Not All Somatic Work Is Trauma-Informed: A Framework for Clarity
Both trauma-informed care and somatic practices have gained attention in therapy, bodywork, and healthcare. While they are often mentioned together, they are distinct concepts. Understanding how they overlap — and where they diverge — can help practitioners use them more clearly and ethically.
What Is Trauma-Informed Care?
Trauma-informed care (TIC) is a framework that recognizes the widespread impact of trauma and aims to avoid retraumatization while fostering safety, empowerment, and choice. Rather than a set of techniques, it’s a lens — a way of approaching all interactions with an awareness of how trauma shapes the nervous system, behavior, and relationships.
TIC emphasizes safety (physical, emotional, relational), collaboration (minimizing power imbalances), empowerment (supporting autonomy and choice), and understanding (acknowledging trauma’s effects and adaptations).
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What Is a Somatic Approach?
“Somatic” simply means “of the body.” A somatic approach brings attention to felt bodily experience — including movement, breath, sensation, and nonverbal communication — rather than focusing only on thoughts, insight, or language.
This matters in trauma work because trauma often bypasses cognition. It lives in the body. The nervous system reacts long before the mind can make meaning. That’s why working somatically is essential for many people. But that doesn’t mean all somatic work is trauma-informed.
Three Categories of Somatic Practices
Not all somatic practices are created equal when it comes to trauma-informed care. Rather than sorting them into “good” or “bad,” it’s more helpful to ask: How is this practice structured? And does it support or undermine the principles of trauma-informed work?
1. Practices That Are Trauma-Informed by Design
These methods were built with trauma recovery in mind. They prioritize interoceptive awareness, relational safety, and the pacing of choice. They understand that healing comes not from pushing through distress, but from reclaiming agency and rebuilding trust in the body. Somatic Experiencing (SE) and NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) are examples. These approaches don’t just involve the body — they work with the body’s signals, and they respect the adaptive strategies people carry.
2. Practices That Can Be Made Trauma-Informed
Some somatic methods — like yoga, breathwork, and massage therapy — were not originally developed with trauma in mind. But with thoughtful adaptation, they can become deeply trauma-informed.
These practices aren’t trauma-informed by default, but they can be, when offered with nuance, humility, and respect for the nervous system.
3. Practices That Are Incompatible with Trauma-Informed Care
Some approaches, by their very nature, conflict with trauma-informed principles. These practices tend to force people into overwhelming states, treat intensity or catharsis as the goal, strip away choice or rely on authority, override pacing or interoceptive cues, and assume more sensation is always better.
High-intensity breathwork without preparation or regulation, “release” techniques that impose outcomes rather than invite awareness, and rigid posture correction, aggressive manipulation, or “no pain, no gain” bodywork fall into this category. These practices may be marketed as healing — but they often replicate the dynamics of trauma: something is done to the person, rather than with them.
Final Thoughts
Trauma-informed care is not a set of tools — it’s a philosophy grounded in safety, agency, and trust. Somatic work can be profound — but only when it aligns with a person’s capacity, choice, and nervous system.
Some methods are built to be trauma-informed. Others can be adapted. And some, by their nature, are not appropriate for trauma recovery. The difference lies less in what is done, and more in how — and why.
Author
Dr. Mark Olson holds an M.A. in Education and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Illinois, specializing in cognitive and behavioral neuropsychology and neuroanatomy. His research examined memory, attention, eye movements, and aesthetic preferences. He is a NARM® practitioner, aquatic therapist, former director of the Pacific Center for Awareness and Bodywork, and a published author on chronic pain and trauma-informed care. He teaches courses at Dr-Olson.com that bring neuroscience and relational skill-building together to help people understand themselves—and each other—with more clarity and compassion.
