There’s a phrase that has become shorthand in the trauma community, borrowed from the title of Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s landmark book: the body keeps the score.
It means this: long after the cognitive facts of the affair have been established — long after you know what happened, when it happened, and with whom — your body is still carrying the trauma. In your tight jaw. In your aching shoulders. In the deep muscle in your hip that you didn’t know existed until it started hurting. In the chest that feels like something is sitting on it.
You can talk about the affair in therapy for an hour and walk out with your shoulders still braced for impact. You can understand the psychology of betrayal completely and still lie awake at night with your heart racing.
This is because the body and the mind process trauma on different timelines. And the body doesn’t release what it’s holding through conversation. It releases through physical action.
This article is about those actions.
Where Trauma Lives in the Body
Betrayal trauma doesn’t distribute itself evenly. Research and clinical observation show that it concentrates in specific areas.
The jaw. Clenching — often unconscious, often during sleep. The jaw is one of the body’s primary tension points, and chronic clenching leads to headaches, TMJ pain, and tooth damage.
The neck and shoulders. This is “muscle armoring” — your body bracing for the next blow. The trapezius muscles contract and stay contracted, creating chronic pain and stiffness.
The chest. The “hole in the chest” or “weight on the chest” sensation is one of the most commonly reported symptoms of betrayal trauma. It’s produced by chronic tension in the intercostal muscles and diaphragm, combined with cortisol’s effect on the cardiovascular system.
The psoas. This is the one most people have never heard of, and it may be the most important.
The Psoas: The Muscle That Holds Your Fear
The psoas is a deep muscle that runs from your lower spine through your pelvis and attaches to the top of your femur. It’s the primary muscle responsible for the fetal position — curling into a ball to protect your abdomen. It’s also the primary muscle that activates when you need to run.
In fight-or-flight, the psoas contracts. In chronic stress, it stays contracted — sometimes for months or years. A chronically tight psoas does several things: it restricts your diaphragm (making it harder to take a full breath), it creates lower back and hip pain, and — because it is densely innervated with sympathetic nerve fibers — it sends a constant signal back to your brain that you’re under threat.
This creates a feedback loop: trauma tightens the psoas, and the tight psoas tells the brain to stay in trauma mode. Breaking that loop requires physically releasing the muscle.
Releasing the Body: Specific Practices
Practice 1: EFT Tapping
EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) involves tapping on specific acupressure points on the face and body while focusing on a distressing emotion or memory. Clinical trials have shown it can reduce cortisol levels by up to thirty-seven percent — significantly more than talk therapy alone.
How: Using two fingers, tap firmly but gently on each of the following points, spending about five seconds on each: the side of the hand (karate chop point), the top of the head, the inner eyebrow, the side of the eye, under the eye, under the nose, the chin, the collarbone, and under the arm. While tapping, acknowledge what you’re feeling: “Even though I’m feeling this pain in my chest, I accept myself completely.“
The tapping sends a calming signal to the amygdala while you simultaneously hold the distressing emotion in awareness. This “bifocal“ approach — feeling the pain while providing a safety signal — allows the brain to begin reprocessing the emotional charge.
When: When a specific trigger or memory surfaces and you have five to ten minutes. Daily practice produces cumulative benefits.
Practice 2: Trauma-Sensitive Yoga
Trauma-sensitive yoga is different from regular yoga. It focuses on interoception — the ability to notice what’s happening inside your body — rather than flexibility or strength. It’s gentle, it’s slow, and the emphasis is on choice: you move your body in the way that feels right, at the pace that feels safe.
Research shows that women with PTSD symptoms who participated in a ten-to-twelve-week yoga intervention experienced significant decreases in hyperarousal and intrusive thoughts. Yoga has been shown to decrease basal cortisol and increase GABA, the brain’s primary calming neurotransmitter.
How to start: Look for classes labeled “trauma-sensitive,“ “restorative,“ or “gentle.“ Online classes are fine. The key principle: no forcing. If a position feels uncomfortable, modify or skip it. Your body is relearning that it gets to choose.
Practice 3: Somatic Shaking (TRE)
Animals in the wild shake after a traumatic event — literally vibrate, from nose to tail — to discharge the adrenaline from their system. Humans suppress this reflex because we’ve been conditioned to “keep it together.“ TRE (Trauma Release Exercises) works by inducing that natural shaking response intentionally.
How: Stand and gently bounce or shake your limbs for one to two minutes. Let the tremors be uncontrolled. They may start in your legs and move upward. You may feel emotional during or after — this is normal. This is your body discharging stored survival energy.
When: When you feel the wired, buzzing, can’t-sit-still energy of hyperarousal. This practice gives that energy somewhere to go.
Practice 4: Hip-Opening for Psoas Release
These gentle stretches target the psoas directly and help break the contraction-anxiety feedback loop.
Pigeon Pose: From a hands-and-knees position, bring one knee forward and fold that leg in front of you while extending the other leg behind you. Lower your torso toward the floor and breathe deeply into the stretch. Hold for one to two minutes per side.
Reclined Knee-to-Chest: Lying on your back, draw one knee toward your chest and hold it with both hands. Keep the other leg extended. Breathe deeply. Hold for sixty seconds per side.
Child’s Pose: From hands and knees, sit back on your heels and extend your arms forward on the floor, forehead down. Breathe deeply. Hold for two to three minutes. This pose relieves tension in the lower back and encourages a sense of physical safety.
Practice 5: Rhythmic Walking as Bilateral Stimulation
Walking is one of the most powerful and underrated trauma recovery tools available. The alternating movement of arms and legs naturally provides bilateral stimulation, engaging both brain hemispheres in the same way EMDR therapy does.
Many women report that they can process emotions during walks that they can’t access while sitting still. This is not coincidental — it’s neurological. The bilateral movement helps “unstick“ memories from the amygdala and route them toward the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, where they can be filed with context.
How: Walk at a comfortable pace. Let your arms swing naturally. If possible, walk outside — the visual input of scanning the environment adds additional sensory grounding. Twenty to thirty minutes, daily if you can manage it.
Practice 6: Posture as a Signal to the Brain
The mind-body connection runs in both directions. Your emotional state affects your posture — but your posture also affects your emotional state.
After betrayal, most women adopt a collapsed posture: shoulders rounded, chest concave, head forward. This is the posture of protection and grief. And it feeds back into the brain as: I am defeated. I am small. I am unsafe.
Deliberately opening your posture — standing tall, rolling your shoulders back, lifting your chest — sends a different signal: I am present. I am capable. I take up space.
A simple daily practice: stand with your back against a wall and slowly move your arms in a “W“ to “Y“ shape (wall angels). This opens the chest, counteracts the collapsed grief posture, and relieves chronic tension in the neck and upper back.
Putting It Together: A Weekly Practice
You don’t need to do all of these every day. Here’s a sustainable starting point:
Daily: Five minutes of extended-exhale breathing or EFT tapping. A twenty-minute walk.
Three times per week: One hip-opening stretch session (ten minutes). Or one trauma-sensitive yoga class.
As needed: Somatic shaking when hyperarousal spikes. Wall angels when you notice the collapsed posture.
Start small. Do less than you think you should. Your body is recovering from an injury — you wouldn’t sprint on a broken leg. Give it the same compassion.
The Body Lets Go When the Body Feels Safe
The trauma in your body will not release on command. It will release when your nervous system believes — not just intellectually, but physically — that it is safe enough to let go.
Every time you breathe slowly and nothing bad happens, your nervous system logs it. Every time you walk and your body moves freely, your nervous system registers it. Every time you stretch your psoas and exhale into the discomfort and survive it, your body learns: I can hold this. I can release this. I am safe enough.
This is not a quick fix. It is a slow, patient dialogue with a body that has been on high alert for a long time. But the body is listening. It has always been listening.
Speak to it gently. It will begin to answer.
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