Coming Back to the Body: A Day of Somatic Release and Why It Matters

I’m Becky Grace, an EMDR and CBT therapist based in Norwich, UK, I specialise in working with eating distress, trauma, and neurodivergent deep thinkers who often feel overwhelmed, burnt out, or like they’re never quite “enough.” My background spans mental health nursing, personal training, and yoga teaching, which all inform the mind-body approach I bring to therapy. I write here about real healing, nervous system restoration, and making space to be fully human.

This week, I want to share a little about something I rarely talk about so openly: somatic release, and why it’s quietly become one of the most transformative tools in my own healing and in how I work with clients.

Somatic simply means of the body, and when we talk about somatic practices, things like breathwork, movement, or energy release — we’re really talking about ways of tuning in and moving through emotions physically, not just cognitively.

Yesterday, I went to a day-long event with a teacher called Nicky Clinch. I first came across her through Melissa Wells, whose feminine retreat I’ve attended in Costa Rica. Nicky works with something called the Body Maturation Method, which blends mind-body practices in a way that’s hard to pin down in words — it’s spiritual, practical, and deeply experiential. The work she does really reminds me of how healing can’t just be intellectual. It has to move through us.

I went in not quite sure what to expect, and came out both exhausted and exhilarated.

The morning started with theory, exploring what Nicky called “thought loops” — a term many of you who’ve worked with me in CBT will recognise. She described how we can live entire lives inside those loops, repeating old stories of fear, shame, or not-enoughness. The image she used reminded me of the CBT vicious cycle, but spoken with a spiritual edge. And honestly, I loved the reminder: there’s nothing wrong with us. We’re just often stuck in loops that once helped us survive but are now holding us back from thriving.

There were moments of hot-seat coaching where people shared openly about their pain. I didn’t get up myself — I was more in listening and observing mode — but I recognised so many of the themes that come up in therapy: old stories, inner critics, identities built around struggle, and the fear of who we might be without our wounds.

And then came the somatic part. It was described as breathwork and ecstatic dance, but if you’ve ever experienced a Kundalini Activation, you’ll know — it’s not your average breathwork. At one point, there were over 100 of us in the room, releasing stored energy in our bodies — some of it loud, wild, raw. There were hands on heads, chakra points activated, people screaming, crying, laughing. It might sound intense, but it was also joyful. It felt safe. Held. Collective.

What always strikes me after events like this is the importance of integration. These experiences open a lot up, and without time and space to process and ground, we can feel disoriented. This is why I always take the train to things like this. I need the journey home to be gentle, even if the Tube closures tried to test that.

This month’s been packed with learning — marketing retreats, strategy days, business mentoring, this event, and I’ve noticed something: I’m no longer signing up for courses from a place of proving myself. I don’t need more certifications to feel “good enough.” The learning now is purely out of desire, not deficit.

Right now, I’m leaning into EMDR and gently integrating more Internal Family Systems (IFS), ego states, and somatic approaches into my work. Less pure CBT. More whole-person. More intuitive. I’ve flipped my professional identity, I now say I’m an EMDR and CBT therapist, not the other way around.

As a Scorpio rising (for those who love astrology), transformation is my core theme. I move towards pain and fear. I believe many of my clients do too, even if they don’t realise it yet. There's something powerful about choosing to walk into the fire rather than away from it.

And yes, we all need to feel safe enough to do that.

So here’s the thing I want to leave you with:

So many of my clients, especially those who are neurodivergent, deeply sensitive, or living with complex trauma or eating disorders, spend a lot of time in their heads. We intellectualise our pain. We overthink our symptoms. We loop, ruminate, and analyse. But healing doesn’t happen through thinking alone.

Healing happens when we get back into the body.

When we allow movement, breath, sound, stillness.

When we learn that conflict doesn’t have to mean disconnection.

When we sit with the discomfort, rather than avoid or soothe it away.

When we stop living from survival mode and start living from aliveness.

This is what I want to bring more of into the therapy room. Slowly. Gently. With care.

I now have the space, a quiet, private office where somatic work can happen safely. I won’t be asking you to scream into the void on a Tuesday afternoon (don’t worry, I’m saving that for the weekends so I don’t freak out the neighbours), but I will be inviting you back into your body, bit by bit.

Because you deserve to live a life that feels fully alive. Not just managed. Not just analysed. Not just survived.

And I’ll be right there beside you as we walk that path, body, mind, and soul.

Becky Grace x

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