Healing Through Spiritual Exercises: Addressing Past Hurts

I want to invite you into a different kind of conversation today.

We think we’ve moved on. We think we’ve processed, forgiven, and filed away the hurts of the past into a neat, alphabetized cabinet in the mind. We’ve done the work, we tell ourselves. And then, one ordinary Tuesday, you bend down to tie your shoe and a sharp, searing pain shoots through your lower back, so intense it steals your breath. Or perhaps it’s a stubborn rash that no cream can seem to soothe. Or a knot in the shoulder that has become a permanent resident, a silent companion to your days.

The mind may forget, or at least, it may build very convincing stories around why it has forgotten. But the body… the body never does. It is the most honest historian we have, the sacred keeper of every experience, every joy, every sorrow, every shock. That sudden pain, that persistent symptom—it is not a betrayal. It is a message. A memory, held in the intricate web of your tissues, finally asking to be heard.

For years, I had a recurring, mysterious pain in my left hip. It would flare up without warning, a deep, resonant ache that felt ancient. I saw specialists, of course. They gave it names—bursitis, sciatica, piriformis syndrome—but no treatment offered more than fleeting relief. It was only when I stopped treating it and started listening to it that the true healing began. The hip, it turned out, was holding the memory of a childhood fall, yes, but more deeply, it was holding the terror of feeling unprotected, the grief of a little girl who felt she had to handle everything alone. The pain wasn’t just a physical sensation; it was a story, held in my fascia, waiting for a compassionate witness. And that witness had to be me.

The Body as a Living Archive

This is not just poetry. It’s neuroscience. When we experience a shock or trauma—whether it’s a car accident or a parent’s harsh words—our bodies flood with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. This is the fight-or-flight response, a brilliant, primal mechanism for survival. In an ideal world, once the threat passes, our nervous system completes this cycle, and the energy is discharged. We might tremble, cry, or simply take a few deep, ragged breaths. The energy moves through.

But so often, it doesn’t. We are told to “be strong,” to “suck it up.” We clench our jaw, brace our shoulders, and stuff the feeling down. The energy of that unresolved response becomes trapped in our system, stored in our tissues, organs, and cells. It becomes a pocket of density, of frozen consciousness. Dr. Peter Levine, a true pioneer in this field, calls this the “freeze” response. The body, in its infinite wisdom, encapsulates the overwhelming experience to allow us to survive and keep functioning. It’s a brilliant strategy. But it comes at a cost.

These frozen pockets of energy can, over time, manifest as chronic pain, anxiety, depression, digestive issues, and autoimmune conditions. They create blockages in our energetic pathways, leading to a sense of being stuck, of not fully inhabiting our own lives. The body is essentially holding its breath, waiting for a moment of safety, a moment of presence, where it can finally exhale and complete the story. The latest research in neurobiology confirms this, showing how traumatic memories are stored not as linear narratives in the brain, but as sensory fragments in the body’s tissues. The brain’s amygdala, our internal alarm system, stays on high alert, and the hippocampus, responsible for memory consolidation, can be impaired, preventing the experience from being integrated as a past event. It remains a present-tense reality in the nervous system.

The Sacred Practice of Somatic Release

So how do we create that safety? How do we become a compassionate witness to our own history and allow these stories to unwind? This is where spiritual practice becomes deeply practical. It’s not about transcending the body, but about inhabiting it more fully, more lovingly, than ever before. It’s about learning to listen to its subtle language—the language of sensation.

Here is a very good thing to know: you do not need to mentally remember the trauma to heal it. The body remembers. The work is not to re-traumatize yourself by digging for painful memories, but to create a container of such profound safety in the present moment that the stored energy feels safe enough to emerge and release. One of the most powerful and gentle ways to begin this process is through a practice I call “Welcoming the Messenger.”

Welcoming the Messenger: A Guided Practice

Find a quiet, comfortable space where you won’t be disturbed. You can sit or lie down. Close your eyes and bring your awareness to your breath, just noticing its rhythm without trying to change it.

Now, gently scan your body. Is there a place that feels tight, numb, painful, or just… loud? It doesn’t have to be dramatic. It could be a slight tension in your jaw, a flutter in your stomach, a coolness in your feet. Let your awareness rest there, like a soft, warm blanket. Don’t try to fix it. Don’t judge it. Don’t even name it. Simply be with it. Your only job is to notice the pure sensation. Is it sharp or dull? Does it have a temperature? A color? A texture? Does it move, or is it still?

As you stay present with the sensation, you might notice other things arising. An emotion—a flicker of sadness, a wave of anger. A memory—a fleeting image, a snippet of a conversation. A thought—“This is silly,” or “I don’t have time for this.” Whatever comes, simply let it be part of the landscape. You are the vast, open sky of awareness, and all of this—the sensation, the emotion, the thought—is just weather passing through.

Keep your anchor in the physical sensation. Breathe into it. Not to force it away, but to bring it more oxygen, more presence, more love. You might even silently say to it, “I feel you. I am here with you. You are welcome here.”

Stay with this for as long as it feels right. You might notice the sensation shifting, changing, intensifying, or dissolving. It might move to another part of your body. Just follow it, with gentle, curious attention. When you feel complete, slowly bring your awareness back to the room. Wiggle your fingers and toes. And before you get up, place a hand on your heart and offer yourself a moment of gratitude. You have just engaged in a profound act of self-healing.

The Unwinding Spiral: A Movement Practice

Sometimes, the body needs to speak in movement. Stored energy is, after all, potential motion that was inhibited. This practice invites a gentle, intuitive unwinding.

Begin by standing with your feet hip-width apart, knees soft. Close your eyes and feel your connection to the earth beneath you. Take a few deep breaths. Now, bring your awareness to your spine. Imagine a current of energy running from the base of your spine to the crown of your head.

Begin to allow a small, gentle movement to arise from your core. It might be a slow sway, a gentle rocking, or a subtle spiral. There is no right or wrong way to do this. The key is to let the movement be initiated by your body’s inner wisdom, not by your conscious mind. Let your head and neck be free. Let your arms be soft.

Follow the impulse of the movement. It might grow larger, more expressive. You might find your torso wanting to spiral, your arms wanting to float up, your hips wanting to circle. Allow it. You are simply following the thread of sensation, the current of stored energy as it begins to express itself. If you feel self-conscious, just come back to the breath and the simple sensation of movement. This is for you alone.

This is not a performance or an exercise. It is a dialogue. Your body is speaking, and you are listening through movement. Stay with it for 5-10 minutes, or however long feels nourishing. As you slow down, come back to stillness. Notice how you feel. Is there more space? More fluidity? A sense of release? This practice can be incredibly powerful for unwinding tension held in the spine, shoulders, and hips—the central axis of our bodies where so much of our history is stored.

The Tao of Letting Go

These practices are a form of somatic—or body-based—release. By bringing non-judgmental awareness to a physical sensation, you are creating new neural pathways in the brain. You are signaling to your nervous system that it is safe to release the old, stored energy. You are, in essence, practicing neuroplasticity in action. You are showing the amygdala that the threat is over and allowing the hippocampus to file the memory away as a completed event. You are moving from a state of sympathetic activation (fight-or-flight) to parasympathetic dominance (rest-and-digest), where true healing occurs.

The Tao te Ching says, “Yield and overcome; bend and be straight.” We so often try to fight our pain, to brace against it, to conquer it. But this only creates more tension, more resistance. The path of healing is one of yielding. Of softening. Of allowing. It is the path of water, which flows around obstacles, gently wearing away even the hardest stone over time.

Each time you practice Welcoming the Messenger or the Unwinding Spiral, you are becoming more like water. You are cultivating the capacity to be with what is, without needing it to be different. And in that radical acceptance, a transformation occurs. The frozen energy begins to melt. The story begins to unwind. And the life force that was bound up in holding that old trauma is liberated, returning to you as vitality, creativity, and a deeper sense of peace.

This is not a one-time fix. It is a practice, a journey of coming home to yourself, one sensation at a time. It is the sacred work of a lifetime. And you are so, so capable of doing it. It is your birthright to feel whole, to feel at home in your own beautiful, breathing body.

With infinite love and support on your journey, Susan