When the Body Remembers: Fascia, Trauma & the Return to Movement
Recently I had the honour of presenting to counsellors from the Australian Counselling Association (ACA) about trauma-informed counselling & understanding the nervous system.
If trauma is an experience — why does it live so clearly in the body?
To answer that, we need to move beneath thoughts, beneath emotions… into tissue.
Trauma is not only remembered — it is organised
In psychology we often say trauma lives in implicit memory.
But in the body, trauma lives in pattern.
When a threat occurs, the nervous system prepares for survival:
muscles contract
breathing changes
heart rate rises
fascia stiffens
perception narrows
The body mobilises to fight or run.
Researchers in somatic psychology, including Peter Levine, describe trauma not as the event itself, but as an incomplete biological response.
If the organism cannot escape, the nervous system shifts toward immobilisation.
The survival energy — meant for action — has nowhere to go.
So it stays.
Not as a thought.
Not even as an emotion.
But as tension.
The role of fascia — our living architecture
Fascia is not simply connective tissue.
It is a sensory organ, a communication network, and a memory-bearing structure.
Modern osteopathic and anatomical research shows fascia contains:
mechanoreceptors (movement perception)
interoceptors (internal body sensing)
nociceptors (pain receptors)
autonomic nervous system fibres
The nervous system is literally embedded inside the fascia.
When sympathetic activation occurs — the “ready for danger” state — muscle tone increases.
Fascia adapts to this tone.
If the defensive response cannot complete, the tissue remains slightly contracted.
Over time:
physiology becomes posture
posture becomes emotion
emotion becomes personality
This aligns with clinical observations described by trauma psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk — the body keeps the score not metaphorically, but biologically.
Stress shapes the body
Chronic stress does not only affect mood.
It reshapes structure.
Long-term activation of the stress system:
increases baseline muscle contraction
reduces tissue hydration
decreases fascial elasticity
alters breathing patterns
sensitises the threat circuitry
The body becomes organised around protection.
And the nervous system begins to interpret safety as unfamiliar.
In polyvagal theory, developed by Stephen Porges, this means the system struggles to return to regulation because the organism never completed the original cycle of mobilisation → discharge → rest.
So the survival energy remains stored in the tissues.
Why movement releases emotion
When fascia lengthens slowly and safely, receptors signal to the brain:
The threat is over.
The nervous system then allows completion of previously inhibited responses:
trembling
heat
spontaneous breath
emotional release
deep fatigue followed by calm
This is not psychological catharsis. It is biological resolution.
The body finishes what it could not finish before.
My personal encounter with this truth
I went to my first yoga class 20 years ago for a very simple reason —
I wanted to do the splits again, like when I was a little girl doing gymnastics.
I was looking for flexibility - I found peace.
Every time I left the mat, my anxiety had disappeared.
It sparked my curiosity and I started to study yoga, anatomy, from the body I was led to the study of the mind and emotions. And years later what the ancient teachings knew I relearnt through nervous system regulation and somatic trainings. Years later I understood why yoga was such an incredible practice. It has followed me all these years, from my youth, to pregnant, post-partum and in my mid-forties.
Mindful postures gently load and unload fascial tissue while maintaining a sense of safety.
This allows the nervous system to reorganise.
Yoga became less about stretching and more about listening.
Less about performance and more about regulation.
A posture held with awareness becomes a conversation between body and brain.
And slowly, the body realises it no longer needs to protect in the same way.
Trauma-informed movement
When movement is done with force, the body defends.
When movement is done with presence, the body releases.
This is why in trauma-informed approaches — including craniosacral therapy and somatic therapies — we do not “fix” tension.
We allow completion.
The fascia softens not because we pushed it, but because the nervous system permitted it.
The body and mind are not separate healers
Counselling helps create meaning, craniosacral therapy work helps create safety and releases the stories held in the tissues.
Together they restore resilience.
When the defensive cycle completes, the organism no longer lives in preparation for a past event.
It lives here.
And often, clients describe something beautifully simple:
“I don’t know what happened…
I just feel like myself again.”
