Anxiety Lives in the Body: Somatic Mindfulness Tools That Help Me Feel Safe, Grounded, and Present

Trigger Warning: This post discusses personal experiences with anxiety, childhood emotional trauma, generational trauma, and self-soothing behaviors (including nail biting, binge eating, and substance use). Reader discretion is advised, especially if these topics are sensitive or activating for you.

Anxiety isn’t just in the mind. I feel it in my body first—in the clenching of my jaw, the tightness of my shoulders, the narrowing of my vision. Sometimes I catch myself only looking to the left, frozen in place, bracing. That simple clue often tells me I’ve been triggered. It might be someone’s tone of voice, a certain look, or even the time of day. For me, dinner time around people who are heavily drinking is a big one. As a child, our dinner table was often filled with arguments about money and my parents’ business. My body still remembers.

Your body is not the enemy. It is the messenger.

That’s why somatic mindfulness has become such a lifeline. It helps me read the language of my body and respond with compassion instead of judgment. It helps me return to safety.

What Is Somatic Mindfulness?

Somatic mindfulness is the practice of noticing what’s happening in your body in the present moment, without judgment. It’s tuning into the physical sensations that signal anxiety before your thoughts can even catch up. It’s realizing that your body holds your history—your trauma, your coping mechanisms, your survival strategies.

It’s also deeply connected to parts work (or Parts Therapy), where I notice the different parts of myself that show up when I’m triggered. The part that braces. The part that wants to hide. The part that still feels like a child at the dinner table, afraid to speak.

The Somatic Tools That Help Me Come Back to Myself

Start small. Trace your fingers. Breathe in, breathe out.

These are some of the somatic tools I use to calm my nervous system and come back to the present moment:

1. Head Turning + Tapping - When I notice I’m only looking to the left—symbolically stuck in the past or caught in my feminine wounding—I gently begin to turn my head from side to side while tapping on my body. This bilateral movement helps my brain and body feel safe again. I’ll often start to sigh or even yawn, and that’s when I know something is beginning to release. It supports me in letting go of old patterns, especially those tied to financial scarcity and emotional co-dependency.

2. Breathwork with Longer Outbreath - I consciously breathe in through my nose for a count of four and exhale through my mouth for a count of eight, letting the outbreath be longer and slower. My neck and shoulders carry so much emotional weight—it feels like I’m wearing a yoke with heavy buckets on each side. These deep exhalations help lighten that burden and loosen the tension I’ve been holding.

3. Tracing My Fingers - When I’m overwhelmed, I trace the outline of my fingers slowly with my other hand. It brings me back into my body and grounds me in the now.

4. EFT Tapping - When I’m feeling the pressure of old money stories or emotional overwhelm, I tap on specific meridian points on my face and chest. It calms my nervous system and helps shift limiting beliefs.

5. Thumb and Ring Finger Anchor - This one is simple but powerful. I press my thumb and ring finger together and say to myself: "I am calm, grounded, and in control." I often use this in sessions with clients too.

6. The 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Technique - I name 5 things I see, 4 things I feel, 3 things I hear, 2 things I smell, and 1 thing I taste. It brings me out of panic and into my environment.

7. Havening Touch - This involves gentle stroking of the arms or face. It shifts the brain into a calm, delta wave state. I find it incredibly soothing when I feel raw or activated.

8. EMDR-Inspired Bilateral Movement - Inspired by EMDR, I sometimes use eye movements or tapping from left to right to help process stored trauma and bring a sense of regulation.

What My Body Has Taught Me

Over the years, I’ve started to understand what my body is trying to say:

• Clenched jaw = I’m not speaking up. I don’t feel heard or respected.

• Tight neck and shoulders = I feel like I have to carry it all, like I can’t let go.

• Only looking left = I’m stuck in the past.

• Startling easily = I’m in survival mode, braced for something to go wrong.

What is your body telling you?

These are not faults. They are signals. And when I respond with compassion, something softens.

Oral Fixation: The Self-Soothing I Was Shamed Out Of

As a child, I sucked my thumb for comfort—a natural self-soothing behaviour. It was how I self-regulated. But I was shamed and ridiculed by my father, and controlled by my mother, who used bitter-tasting gel on my nails to force me to stop. I learned that my need to soothe was wrong.

Thumb sucking was my quiet way of coping—something I turned to when I felt tired, scared, or too shy to speak, long before I had words to explain what I needed.

That need didn’t go away. It transformed. Into nail biting. Cuticle tearing. Binge eating. Smoking. Alcohol. My body still needed to soothe itself, and it found ways to do that, even when I didn’t consciously understand why.

Somatic mindfulness has helped me reclaim those moments. Now, when I feel the urge to bite or grab food, I pause. I trace my fingers. I breathe. I tap. I meet that wounded part of me with self love and compassion.

Generational Trauma Around Money

The anxiety I carry around money isn’t just mine.

On my mother’s side, there was deep scarcity. She was born during the Depression. Her parents reinforced the belief that money was always tight, never enough, and not to be trusted.

Conversations around my childhood dinner table often turned into heated arguments about money, leaving a lasting tension in the air that I didn’t fully understand at the time. (Photo curtesy of Canva)

On my father’s side, money was tied to control and power. He immigrated from post-WWII Netherlands, where survival meant working hard. Money was only deserved if it was earned through sacrifice and discipline.

These two belief systems collided in my childhood—and in my nervous system. I often found myself trapped in a cycle of wanting financial ease and abundance, but feeling shame or fear when it showed up. Somatic practices help me process these patterns in my body, not just in my mind.

How I Use These Tools in Hypnosis Sessions

When I guide clients through hypnosis, I weave in these tools to help anchor them in their bodies:

• Finger tracing or tapping when they begin to dissociate.

• Gentle breathwork to deepen or regulate the trance.

• Anchoring with thumb and ring finger to bring a sense of safety.

• Compassionate inner dialogue with Parts Therapy when conflicting thoughts arise.

A gentle fusion of hypnosis and somatic healing invites the mind to rest and the body to release.

A gentle fusion of hypnosis and somatic healing invites the mind to rest and the body to release.

Sometimes, healing is just about giving the body permission to feel safe again.

Closing: You Don’t Have to Think Your Way Out of Anxiety

You can’t logic your way out of a dysregulated nervous system. But you can learn to listen. To pause. To notice. To soothe.

Healing begins by listening to the body, not fighting it.

Your body is not the enemy. It is the messenger. And when you begin to meet it with care and curiosity, healing becomes possible.

Start small. Trace your fingers. Breathe out longer than you breathe in. Touch your shoulder gently. Say to yourself, “I am calm, grounded, and in control.”

That’s where healing begins.

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