The Body Knows First: A New Way to Understand Healing

We’re living wired and wound up—and our bodies are screaming for relief.

Tight. Addicted. In pain.

The Body Knows is about listening to the raw intelligence under your skin—the signals that know before you do when something’s wrong, when you’re safe, or when you’re bullshitting yourself. This series rips the lid off how our ancient wiring runs the show—and why learning to read your body isn’t just self-help, but the only way we’ll change a world that’s burning.

---

There’s a quiet wisdom inside you—one that often speaks through your body before

your brain has time to catch up.

It’s the way your shoulders tense before a hard conversation.

The way your stomach flips when your phone rings late at night.

The way you instinctively lean away from someone whose smile doesn’t quite reach their eyes.

These are more than just sensations. They’re messages. Signals. Warnings and invitations. This is your body’s knowing. And it always speaks first, long before you form a thought, long before you find the words.

Your Nervous System Speaks—And Listens

Your body is always in conversation, whether you realize it or not.

Before you say a word, your nervous system is already speaking through your posture, facial expressions, tone of voice, and breath. These subtle cues communicate what state you’re in: grounded or guarded, open or overwhelmed. And just as you’re broadcasting, you’re also picking up signals from everyone around you.

Your autonomic nervous system guides this continuous exchange through a process called neuroception—your body’s unconscious ability to detect safety or threat. You might not realize you’re doing it, but your body does: tightening your chest at a sharp tone, softening at a gentle gaze, freezing when the energy in the room changes. These responses are instinctive, not intellectual.

Polyvagal Theory, developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, gives us a framework to

understand this. At the center is the vagus nerve, a long and winding connector between the brain, face, heart, lungs, and gut. It helps regulate everything from your breath to your voice to your sense of presence. It’s the reason your throat tightens before tears come, or your belly churns in a moment of dread.

We were never designed to live in isolation. We are wired for connection. And when our early environments lacked safety or attunement, our systems adapted to survive. Sometimes that means shutting down, dissociating, or misreading cues of safety as threat.

These aren’t signs of failure. They’re signs of intelligence.

When the Body Learns to Survive

If you’ve ever felt like your body was betraying you—shutting down during a conversation, spiraling with anxiety after something good happens, going numb in moments meant to feel joyful—it’s not because you’re broken.

These symptoms are evidence that your nervous system is doing exactly what it learned to do: keep you safe.

From anxiety before speaking up at work, to going cold when someone raises their voice, to flaring with anger when you sense you’re being dismissed—these reactions aren’t random. They’re responses your body learned long before you had words for them.

You may have explored some of this in therapy: piecing together childhood moments when you felt small or dismissed. That insight can be powerful. But the nervous system isn’t changed by awareness alone.

Because even when you understand your triggers, your body still reacts.

Why? Because the body learns in relationship, not in language.

Take, for example, the well-known studies on mother–infant interaction. A baby learns

safety through facial expression, tone, and gaze. A smile is met with a smile. A coo with a warm sound in return. This conversation without words builds the baby’s first sense of connection, co-regulation, and self.

But what happens when the mother suddenly goes still? When her face goes flat, her eyes unfocused, her voice absent? The baby notices immediately. Not cognitively, but physiologically. Breath shifts. Eyes drop. Throat tightens. The baby withdraws—first in body, then in feeling, then in meaning.

Perception becomes sensation.

Sensation becomes feeling.

Feeling becomes belief.

And so, in that moment of disconnection, the baby doesn’t just feel sad. The baby feels bad.

These early, embodied memories lay down the blueprint for how we relate to the world. When disconnection becomes the norm—when caregivers are misattuned, absent, volatile, or themselves dysregulated—the nervous system adapts to live in a world where safety cannot be counted on.

You might learn to fawn, to freeze, to disappear, to overfunction. You might learn to scan every interaction for micro-shifts in tone or gaze. You might stay braced long after the threat is gone, because your body never got the signal that it’s over.

And if your lineage carries intergenerational trauma—historical dislocation, racism, forced assimilation, or inherited grief—your nervous system may have come into the world already primed for vigilance. These are not personal failings. They are survival strategies passed through bodies, not just stories.

The beauty of the nervous system is that it’s plastic. It can learn. It can be repaired. It can rewire. But not through thought alone.

What was shaped through relational disconnection must be reshaped through relational safety—through breath, through presence, through attunement.

Through slow and steady invitations for the body to feel something new.

That’s the work of somatic healing. And that’s the journey we’re beginning in this series.

Rebuilding Trust From Within

Healing begins when we stop overriding our bodies and start listening to them.

This is not about controlling symptoms. It’s about restoring the relationship between you and your inner world. That relationship begins with what somatic therapists call the felt-sense: the moment you notice something shift inside. A sudden catch in your breath. A warmth in your chest. The slow loosening of your jaw.

This is your body speaking again. Not in pain, but in presence.

The capacity to notice these shifts is called interoception—your internal sense of self.

Many people lose touch with it after trauma, but it can be restored. And the act of tuning in—even briefly, even gently—is itself an act of re-regulation. Of coming home.

As Jan Winhall says, “The capacity to ground ourselves, to feel safe and regulated inside our bodies is the most fundamental skill we can achieve in a lifetime.”

You don’t need to do it perfectly. You just need to begin.

A Gentle Practice to Begin

Take 20 minutes for yourself. Let this be a time to turn inward—not to fix anything, but to listen.

1. Orient yourself for environmental safety using your senses. Notice the space around you. Let your eyes scan the environment. Let your ears register sounds far and near. Run your hands along the surface of the chair you sit on, or the ground beneath you. Notice the smells in your environment.

2. Ask permission. Softly ask your senses: Is now a good time to feel? If not, that’s okay. Trust your pacing. If yes, close your eyes or soften your gaze. Begin to breathe more intentionally.

3. Sense your internal landscape. Scan your body slowly. Notice areas of obvious tension or sensation: The hips. The stomach. The chest. The throat. The jaws. The forehead. Is there a place that draws your attention? Rest a hand there.

4. Visualize support. Imagine this area of sensation - the heaviness in your chest, that tightness in your throat- it has emerged as a friendly guide to lead you down deeper pathways of your internal landscape to solve the puzzle of your past, reclaim lightness and joy. What does your guide look like? A totem animal? A spiritual presence? A wise woman? An innocent child?

5. Let it unfold.You might notice sensation, emotion, memory. You might not. Either is welcome. This is not about performance. This is about presence.

6. Reflect. When you're ready, journal, draw, or simply sit with what arose.

   
   

   This is how we begin to rebuild trust—not through willpower, but through willingness.

   
   

This Is Just the Beginning

You don’t need to have it all figured out. You don’t need to master regulation or perfectly interpret every sensation.

You just need to remember: Your body is not the enemy. It is your companion. It has always been working for you.

In the next blogs in this series, we’ll explore how to work with the vagus nerve to support deeper healing, from chronic pain and anxiety to the exhaustion of always holding it all together. You’ll learn simple, practical ways to shift your state—gently, safely, and without forcing.

We’ll also talk about why healing in community matters. The nervous system doesn’t just listen—it broadcasts. In safe company, we soften together. We regulate together. We come home to ourselves and each other.

---

Samantha is a member of the International Association of Yoga Therapists, a Noom Certified Health Coach, and founder of Davidson Yoga Therapy and Health Coaching.

She has held complimentary healthcare positions at The Blanchard Institute, Atrium

Hospital, Levine Cancer Institute, Sanger Heart Clinic, and Davidson College. She has presented for Fortune 500 companies and major Universities, both public and professional audiences, on this thing called yoga therapy and what it can do when it is unpeeled, revealed, and adapted to meet the needs and the abilities of the person doing it. 

She leverages her three decades of yoga therapy, and health coaching experience with the following therapeutic models:

• Breathing Technology

• Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

• Jungian Psychology

• Jungian Dream Interpretation

• Somatic Cognition

• Internal Family Systems

• Interfaith Perspectives

• Spiritual Technologies

• Trauma Healing

• Polyvagal Somatics

• Ayurvedic Lifestyle Coaching

• Compassionate Inquiry

• Pain Reprocessing Therapy

• The Neurosequential Model

All this is to say, there are many doorways to use on the path to healing and self-discovery, and Samantha’s breadth of experience allows for vast creativity on which approach is right for you!