacity to address it.  There is also a difference between what triggers you, and what gets triggered within you. As you put the puzzle pieces together, you begin to understand without reliving the entire trauma.

When you recognize a trigger, you can ground yourself ahead of time.
Start with a long, slow exhale, lowering the heart rate if anxious, and start to orient yourself to the environment you are in, here and now, this gives you the ability to deal with challenges.

To build an awareness, start by noticing any tightness, is your body shaking, trembling, going numb or is your heart racing, filling with anger or critical self-talk?

These aren’t overreactions, this is your body’s automatic survival response.  When overwhelm becomes too much, the body shuts down.

Later, in a safe environment, you might wonder, why didn’t I run? The truth is, your nervous system made that call for survival.

PTSD is a form of auto-repeat, your system becomes conditioned to stay in survival mode.

Behaviors like eating disorders, substance use, overworking, or self-harm are survival strategies. They start as a way to manage pain, but can spiral into danger. Shame creeps in, and what started as control becomes chaos and all of it began as a way to self-regulate.

Parents often expect children and teens to “will” their way through struggles and addictions, but willpower requires capacity, and that comes from a regulated nervous system.

The prefrontal cortex responsible for decision-making only works when we are functional and not in shut down. That’s why healing requires integrated therapy. Modalities like CBT may not work alone if trauma is present, because the person may lack the capacity to create change.

Some people in long-term therapy may wonder why they still feel stuck or why certain issues keep resurfacing. They may have already worked with specific parts of themselves the ones willing to show up in therapy, lower their guard, and express what they feel. Yet other parts may remain dormant quiet spectators or cautious listeners still too vulnerable to share due to fear of shame, judgment, or past pain.

In IFS, it’s important to honor and get permission from all parts before moving forward.

True healing happens when every part feels safe enough to be seen and heard, and when there is enough internal capacity and external support to work with those quieter, hidden aspects in a safe environment.

Life can be messy, sticky, and sometimes an unbearable journey, remember it is a journey not a destination. We may strive for excellence, but life meets us with interesting adventures and paths to uncover even if exciting, they too can be messy and sticky.

It is important to become aware, and learn regulate the nervous system by doing the things that make you feel good at the end of a tough day such as taking a nature walk, humming to a tune, taking a hot shower, sitting with a favorite pet or friend, and combining that with breathing, therapy, movement, dance, meditation, mindfulness etc., It is finding what works when things creep up, taking the time to address them and being kind to oneself.

Give permission to yourself to pause and be your best witness.

Rawya El Gammal is an Integrative Rehab Sports Therapist. She has been working in Somato-Emotional Body work for over 20 years, is Somatic Experiencing (SE)Trained, IFS informed, a Heart Math Trauma Resilient Practitioner, MBSR and E-Motion instructor, studied Food as Medicine, among other modalities supporting the nervous system.