You are not alone in feeling the weight of anxiety in your body. You may notice tightness in your chest, shallow breathing, or a restless feeling that makes you want to move. These are not just mental signs; they are tangible, physical signs that your primal brain’s warning system has been activated: the sympathetic nervous system (SNS). Somatic exercises for anxiety provide an alternative approach; by engaging your innate sensory receptors, you can activate the parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS) to relax tension and restore calm.
In this blog, I share over a decade of experience guiding people through body-based therapy. I offer simple, actionable steps you can try today, along with resources available in your community. You will learn what somatic anxiety is, how somatic therapy for anxiety works, and specific techniques you can use right now.
What Is Somatic Anxiety?
When your nervous system becomes reactive, your body stays alert, and your mind struggles to keep up. Somatic anxiety is the physical expression of symptoms that show up in the body. You can feel it. You can sense it. Your chest and face might tighten. Your breathing could become shallow. You might tremble internally or experience the ‘shakes’. You may lose peripheral vision and feel impulsive, irritable, or impatient. Somatic anxiety isn’t separate from your mind; it’s deeply connected. It’s how your nervous system communicates without words.
Somatic anxiety can be the physical echo of chronic stress or from ongoing worry or rumination of thoughts. It may come after trauma, infection, or repeated exposure and stimulation of a perceived or real threat. The nervous system gets stuck in a survival mode. In somatic therapy for anxiety, the goal is to help you listen to your body’s signals and respond with care and non-judgment. You gradually help to reset your autonomic nervous system so it doesn’t stay locked in sympathetic drive or hyperarousal. You learn to feel safe in your body again.
How Somatic Therapy for Anxiety Works
Somatic therapy for anxiety works by connecting the mind and body. It doesn’t focus on the mind alone; it includes the body. It helps you become aware of what’s happening inside. It teaches you how to regulate your system through felt awareness and gentle movement. True somatic therapy for anxiety takes place in safe, supportive environments. A certified therapist helps you stay present while exploring and working through complex sensations. You don’t push yourself hard. You go slowly. You learn that your nervous system can return to a state of calm and presence.
Here is how it functions in practice:
Awareness While Suspending Judgmental Thoughts
The ability to pay attention to ourselves is simply our capacity to notice bodily sensations, emotions, and movements: where there is tightness, softness, or emptiness. By bringing attention, you interrupt habitual avoidance. The key is to notice without allowing self-defeating thoughts to overrule your experiences.
Tracking the Quality of Sensations
Follow their intensity, location, and whether they shift over time. This tracking is essential. It helps us learn to differentiate or detect change. It gives us the keys to open the door, enabling us to exercise conscious choice rather than being held captive by compulsions. It is crucial to start paying attention to your physical comfort.
Somatic Regulation
You use tools that soothe your body: breathing, self-touch, gentle movement, and orientation to your environment. Actively engaging awareness through action cultivates safety and enhances the resilience of the PSNS. Your system recovers faster from triggers, and you become less reactive.
Integration
You carry these skills into your daily life. Over time, your baseline state shifts. Your nervous system becomes more resilient and less driven along a fixed neural pathway.
Gentle Somatic Anxiety Techniques You Can Try
Below are techniques you can try right now until you find a skilled therapist in your area. Use them slowly and with patience. Some days you do more. Some days less. The goal is consistency and connection.
Somatic Breathwork for Anxiety
Breath is a direct lever on your nervous system. Somatic breathwork uses gentle patterns to help your autonomic nervous system shift from tension (SNS) to relaxation (PSNS). Use it with intention. Breathing alone can help calm the Sympathetic Nervous System response.
Cultivating the long, slow exhalation
This is a well-researched, safe, supported way to bring your body toward rest. It is one of the core somatic anxiety techniques you should practice often and in any position. If any part feels too intense, pause, revert to slow, gentle breathing without a pattern, and then start again. Always prioritize ease. Here are several different options.
- The Open Triangle: by far the most straightforward go-to somatic breath strategy.
- Inhale: through the nose. No need to count, just inhale
- Exhale: through the mouth, using pursed lips, slows the release of the breath, making it longer than the inhale.
- Repeat 5-7 rounds or until you feel more centered and calm.
- Diaphragmatic Breathing: Place one hand on the chest and one on the mid-to-lower belly.
- Inhale: deeply enough through your nose so that only your belly hand rises, your chest hand stays still.
- Exhale: through the mouth while gently pulling in your belly away from your hand.
- Relax the belly completely.
- Repeat for 5-10 minutes a day, 3-4 times a day.
- Use the 4-7-8 pattern or a variant (for example: inhale for 4, hold for 7, exhale for 8). Use numbers you can manage.
- Inhale: slowly and deeply through the nose for a count of 4.
- Hold your breath for a count of 7.
- Exhale: through puckered lips forcefully for a count of 8.
- Repeat 5-7 rounds or until you feel more centered and calm.
- Physiological Sigh:
-
-
- Inhale: take one normal breath in through your nose.
- Second inhale: immediately take a second, even deeper breath in through your nose.
- Long exhale: release the air in a long, slow, sighing exhale through your mouth.
- Repeat 1-4 times.
-
The “Orienting” Technique
Orientation is about noticing what is around you to anchor your nervous system. It helps counter overwhelm by bringing your awareness outward, rather than focusing only inward.
Steps:
- Sit or stand comfortably.
- Softly look around you. Take in shapes, colors, and textures.
- Gently notice three things you see in your environment.
- Shift to three things you hear.
- Then, three things you can feel (e.g., your clothes, breeze, surface you touch).
- You can also include two things you can smell, one thing you can taste (if safe and possible).
- Let the jaw disengage, sense the breath moving in and out of your nose naturally.
This technique helps bring your nervous system back into balance. It signals to your brain: you are safe in this environment. You are okay. It interrupts runaway fear.
Touch and Self-Soothing Practices
Guided self-touch is a powerful way to rev up the PSNS and turn down anxiety. When safe and appropriate, you can use touch to calm your system.
Some ideas:
- Hands on Heart: Place your hands gently over your chest or heart area with your palms facing down. Feel warmth and contact. Combine this practice with one of the breath practices. Upon exhaling, gently press the palms into the chest. Release the pressure upon inhaling.
- Self-hug: You can do this while sitting in a chair with back support, in a recliner, or lying on your back with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor or bed. Cross your arms over your chest, gently holding your mid-upper arms or shoulders. Feel the firmness and texture of your skin. Keep your arms connected to your chest and slowly pull one arm, then release, and repeat with the other arm. Do this several times. This creates a gentle rocking and rolling sensation across your upper back and torso. Let your head move with your movements. Close your eyelids. Gently look in the direction where your head rolls. Rock back and forth without holding your breath.
- Face Stroking*: Place fingers on forehead. Slowly and gently stroke downward along the sides of your forehead, temples, cheeks, and jawline, ending at the chin. Lift the hands back to the forehead and repeat 10-15 times. For added benefit, count out loud, backwards from 3o by threes until you reach zero.
- Weighted blanket or soft object: Use a blanket, hug a large pillow, or hold a big soft teddy across your chest. Feel the soothing pressure. Try both the backlying and sidlying positions to observe which feels more supportive. You can couple this strategy with one of your breathing techniques.
- Cold or warm stimuli: Place a cool washcloth on the back of the neck, across the face, the wrists, or the chest. Press a warm hot water bottle (safe temperature) to your belly or chest.
Grounding Through Body Scanning
This is one of the easiest and most effective somatic exercises for anxiety. It anchors you in present experience.
Steps:
- Find a quiet place. Sit or lie down comfortably.
- Close your eyes or soften your gaze.
- Take a few slow, gentle breaths.
- Bring your awareness to your feet. Sense contact with the ground or surface under your feet.
- Move your attention upward: ankles, calves, knees, thighs, hips.
- Continue upward: abdomen, chest, hands, arms, shoulders, neck, face, top of the head.
- In each region, notice what you feel: warmth, tightness, tingling, or nothing.
- If you find tension, pause there and breathe into it. Breathe outward.
- After completing the scan, rest in your body for a few breaths, absorbing the experience.
You may do this exercise for 5 to 20 minutes. The key is not speed but depth of awareness. Over time, your body scanning becomes a regular way to sense shifts before they escalate.
These self-soothing somatic anxiety techniques lend comfort in moments of distress. Use them when anxiety feels intense or during transitions in your day.
When to Seek Professional Somatic Therapy for Anxiety
Somatic exercises for anxiety can be extremely helpful. Yet, there are times when professional support is necessary. Consider seeking a trained somatic therapist to help you stay present while exploring difficult sensations, or if:
- Anxiety symptoms are severe or debilitating.
- You experience panic attacks frequently.
- You have a history of trauma or PTSD.
- You feel disconnected from your body or numb much of the time.
- Self-practices trigger overwhelming emotional flooding or dissociation.
- You are not making progress despite consistent effort.
You do not push too hard. You go slowly. You learn how to help your nervous system recover more quickly from triggers. You become less reactive and start feeling more at home in your body.
Additional practitioner resources:
*Havening Techniques®: Havening.org
Somatic Experiencing® International (SEI) traumahealing.org
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SE) sensorimotorpsychotherapy.org
Sounder Sleep® soundersleep.com
Feldenkrais Method® feldenkrais.com
You deserve to feel safe in your body. You deserve a life less burdened by tension and fear. Over time, these gentle somatic techniques can transform the inner landscape of your brain. They are not magic, but the results can feel like magic. They are reliable companions. Use them consistently. Be gentle with yourself. Remember that healing is not a straight line, but your willingness to read and take action shows bravery.
At Montgomery Somatics, you’re warmly welcomed. Schedule a private online session with Carol today and start your journey toward safety, ease, freedom of movement, and regaining function. Together, we’ll explore how your body can become an ally once more.