Meditation, Mindfulness, and Somatic Experiencing — Closer Than You Think
Content warning: this article discusses trauma and the body's stress response in general terms. It isn't a substitute for individual therapeutic support.
If you've ever sat in meditation, you've already begun the work that somatic therapy continues.
Some people come to somatic therapy having already tried meditation, sometimes with a longstanding practice, often rooted in traditions like Vipassana. Others have used guided meditations simply to manage stress: a few minutes of breathing before a difficult meeting, or a sleep meditation to quiet a busy mind.
The language and methods differ, but underneath, they're related.
Meditation, mindfulness, and Somatic Experiencing® share a common root: awareness. That quality of paying careful, non-judgemental attention to what's happening right now, in the body, the posture, the sensations, the breath, is where change begins.
What Meditation and Somatic Therapy Have in Common
Meditation and somatic therapy are both practices of present-moment awareness. Rather than analysing the past or planning for the future, both invite you to attend to what's happening now. The sensations in the body are what bring you back into the present moment, and the present is where you actually have a sense of choice and control. When something feels within your control, the same stressor can feel less overwhelming.
The body as anchor Both use physical sensation, breath, weight, warmth, as an entry point into present-moment awareness.
Non-judgemental attention Neither asks you to fix or suppress what arises. Both encourage you to notice, to stay, to observe without immediately reacting.
Acceptance Approaching experience with curiosity rather than judgement is what allows acceptance, and from acceptance, compassion becomes possible.
Slowing down Both practices create space between stimulus and response. In that space, you notice more.
Impermanence Both notice that experience is always changing, nothing arises and stays forever; everything has a beginning and an end.
Nervous system regulation Regular practice in either shifts your baseline, from reactive to responsive, from braced to settled.
Mindfulness, as taught in traditions like MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction), explicitly trains the ability to observe sensations, thoughts, and emotions without immediately reacting to them. Somatic Experiencing® does something similar, but goes further into the body's language of stress and survival.
Where Somatic Therapy Goes Deeper
Meditation teaches you to observe what arises. Somatic therapy works with what the body does with it.
When we experience stress or threat, a difficult conversation, a looming deadline, or the residue of something that happened years ago, the nervous system responds. It prepares the body to act: to fight, to flee, or sometimes to freeze. Rather than psychological choices, these are biological responses, older and faster than thought, pre-verbal.
You might notice this as an impulse to draw your arms in for protection, and that protective impulse is a good thing; it's the nervous system doing its job.
The problem is that these responses can get stuck. The body mobilises for survival but never fully completes the cycle. The activation stays as tension in the shoulders, a held breath, a vague sense of unease, difficulty switching off. Over time, this becomes the background hum of daily life. (If you'd like to understand this in more depth,What is Trauma? covers the causes, types, and symptoms more fully.)
"When this stuck energy is restored to the whole organism, we can begin to live more fully — to create, accomplish, communicate, collaborate, and share." — Dr Peter Levine
Somatic Experiencing®, developed by Dr Peter Levine, works at exactly this level. Rather than only talking about stress, it works with the sensations of stress as they're held in the body, gently, carefully, without overwhelm. The goal isn't to relive past experiences, but to allow the nervous system to complete what it began and find its way back to regulation.
If meditation trains you to notice the weather inside, somatic therapy helps you understand the climate, and gradually change it.
Why an Existing Meditation Practice Can Help (With One Caution)
If you already meditate, even occasionally, you've developed something valuable: a degree of body awareness. You're familiar with turning attention inward. You know what it feels like to notice a thought without immediately following it. You may already use the breath as a resource and notice how it shifts with your emotions.
These capacities translate directly into somatic work. Clients with a meditation background often find they can track their internal experience more easily, they've already practised the art of pausing and noticing.
At the same time, somatic therapy can offer meditators something sitting practice alone doesn't always provide: a way to work directly with the body's stress responses, not just observe them. For some people, meditation surfaces difficult material, strong emotions, physical discomfort, a sense of agitation, without a clear way through. Somatic work offers exactly that: a way to become present to internal experience, and to understand long-held beliefs and perceptions that may have formed unconsciously, from events we've since become desensitised to, but which no longer serve us.
A word of caution: if you're carrying significant trauma, some neuroscientists and meditation teachers note that long, unsupported sitting practice isn't always advisable in that state. Short moments are fine, and this capacity can be built up gradually. Working with a practitioner first, to build resourcing and stabilise trauma symptoms, can make deeper meditation more accessible later, rather than less.
Mindfulness as a Bridge
Mindfulness, whether practised through formal meditation, body scans, or simply pausing to notice your breath during the day, can be understood as a bridge between everyday reactive living and the deeper work of nervous system regulation.
It trains the capacity to be with experience rather than immediately trying to change, avoid, or interpret it. That's precisely the quality somatic therapy depends on, and develops further.
In sessions, clients are often invited to simply notice: What do you feel in your body right now? Where do you notice that? What happens when you stay with it? This is mindfulness in action, attention brought deliberately to present-moment experience, without an agenda.
The difference is that in a somatic session, that attention is held relationally, with a practitioner tracking the nervous system alongside you, helping to pace the work, and supporting you to stay within a window of experience that's manageable rather than overwhelming. The aim is to bring this awareness to the stress or trauma itself, and transform it.
We may move through talking, emotion, and memory, but we keep returning to sensation, moments of quiet, meditative attention, tracking the changes that let mind and body guide you back to balance, centre, and a more fully embodied sense of yourself.
Meditation traditions teach you to let emotions pass through. Where you get stuck instead of passing through, that's where we meet, and where the work begins.
A Practice You Can Begin Now
You don't need to wait for a session to begin. The same attentiveness that meditation cultivates, noticing breath, weight, sensation, is available to you at any moment.
The free audio meditation offered here is designed precisely as a bridge: a guided experience that introduces the kind of body-based, present-moment awareness somatic therapy works with. It isn't passive relaxation, though you may find it deeply settling, it's an invitation to begin noticing, which is where all of this work starts.
Whether you're new to meditation, carry an existing practice, or are simply curious about including the body in your healing, this is a place to begin.
→ Free Guided Audio Meditation A body-based meditation in English or Spanish — a first taste of somatic awareness, available to you now. Sign up to the newsletter to receive it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Somatic Experiencing the same as meditation? No. They share a foundation in present-moment, non-judgemental awareness, but Somatic Experiencing® is a structured therapeutic approach that works directly with the nervous system's stress responses, typically with a trained practitioner, rather than a solo contemplative practice.
Can meditation bring up trauma symptoms? For some people, yes. Sitting with attention can surface difficult sensations or emotions without an obvious way to resolve them. This is one reason people with significant trauma histories are often advised to start with shorter practices, or to work alongside a somatic or trauma-informed practitioner.
Is somatic therapy the same as mindfulness-based therapy, like MBSR? They overlap but aren't the same. MBSR is primarily a mindfulness training programme. Somatic Experiencing® uses body awareness as one tool among several, including tracking, titration, and resourcing, aimed specifically at resolving stuck stress and trauma responses in the nervous system.
Do I need meditation experience before starting somatic therapy? No. Many clients arrive with no meditation background at all. An existing practice can help you settle into body awareness more quickly, but it isn't a prerequisite.
“…To incorporate mind, body, spirit, and emotions in the healing process has taught me to be more introspective and look for answers within.
Verinder has helped me identify and release past trauma and in my goal to get my marriage back on track…”
About the author Verinder Sharma is a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner and the founder of Soul Somatic Therapy, drawing on Somatic Experiencing® and Compassionate Inquiry (developed by Dr Gabor Maté). Sessions are offered online, bilingually in English and Spanish.