If you haven’t read the bestselling book The Body Keeps The Score yet, chances are its advice has still trickled down to your TikTok or Instagram feeds.
The book suggests an idea that’s resonated with over a million people – emotions affect the body, it argues, so engaging our bodies through activities like yoga and meditation can help us to access feelings we’d otherwise keep buried.
This reasoning, which has been linked to somatic, or movement, therapy, has caught the attention of experts like clinical psychologist Dr Amanda Baker.
She told Harvard Health: “Cognitive behavioural therapies [CBT] focus on conscious thought and work on challenging thoughts in relation to anxiety and behaviours, helping desensitise people to uncomfortable sensations.
“But somatic therapy is more about relieving the tension, as opposed to desensitising people to it,” she added.
I’ll be honest, I hated the idea when I first read it, dismissing it as poorly-researched woo-woo (the practice is far less studied than, say, CBT).
There’s only one problem ― I’ve cried on a mat in the cool-down period of a yoga class for no apparent reason way too often for me to ignore the association.
So, I decided to speak to Veronica West, a practising psychologist and the founder of My Thriving Mind, about the therapeutic effect.
Isn’t the benefit just from exercise?
Exercise is, as objectively as possible, great for our mental health. The NHS calls it “one of the best things we can do” for our mood.
At first, I wondered if the emotional check-in I felt after the workout was just down to the mindful nature of yoga combined with exercise’s general benefits.
But Veronica thinks something else could be at play.
“What’s fascinating is that somatic practices like yoga don’t just work out the kinks in your back — they loosen up emotional tension stored in your muscles,” she told HuffPost UK, explaining that “it isn’t just ‘exercise coming out sideways’”.
That’s because, she says, our bodies seize up a little when we’re stressed.
In moments of sadness, anger or panic, “you tense your shoulders or clench your jaw as if preparing for combat”. “Not only that,” the psychologist wrote, “but your muscles start to retain that tension as if it were their job over time”.
The kinks in your back, Dr West suggests, might sort of “store” the emotional hurdles from the past week, month, year, or maybe more.
“Although this may sound crazy, it’s almost like your muscles form a memory for these things. Muscle tension stores all those... moments as tiny emotional time capsules,” she revealed.
“While your muscles may not actually ‘store’ the feelings, they retain the reaction, bracing, tensing, clenching, or any other posture your body adopted due to stress. Your body is saying, ‘Hey, remember all that?’ when you finally let go.”
Why yoga?
Yoga isn’t the only exercise I do. All forms improve my mood, but only one regularly kicks off the public waterworks.
That’s normal, the webpage for The Body Keeps The Score suggests, saying that “one size never fits all.”
Some therapies they recommend include various forms of trauma processing, neurofeedback, theatre, meditation, play and (yep) yoga.
In my case, Dr West says, something about yoga may distract me from my conscious thoughts enough to “access this strangely unvarnished, honest space where feelings appear to have been hiding”.
While a little part of me remains sceptical about the therapy, there’s no denying working out is great for our mental and physical health ― why not explore the idea that it’s unlocking some otherwise hard-to-access emotions too?