(NOTE* – I capitalize several words that have other cultural, spiritual, and contextual meanings).
I hope your Holiday season was everything you needed, or is still going well.
If you are looking for something interesting to read in your time off, this series of articles (and this series) may give you some perspective on how distress and Trauma change your brain and embodied sense of self.
In Part One – of this conversation, we explored the nature and experience of Trauma, and its effects on your instinctual and cognitive adaptability. It asks the question, ‘What if most of the experience and aftermath of Trauma happens below and before the Mind?’
If you have not read Part One of this series – HERE is the LINK.
In Part Two – the inquiry focused on the Brain regions that are most impacted by Trauma and chronic distress. Understanding, in real time, how your conscious and unconscious experience are driven by changes in your Neurology can be life changing. The metaphor of the ‘back of house’, or the noisy, chaotic, and barely keeping up restaurant kitchen still applies. Although we are shifting our focus, the influence of your Brain’s adaptability and orientation to life is still a present force behind everything discussed today. HERE is the Link!
In this article (part three) – we will explore the many ways that your Somatic or Embodied Experience can determine your State of Being, your social availability, and your sense of Self – or your ‘front of house.’ If you have experienced significant trauma and overwhelm, we will also discover (or remember) how your Embodied State can also become the primary source of distress and overwhelm.
TRIGGER WARNING – This will bring your attention to where pain is hidden and forgotten.
“Your Body is your Mind Before Your Mind is the Mind”See AlsoConsolidate the use of low-frequency therapeutic device-Nuopuen is a professional manufacturer of smart beauty, health and therapy equipment
Front of House
Staying with the imagery of a busy restaurant, the front of house’ is serving you thoughts and feelings, all day every day. It determines your ‘vibe’, which implies what it is like to be you – for you – and for everyone you meet. Everything that has ever influenced you about social connection, relationships, intimacy, and trust determines the kind of restaurant you receive nourishment from everyday… Or…
Please take a moment and feel into what your restaurant is like?
What would a week in your shoes of Somatic felt sense be like?
How often do you feel butterflies in your stomach?
If you start looping, what is the context?
Are those thoughts actually a result of critical thinking, or are they stories that help your feelings make sense? That is a good beginning, by the way.
This is where almost all forms of Therapy and Counseling start. What is your story and where does it come from?
In this context, your Brain (the ‘back of house’ – a chaotic kitchen that no one sees) is below your mind physically and functionally. It knows, feels, remembers, disregards, understands, and gets impatient with every long-term emotion or sensation you experience. Depending on your experience, your Brain can alter your perceptions and behaviors in ways that create or solve a lot of problems.
As well, your Embodied State (which is directly connected to those brain structures) is before your Mind.
I capitalize Embodied State to remind you that I am referring to a tangible awareness rooted in the time it takes to learn a practice, stop being busy and distracted, take care of yourself enough to feel curious and resourceful, and then begin a lifelong interaction. Evolution has ensured that you can ‘forget’ chronic low-grade sensations and ignore acute pain until there is time to slow down and heal.
In a caveman movie that kind of survival experience looks a certain way. In 2025, with a screen in every room, surrounded by an uncertain world, survival and ‘grinding’ looks very different.
If you are on a Healing Path, and your Embodied State is an important part of that journey, you may benefit from allowing your Adaptive Capacity to slowly come back for a while first. If you are also recovering from overwhelm of any kind, especially hard addiction, you will need to rest and restore your nervous system for a while.
When it comes to Trauma, you can only feel what you are ready to feel. You can only remember painful memories when you can adapt to them as a Self and as a social Being.
Modern culture tends to diminish, repress, or drug our embodied sensation out of existence. Outside of imported practices like Qi Gong and Yoga, the Western world uses Bodies like a machine – a machine that needs to keep going no matter what. This shift of importance, choosing you over external effort and opportunity can be one of the hardest to make. Trauma is about survival and overwhelm. When life or death howling consequences surround you like a hurricane, it takes a great deal of Courage and Wisdom to turn inward – to stay with the Eye of Your Hurricane – and all that it has seen.
What follows is an invitation to learn some new ways to relate to, and feel more deeply, every aspect of your Embodied Existence.
Mountain Musings with Dr. Michael Smith is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Your Somatic Sense Apparatus (SSA)
Being purposefully objective can help us explore tender places. For example: the combination of sight, sound, smell, touch, taste, and somatic state make up your Sensory Apparatus. In the most objective sense, this describes how information moves inward and outward.
The term somatic state (no capitals) refers to a latent attribute of awareness. The term implies a range of States (‘State’ means a present, describable, or ephemeral, yet defining quality of experience).
If Embodied Awareness practices are a part of your life, you are most likely aware of the distinction between a state, and Being ‘in State.‘ Sometimes euphoric, and sometimes Soul wounding interactions arise from there.
If you are new to those practices, or still deciding, I would encourage you to cultivate your Somatic Sense Apparatus. Just like eyes and ears, your inner Embodied experiences and sensations come into your awareness through different aspects of your nervous system. As I share some information about each of these functional and necessary aspects of your Somatic Mind, take a moment and explore what that attribute is like.
What will help you feel that part of your Embodiment more?
(If you have not subscribed, please do. The rest of this article will be for paid subscribers only. PLEASE consider supporting my efforts to share my clinical and personal experience about health and healing. Thanks for reading!)