“I feel like I can see it all over my body,” I told my peers after the final session exchange.
As part of my continued growth and development as a practitioner, I regularly participate in somatic therapy exchanges with small groups of peers.
Once our last session was complete, I sat with a quiet, stable sense of view. It’s like I’m sitting on the top of a mountain, rooted in the earth rather than the breath of the wind, with a 360-degree view of me and me inside, not just the world around me.
It felt as if I had stepped into a deeper dimension of perception.
I wasn’t familiar with it, but it was a place where I felt a deep sense of rest. Completely.
That morning, when I learned that my partner had taken his life, I wanted to tackle the shock I felt I was still carrying from that day. I’ve done a lot of work over the years, but the impact of this moment has not yet been touched on.
As I was preparing for the session, I felt my chest fluttering and gentle contractions gently contracting behind my heart and torso.
“I feel a little scared…” I shared with her. This was normal and I knew exactly why my body didn’t touch on how it preserved the effects of today.
Often, the place we fear most is exactly where we need to go.
It reminded me of my memories of traveling the small bitumen road leading to the gravel road in our family home. We lived on two acres of the beautiful community of NSW Semirural. My dear friend, unknown to me, had already been informed of what had happened, but I was pregnant for 5 months and was overwhelmed by emotions so I was driving.
That morning we went to the local police station to report him missing. He hadn’t answered his phone and hadn’t appeared at work that day. His close friends hadn’t heard of him, nor did I have one.
We all knew something was wrong.
As we turned to the property, we met a line of cars strewn outside the entrance. My breath was wrapped around my chest, my eyes widened, darting, my car and close friends walking through the front door towards me. That moment felt very surreal. I knew something was grossly wrong.
There are moments when our nervous system perceives something our eyes have not yet seen. Knowing it more deeply is itself a tragic defiance of danger, like a wild animal that can feel the storm before it arrives.
I don’t know when that first moment was for me. When I was talking to his job and advised him not to show up, when I went to the police, when my friend made a private call while waiting for my friend to contact us, or when we turned the car just before the wooden canopy parted ways to expose the cars scattered outside the house.
When it comes to shocking trauma, the brainstem registers shock before it occurs. And the body is brace accordingly.
I was already brave when I left the car, and I was tightening even further when I saw a friend leaving the front door.
That morning I was sharing it with a colleague. At the deepest moments of meditation, I was able to feel a very deep grip. It’s sometimes awakening with a very subtle but obvious internal retention and contractions deeper than I can touch myself. I also shared that I felt this courage was affecting my health.
For years, I have been eager to restore my health. It’s spent on thousands. Recovers from severe biotoxin addiction, chronic fatigue, and burnout from all of relationship trauma, his death trauma, and survival stress.
I have come a very long way, but I still know there is a way to go. It peels off with each layer.
Our sessions met one of those layers.
Releasing trauma often manifests as tremor. trembling. It can appear anywhere on your arms, hands, feet, feet or body, and can be seen by others on release. It can also be held deep within an organization that never sees the light of day.
Twenty-five minutes after the session, I felt a subtle internal trembling. It almost felt like an electric shock. The tremor that began in my cervical vertebrae stopped at the bone just below the back of the skull, where the skull meets the spine, rippling into the bone protecting the back of my heart.
I sat silently with myself, realising the sensations in my body, allowing my body to guide me to where the braces were. All of the sensations, emotions, and “being together” came to life. It provides a simple and loving presence.
This earthquake ripple takes three seconds from start to finish, literally starting a wave like a soul-level trembling (deep rewind pulse) that reaches and unravels the very fabric of the preserved experience.
It was sudden and powerful, and disappeared in an instant. And then something was released, I took a deep breath and cried.
I was saddened in a way I hadn’t done yet for what was lost that day. For him. For me. For my children. For his family. For the ripple effect he chose.
I cried in the sea of tears for days. Tears trapped inside my body’s fortress were held in place by years of survival, tension and braces.
With my own attempts to manage the intensity of the event, my own vulnerability to being pregnant at the time, and everything that came afterwards, I opposed the news of his death and aftermath. I was alone against my mother’s reality. I breathed back. I was bracing against it all.
For many years I thought I was working through it all, but deep inside, I was still brave.
I was softened when I cried.
The walls I used to hold firm began to melt a little, and instead there was space. A vast, quiet openness that allows my breath to move freely. My body no longer bites itself or life.
It felt light. Not in the way that something is missing, but in the way that something is finally released.
I didn’t notice that I was holding my breath until I finally managed to exhale.
This is what I had. This is something I didn’t feel. Something I couldn’t feel at the time, as my body was prepared to protect my fetus. This has been something my body has been oriented for the past decade.
You grip these tears, your shock, and your fears.
This is where deep elucidation occurs. This is why we work with our bodies.
I can’t say that everything was released in that session, but I can say that the earth has opened enough to feel the space in my presence.
Over the next few days I moved differently. I breathed differently. I realized that there was no tension I had so long that I had been invisible for so long that I had been woven into the structure of my being. And with that release, there are more beings, not tolerate what it was, it’s more beings.
This is what the body has.
Not just the stories, but also the memories, but their influence, how we shape ourselves around survival. And this is why we have to listen not only to our minds but our bodies themselves.
Because healing is not about erasing the past. That’s to rewind.
What trauma occupied was to reclaim the space within us. It is to find breathing where there was contraction, rigid movement, and absence of presence.
And ultimately, it’s about going back to ourselves. whole. Concrete. free.
As I continue this journey, I am increasingly realising that the obstacles we face and the emotional, health and relationship challenges we experience are shaped by events that we have not yet truly experienced.
Anything trauma, shock, old wounds, and anything we hold in our organization will not disappear for us to ignore them. They settle in our bodies. Dust gathers on the shelves of forgotten rooms, firing lenses that we see, live, breathe, awaiting moments when we have courage rather than heading towards them.
We recognize that the healing path is not linear, nor is it a one-off modification or a quick release. It is a constant process of returning to your body, returning to your breath, and returning to yourself. The layer we peel off is slow, patient, retaining not only the pain but also the possibility of its wake. And in the space after each unraveling, we approach the wholeness that exists within us all, buried beneath years of survival, buried in the ground of quiet, fertile existence.
By listening deeply to our bodies and holding space for ourselves with compassion and presence, we give ourselves permission to release ourselves and heal. We create space for truth about what happened, and in doing so we create space for truth for those who are beyond trauma.
I don’t know what the future holds, discovering any further layers, but I know this. That part is here. the current. All in all. And in this presence I find the gift of peace.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s where true freedom begins.
About Maraya Rodostianos
Maraya is an integrated somatic therapist who offers in-person sessions in Melbourne and online around the world. Mixing modern neuroscience on trauma and the nervous system with psychotherapy tools and ancient wisdom traditions, she takes a holistic approach to integrating the mind, body, mind and nervous system. She works at the intersection of trauma, reliability, embodied spirituality and happiness, and guides her to free the clients from living as the most authentic, holistic and embodied themselves. You can find her at http://marayarae.com. Facebook / Substack / Instagram
