Somatic Movement—Learning to Stay When the Body Wants to Leave

For a long time, movement felt dangerous.

Not because my body didn’t want to move, but because movement had once been taken. Directed. Overridden. TNot because my body didn’t want to move, but because movement had once been taken. Directed. Overridden. The body learned that leaving—dissociating, freezing, going still—was safer than staying present.he body learned that leaving—dissociating, freezing, going still—was safer than staying present.

So when I first encountered somatic movement, I misunderstood it. I thought it would ask me to express, to emote, to release. I thought it would require visibility.

It didn’t.

What it offered instead was something far more subtle: choice.

Staying Is Not Forcing

Somatic movement is often described as gentle. That word can be misleading. Gentleness is not softness. It is precision.

Somatic work did not ask my body to move more. It asked my body to notice. To feel weight. To sense contact. To register breath without changing it.

Staying did not mean pushing through discomfort. It meant recognizing when the body wanted to leave—and respecting that signal rather than overriding it.

Learning to stay was not about endurance. It was about permission.

The Power of Smallness

In somatic movement, the smallest action carries the most information.

A shift of weight.

A turn of the head.

A pause before moving at all.

These movements reintroduced agency without spectacle. They taught my nervous system that nothing bad would happen if I stayed present for a few seconds longer. Then a few more.

There was no requirement to go further than what felt tolerable. There was no demand to access emotion. There was no expectation of release.

This was not catharsis.

It was calibration.

Reclaiming Choice in the Body

Military Sexual Trauma fractures choice. Not just in memory, but in physiology. The body learns that consent can be bypassed. That signals can be ignored. That staying present is unsafe.

Somatic movement began to rewire that lesson—not by insisting the body was safe, but by allowing it to decide.

I could stop at any moment.

I could change my mind.

I could move away.

That mattered more than the movement itself.

Choice restored trust.

Trust allowed presence.

When Staying Becomes Possible

Over time, staying no longer meant bracing. It meant noticing without panic. It meant recognizing sensation without immediately needing to escape it.

The body learned that presence could be brief and still survivable. That nothing had to be resolved. That awareness could exist without consequence.

Somatic movement did not fix me. It did not erase memory. It did not promise comfort.

What it offered was capacity—the ability to remain in my body without disappearing.

That was enough to begin.

This essay is original work authored and published under the pen name Author Honey Badger. All writing in this series is protected intellectual property. Sharing for reading is welcome; reproduction, reposting, adaptation, or attribution without permission is not authorized.

© 2026 Author Honey Badger. All Rights Reserved.