Somatic Yoga for Stress: Effective Techniques to Find Calm and Relief

Do you ever notice when you open up an email that your shoulders start to creep up to your ears? Or maybe your phone starts ringing and your jaw immediately tenses?

These are habitual bracing patterns that have been brought on through either trauma or stress. They are your body’s way of responding to a stressful situation(preparing for fight/flight/freeze) that may occur on a regular basis. And while yes, they developed for a reason, to try and keep you safe, that does not mean they are serving you anymore. They could even be causing you chronic pain 😬.

It’s time to relieve stress and the muscular tension it causes through increasing your somatic awareness and doing somatic movement practices.

What Is Somatic Yoga?

Somatic yoga is a gentle, body-focused practice that integrates mindful movement with traditional yoga to help release tension, improve body awareness, and support healing from within.

In somatic yoga, slow and deliberate movements are guided by internal sensations, unlike traditional yoga, which is focused on external alignment. This helps retrain the nervous system to reduce chronic pain and restore natural movement patterns. This approach prioritizes connecting with the physical sensations of how each movement feels, a key theme to all somatic practices, and can lead to profound physical and emotional relief.

The Goal of Somatic Yoga

The goal of somatic, or embodied, yoga is to help close the stress cycle of trauma and help people feel into the uncomfortable feelings they’ve been dancing around. And yes, revisiting a traumatic memory feels uncomfortable, but don’t be scared. This is done in small doses through conscious breathing and focused attention on movement. It’s about finding new ways to move the body that feel safe in order to signal the brain to close the stress cycle and heal.

By incorporating these more diverse gentle movements in the body you can re-train your brain, this is the power of neuroplasticity. Somatic exercises help students to feel safe enough to move in a self guided manner. To start to trust their bodies and themselves again. Because anyone who’s been through trauma most likely needs to learn to trust themselves again. 

Somatics And Stress

Somatic yoga can significantly reduce stress by helping you develop body awareness, release physical tension, and calm the nervous system. By engaging in slow, mindful movements, somatic yoga retrains the body to recognize and release stored stress patterns(those habitual bracing patterns we talked about earlier). When practiced regularly, somatic yoga activates the body’s parasympathetic nervous system, responsible for the “rest and digest” state, which counteracts the effects of chronic stress. This shift allows the muscles to relax and the breath to deepen, effectively lowering stress levels and promoting a sense of calm.

By focusing on in the moment awareness, somatic yoga offers a practical, empowering way to manage stress. This practice encourages a deeper connection between mind and body, helping individuals release habitual tension patterns and improve their overall mental well-being.

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What is Stress?

Stress is your body’s natural response to challenges or threats. These challenges/threats can be physical or emotional and the body responds by releasing hormones to trigger your sympathetic nervous system. Understanding your autonomic nervous system is a great start to understanding your stress response:

Nervous System 101

Your nervous system communicates with every cell, gland, and organ in the body. This is why if your nervous system is not regulated it impacts every function of your body. Your autonomic nervous system, which operates on its own, governs bodily functions, like your digestion, heart rate, blood pressure, metabolism and breathing. It’s divided into two parts: 

1. the sympathetic which is your “fight or flight” function.
2. the parasympathetic responsible for “rest and digest” functions.

When this system becomes dysregulated certain mental health issues can occur. Things like: 

• PTSD, OCD, ADHD
• Depression
• Insomnia
• Poor memory
• Exhaustion

A chronically dysregulated nervous system can lead to chronic stress, which can cause physical symptoms like: 

• Muscle tension
• Digestive problems
• Headaches
• Weight gain or loss
• High blood pressure/stroke and more

Somatic movements and somatic release can help regulate your autonomic nervous system.

How Somatic Movement Helps Stress

Research supports that somatic practices, including somatic yoga and mindfulness-based somatic movement therapy, can reduce stress and anxiety by enhancing proprioception (awareness of body position and movement) and supporting emotional regulation. A study published in Frontiers in Psychology highlights that slow, intentional movement can reduce stress hormones, which plays a critical role in managing stress response . Additionally, somatic practices have been shown to increase heart rate variability, a marker of stress resilience, indicating that the body is better equipped to manage stress over time .

Our high-stress no-rest society has most of us chronically tense. Leaving your sympathetic nervous system always on, always ready for battle. The goal of somatic healing is NOT to de-activate the sympathetic nervous system; but to establish a healthy flow between the sympathetic and parasympathetic. Somatic yoga for stress does this beautifully through increasing body awareness and gentle movements that guide you into the healing power of intuitive exercise and movements.

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Best Somatic Yoga Poses For Stress Release

Somatic yoga can be a powerful tool for releasing stress, using gentle, mindful movements to relax the body and calm the nervous system. They alleviate tension and bring awareness back to the present moment. If you’re able, I highly recommend working with a somatic movement therapist or doing somatic coaching with a certified professional live/in-person. They can cater somatic therapy to your own personal needs.

For a more guided practice you can do at home check out one of my favorite embodiment practices for lowering cortisol and stress:

You can find even more somatic exercise practices on my YouTube Channel, or if you want to make your own somatic practice, give these four somatic movements a try:

1. Legs Up the Wall (Viparita Karani)

Action:
Lie on your back and place your legs up against a wall, keeping them straight and relaxed. Let your arms rest at your sides, palms facing up, and focus on deep, slow breathing.

Benefits:

• Relieves tension in the lower back and triggers to body’s relaxation response by calming the nervous system.

Pro Tips:

• After a few deep breaths encourage students to focus on their bodily sensations. What internal experience is happening? Do any pent up emotions arise? Breathe and allow the body to fully release tension with each exhale.After a few deep breaths encourage students to focus on their bodily sensations. What internal experience is happening? Do any pent up emotions arise? Breathe and allow the body to fully release tension with each exhale.
• Make this a more somatic practice by having students place the soles of feet on the wall and adding in super slow movements like pelvic rocks.

2. Somatic Cat-Cow

Action:
Begin on all fours. Slowly move into Cat–Cow by rounding your back (Cat) on an exhale and arching it (Cow) on an inhale, focusing on the sensations in your spine and moving slowly to release built-up stress.

Benefits:

• Releases tension in the spine and encourages mindful, slow breathing to ease anxiety.

Pro Tips:

• Remind students to move at their own pace and feel each movement, focusing less on form and more on the internal perception of the movement.
• Take this mindful movement practice to another level by changing the position of the left leg and then the right leg. Somatic yoga is about self discovery, so encourage students to adjust this pose in ways that feel good in their own body.

3. Pelvic Tilts

Action:
Lie on your back with knees bent and soles of the feet flat on the floor. Gently tilt the pelvis forward and backward, feeling the lower back press down and release.

Benefits:

• Releases lower back tension and encourages connection to the breath.

Pro Tips:

• Suggest placing hands on the abdomen to feel the breath and movement of the pelvis.
• Sound can be incredibly healing. This could be a nice pose to encourage students to use their voice, making audible exhales.

4. Constructive Rest Pose

Action:
Lie on your back with knees bent, feet on the floor, and allow the body to relax fully, bringing awareness to any areas of tension, increasing awareness and releasing tension from them with each breath.

Benefits:

• Promotes relaxation throughout the body and is excellent for calming the nervous system.

Pro Tips:

• Create a quiet, meditative environment and remind students to check in on the subtle sensations happening in their body. To let go of any holding patterns in the body.
• Another great option is to take a corpse pose with a cushion under the knees and guide students through a regulation exercise.

Closing Thoughts

Somatic yoga is a deeply personal practice that offers a safe space to reconnect with your body. Somatic experiencing is especially beneficial for anyone experiencing stress, trauma, or tension. By embracing a somatic approach, you learn to tune into subtle cues of your body; you discover and release tension you may not have been conscious of. If you’re a yoga teacher, learn more through my Somatic Yoga Training Certification. It will not only help you along your healing journey, but give you the tools to help others on theirs.