How the Body Stores Trauma — and How Kundalini Activation Can Help Release It

When we think of trauma, we often picture emotional wounds or difficult memories — something that lives in the mind. But as Dr. Bessel van der Kolk explains in his influential book The Body Keeps the Score, trauma doesn’t just live in our thoughts. It lives in our bodies.

Our nervous system, tissues, breath patterns, and posture all hold onto the residue of what we’ve lived through — especially the experiences we couldn’t fully process at the time. These somatic imprints remain long after the mind has moved on, creating chronic tension, emotional reactivity, or a subtle but constant sense of unease.

The truth is: we carry far more than we consciously remember.

Trauma Lives in the Body, Not Just the Mind

When we experience something overwhelming — whether it's a car accident, emotional neglect, or the loss of a loved one — the body instinctively responds. Our fight, flight, or freeze system kicks in to keep us safe.

If the threat passes and we have the space to process what happened, the nervous system naturally returns to balance. But more often than not, especially in early life or in situations where we didn’t feel safe, that completion doesn’t happen.

Instead, the body holds on.Muscles stay tense.The breath stays shallow.The nervous system remains on high alert.And unprocessed emotional energy becomes stored in the very tissues of the body — often without us even realizing it.

These imprints can stay dormant for years, even decades. Sometimes they surface as anxiety, chronic pain, digestive issues, or emotional patterns we can’t seem to shift — all without a clear cognitive “why.” As Van der Kolk says, the body remembers what the mind forgets.

Kundalini: The Inner Intelligence of Healing

This is where Kundalini Activation offers something profound.

Kundalini is often described as a dormant energy coiled at the base of the spine. But beyond metaphors, it is a self-organizing intelligence that resides within the body — a blueprint for wholeness, aliveness, and deep repair.

When awakened, Kundalini doesn’t need to be “told” what to do.It doesn’t work through logic, memory, or mental effort.Instead, it intuitively travels through the energy channels of the body, locating blockages — often the very places where trauma and emotional residue have been stored — and begins to move it.

This process can look different for everyone. Some people shake, cry, laugh, or spontaneously move into yoga-like postures called kriyas. Others feel intense heat, tingling, or waves of emotion rising and releasing. What’s important to understand is that this is not random — it is the body unwinding, discharging, and reorganizing itself under the guidance of a deeper intelligence.

And perhaps most remarkably:You don’t need to remember the trauma to release it. There is no need to relive the event or mentally “make sense” of what’s happening. Many people report processing something that they didn’t even know was there. That’s because Kundalini bypasses the conscious mind and goes straight to the root.

Why This Matters

Traditional talk therapy and cognitive approaches can be powerful tools. But when trauma is held in the body — in the fascia, the breath, the nervous system — it often requires a somatic and energetic intervention. This is where Kundalini Activation becomes not just a spiritual practice, but a deeply physiological one.

It allows the system to reset.It restores the natural flow of life force through the body.And it gives us a way to heal — not through effort, but through surrender.

In Closing

The Body Keeps the Score opened the door for us to understand trauma as something that lives in the body. Kundalini Activation offers a path to release it.

By awakening the self-regulating intelligence within us, we can begin to dissolve old emotional patterns, let go of what was never ours to carry, and return to a sense of wholeness that has always been available — waiting just beneath the surface.

If you've ever felt that your body is holding on to something you can't quite name...You might not need more answers.

You might just need to let the body speak — and let the energy move.