When we experience a strong emotion, it often shows up as a local, physical tightness — perhaps shame in the chest, or anger in the jaw, or fear in the belly. The body reflexively tightens: our breath stops for a moment, or our muscles tense. This is the body recognizing that the arising emotion is quite intense and is intelligently trying to stop taking in more input. In such a situation, there may be one or a few locations in our body that are particularly trying to hold the entire experience. When the system narrows like that, the emotion doesn’t fully move through us and gets stuck. Later triggers reactivate the old, unmetabolized experience instead of this new moment.

Integral Somatic Psychology helps the body expand the energy of the emotion, and helps more parts of the body participate in metabolizing the emotion. That lets the energy flow instead of getting trapped, which makes the experience manageable & metabolizable rather than overwhelming. Once the emotion is metabolized, clearer thinking, fresh responses, and new possibilities naturally follow.

Learn more here and here.