The Body Does Not Keep the Score

A new neuroscience paper just dropped and as someone who spent years believing my trauma was physically locked in my body, I could not wait to share it.

The paper is called The Body Does Not Keep the Score: Trauma, Predictive Coding, and the Restoration of Metastabilityand it is making an argument that changes how we think about what we are actually doing as yoga teachers.

Here is the finding that stopped me in my tracks:

A systematic review of 54 studies found that approximately 65% of people exposed to trauma follow a resilient trajectory and do not develop chronic PTSD. The brain, given ordinary life conditions, tends to rebalance itself. Recovery is not the exception. It is what the nervous system is trying to do.

That single finding asks us to look hard at the language we use with students. There is a meaningful difference between telling someone their body is holding something that needs to be released, and telling them their nervous system is working to find its way back to balance.

The paper also has fascinating things to say about flow states, why every effective trauma treatment works through the same mechanism, and why the interpretive stories we tell around interoception can sometimes make things harder rather than easier.

I have written a full breakdown of the nine key findings and what they mean practically for how we teach, over on my website. It is a long read and worth it.

Sign up to my May newsletter for the full blog where I will be going deeper into trauma-sensitive teaching, somatic movement, and the nervous system all month.