Processing Past Experiences

There are experiences in our lives that we understand well. We may know what happened, why it affected us and even recognise the patterns that developed afterwards. We can talk about our childhood, our relationships or a difficult period of our lives with enormous insight, and yet still notice that something happens inside us when a familiar situation arises.

Our chest tightens. Our stomach contracts. We become defensive. We withdraw. We suddenly feel very young, angry or frightened. We know intellectually that the situation we're in now is different, but something in us responds as though the old experience is still very close.

This is one of the reasons I became interested in approaches that work not only with what we think and understand, but with what we actually experience.

In somatic work, meditation and some spiritual traditions, we are invited to shift our attention away from explaining an experience and towards noticing what is happening within us now. Sometimes this is described as moving from being a person having an experience towards becoming more intimately present with the experience itself.

That can sound abstract. In practice, it can be very simple: rather than immediately asking Why am I feeling this?, we become curious about What am I actually experiencing right now?

The story matters, but it isn't the whole experience

We naturally make sense of our lives through stories. This happened. This is how I felt. This is what I learned from it. This is why I behave as I do now. And we become very attached to them as they form our identity.

There is nothing inherently problematic about this. Being able to tell the story of something that happened to us can be important. It can help us make sense of confusing experiences, recognise that something wasn't okay, understand our responses and put language around something we may previously have been unable to articulate.

The difficulty comes when the story becomes the only place we know how to meet our experience.

We can sometimes become very good at explaining ourselves while remaining relatively disconnected from what is happening underneath the explanation. We might know that we have difficulty trusting people, for example, and understand exactly where that pattern originated. But when somebody gets close to us, we still feel our chest contract and notice the impulse to pull away.

At that moment, knowing why we do it and being able to experience what is happening while we do it are two different forms of awareness.

This is where working somatically can offer another doorway.

Moving From Story Into Direct Experience

Imagine that something happens and you feel anxious.

The mind might immediately begin:

Why am I feeling like this?

Is this because of what happened before?

Why do I always react this way?

I thought I'd dealt with this.

There may be useful information within those thoughts. But another possibility is to become curious about the experience before trying to explain it.

Where do you notice the anxiety?

Perhaps there is pressure across your chest. Your breathing has become shallow. Your stomach feels unsettled. Your jaw is tight. Your hands feel cold. Maybe you notice an impulse to move away, or perhaps you become very still.

Instead of immediately turning those sensations into a story, you spend a little time noticing them.

There is tightness.

There is heat.

My breath feels restricted.

Something in me wants to pull away.

This doesn't mean the story has disappeared or doesn't matter. You are simply meeting another layer of the experience.

In my own work, I am interested in the movement between these different forms of knowing. Sometimes we need to understand. Sometimes we need to feel. Sometimes we need expression. Sometimes we need distance. And sometimes what changes something most is simply being able to remain present with an experience without immediately trying to get rid of it.

What Are Samskaras?

Another way of understanding recurring patterns comes from the Eastern spiritual traditions that have influenced my own practice.

In Indian philosophical and contemplative traditions, the Sanskrit word samskara has been used in different ways to describe impressions or conditioning created through previous experience. These impressions can influence how we perceive, respond and behave, contributing to habitual tendencies that repeat themselves.

I find this an interesting framework because it invites us to notice that we don't encounter every moment completely afresh. We meet life through everything we have already experienced, learned and come to expect.

If, for example, expressing a need repeatedly resulted in rejection, criticism or disappointment, we may eventually stop expressing our needs. Years later, even in a very different relationship, asking for something can still feel surprisingly difficult.

A spiritual tradition might understand this through the language of samskara or conditioning. Psychology might describe learned patterns, expectations or associations. Somatic approaches may pay attention to the physical responses that accompany them.

I don't think we necessarily need to collapse these different traditions into one explanation. They can simply offer different lenses through which to become curious about our experience.

Does the Body Really "Hold" the Past?

We often hear phrases such as “the body stores trauma” or “the body keeps the score.” They can be useful shorthand for something many people recognise experientially: our past can influence how our bodies respond in the present.

But I think it is worth being more precise.

It doesn't necessarily mean that a particular emotion or memory is literally stored inside a muscle waiting to be released. Our experiences can shape patterns of attention, expectation, muscular tension, breathing, emotional response and behaviour. A situation in the present can then evoke responses associated with what we have previously experienced.

This might appear as holding your breath when conflict begins, tightening your jaw when you're trying not to say something, bracing when somebody gets close, becoming numb when emotions become intense or feeling your stomach contract before you've consciously recognised that something feels threatening.

The body can therefore give us information that isn't always immediately available through thought.

Rather than asking “Where is the trauma stored?”, I find it more useful to ask:

“What is my body doing right now?”

That question leaves much more room for curiosity.

Feeling Without Immediately Explaining

This is where the idea of becoming the experience becomes interesting.

It doesn't mean losing yourself inside an emotion. In fact, I think the opposite is often more useful.

You begin to experience the distinction between having a sensation and becoming completely identified with what the sensation appears to mean.

Instead of:

I'm anxious because this always happens to me and I'm never going to feel safe in relationships.

There might initially just be:

There is pressure in my chest.

My breathing has changed.

My stomach is contracting.

I want to move backwards.

Something important happens in that shift. You haven't denied the anxiety or talked yourself out of it. But you have created a little more space around the interpretation.

The sensation can now be experienced as something happening within you, rather than immediately becoming the whole truth about who you are or what is happening.

And once we begin paying attention in this way, we often discover that bodily experience isn't static. Sensation can intensify, diminish, move, change quality or remain relatively unchanged. An impulse may arise. An emotion may appear. A memory or image might surface. Or nothing particularly dramatic may happen at all.

All of those possibilities are valid.

The Aim Isn't to Make the Sensation Disappear

This is an important distinction in the way I now understand somatic work.

If we approach a sensation believing that we need to feel it fully so that it will finally release, we can subtly turn awareness into another form of control.

We are no longer simply meeting what is here. We are saying:

I'll allow you to exist so that you'll go away.

The body doesn't always cooperate with that bargain.

Sometimes something softens when we give it attention. Sometimes there is emotion, trembling, movement, tears or a significant physical shift. Sometimes the sensation remains. And sometimes the most meaningful change is not what happens to the sensation but our relationship with it.

Perhaps I can feel the contraction without immediately panicking about it.

Perhaps I can notice the urge to withdraw and still choose whether I actually want to leave.

Perhaps I can experience sadness without needing to understand every reason for it.

Perhaps I can notice fear and remain aware that something else is also present.

That is a very different orientation from trying to extract an emotion from the body.

We Don't Have to Stay With the Difficult Sensation

There is another misunderstanding that can arise in embodied work: the idea that once we find something uncomfortable, the courageous thing is to stay with it until it changes.

Sometimes staying is useful. Sometimes it isn't.

If an experience becomes overwhelming, our capacity for curiosity and connection can diminish. We may become consumed by the emotion, shut down, dissociate or lose contact with what is happening around us.

This is why I work with titration and pendulation in my somatic work.

Titration means approaching something in smaller, more manageable amounts rather than trying to experience everything at once. Pendulation involves allowing attention to move between something that feels difficult or activated and something that feels steadier, more comfortable or resourced.

You might notice the tightness in your chest for a few moments and then feel your feet against the floor.

You might notice sadness and then look around the room.

You might feel the contraction in your stomach and then notice somewhere else in your body that feels neutral, warm or supported.

The movement away isn't avoidance. It is precisely what allows us to remain in relationship with an experience without becoming overwhelmed by it. We are teaching our system that we can be in relationship with something that previously was difficult to be in connection with.

Story and Sensation Can Work Together

I don't think we need to choose between cognitive and embodied approaches.

There are times when the story needs to be spoken. Something may need to be acknowledged, understood or witnessed. We may need to recognise that a boundary was crossed, grieve something we lost or understand why a particular experience affected us so deeply.

At other times, continuing to tell the story may take us around a familiar loop without bringing us into contact with anything new.

The question becomes:

What is useful now?

Do I need understanding?

Do I need to feel?

Do I need to express something?

Do I need support?

Do I need distance?

Do I need to move?

Do I need to stop?

This is one of the things I value about working with both coaching and somatic approaches. We can move between cognitive understanding and embodied experience rather than treating either one as inherently more truthful.

Awareness Is Different From Analysis

There is also an important difference between noticing an experience and interpreting it.

If your throat tightens while talking about your mother, it can be tempting to immediately conclude that you have “unspoken words stored in your throat.”

Perhaps there is something you want to say. But perhaps there are other explanations.

The first information we actually have is much simpler:

My throat tightened when I said that.

We can stay curious.

What happens if you notice it?

Does it change when you breathe?

Is there an impulse to make a sound?

Does an emotion appear?

Does your body want more space?

Does nothing happen?

Allowing the experience to reveal itself can be very different from deciding in advance what the body is trying to tell us.

A Simple Practice for Moving From Story to Sensation

The next time you notice yourself becoming emotionally activated, begin by recognising the story rather than trying to suppress it.

You might simply think:

There's a lot of story happening right now.

Then bring some attention towards your body.

Where do you notice the experience most clearly? Perhaps there is tightness, heaviness, heat, cold, buzzing, pressure, numbness or movement.

See whether you can describe the sensation without immediately explaining it.

Instead of “My chest is tight because nobody listens to me,” try staying briefly with:

“There is tightness across my chest.”

Notice your breathing. Notice whether there is an impulse to move, become still, make a sound, push something away, reach towards something or change position.

You don't need to follow every impulse. Simply noticing it can be informative.

Then widen your attention again.

Feel the surface underneath you. Look around the room. Notice something neutral or pleasant. Listen to a sound. Feel your feet.

You can move backwards and forwards between the sensation and the rest of your experience.

There is nothing you need to release.

You are simply practising being present with yourself.

From Experience to Awareness

There is another dimension to this that connects with my own spiritual practice.

If I can notice a thought, sensation or emotion, then there is also an awareness of that experience.

This distinction is central to several contemplative and non-dual traditions that have influenced me. Rather than being completely identified with every thought and feeling that arises, we begin to become curious about the awareness within which those experiences appear.

This isn't about distancing ourselves from our humanity or telling ourselves that difficult emotions aren't real.

If anything, it can allow us to meet them more intimately.

There can be sadness without I am my sadness.

Fear without I am a fearful person.

Anger without immediately constructing an identity around being angry.

The experience remains real, but our relationship with it can become less fixed.

This is one of the places where, for me, somatic and spiritual practice can meet. One brings us more deeply into direct experience, while the other can invite us to notice the awareness within which that experience is happening.

We don't have to choose between the two.

When Working With the Past Becomes Too Much

None of this means that you should deliberately evoke painful memories and then try to process them alone.

If something begins to feel overwhelming, you can stop. Open your eyes. Look around you. Move your body. Feel the ground underneath you. Speak to somebody. Do something ordinary.

Being able to move away from an experience can be just as important as being able to move towards it.

If you regularly experience overwhelming memories, severe dissociation, panic or other symptoms connected with traumatic experiences, appropriately qualified psychological or medical support may be more suitable than attempting to work through them through self-directed somatic practices.

Somatic work doesn't need to involve pushing through our limits to be meaningful.

Processing Isn't Always About Getting Rid of the Past

Perhaps the biggest change I would make to the way we often talk about processing is this: the aim doesn't necessarily have to be releasing the past.

Some experiences remain important. Some losses remain losses. Some wounds may continue to affect us. Healing doesn't require us to reach a point where nothing from our history ever touches us again.

What can change is the amount of choice we have in relationship with what arises.

We may recognise a familiar contraction without automatically obeying it. We may feel grief without becoming entirely consumed by it. We may notice an old protective response and become curious about whether it is still needed now. We may discover that we can feel something difficult while simultaneously remaining connected to ourselves, another person or the life happening around us.

Sometimes there is release. Sometimes there is understanding. Sometimes there is simply more space.

For me, processing past experiences isn't about endlessly returning to what happened, nor is it about abandoning the story and trying to live entirely through sensation.

It is about developing the capacity to move between story, sensation, emotion, awareness and the present moment and gradually discovering that what happened to us can remain part of our history without having to determine every moment that comes next.