Embodiment as Resistance

After completing a 20-Hour Applied Somatics Training with Collective Being — a mental health organisation founded in 2017 that offers trauma-informed, body-based programs to people experiencing stress, trauma, and systemic barriers to care — I’ve been reflecting deeply on what embodiment means in my own life and practice.

After two days of intensive in-person training, for the first time in my adult life I didn’t leave completely depleted. I learned, connected with brilliant peers, and still had energy for extended yoga practices — and even for giggles and cuddles with my toddler at the end of the day.

What made the difference? Psychosocial safety. The freedom to move, to stim, to lie down. To learn in a body-honouring way.

As a woman of colour, I also felt deeply safe. We spoke about what’s usually silenced in the name of “civility.” I was heard. And I finally saw how much unsafe spaces have been draining my body and blocking my learning.

I’ve been sitting with how much this work feels like a return.

As a neurodivergent person, somatic practice brought me back to stimming — that innate, self-soothing way of moving and being that so many of us were shamed or trained out of. To re-encounter that practice in an affirming space felt like reclaiming something I had always known.

And with new language and tools, I also began to understand something I hadn’t been able to name before: as a person with ADHD, hyperarousal can be a constant state of being for my body and brain. My “starting base” looks different to others, and that difference matters. For years, my self-care efforts were only momentary fixes because I didn’t know I was never truly resetting the stress cycle. Somatics gave me a way to understand and address that cycle, rather than endlessly patch over it.

Already, I find myself dreaming into offerings for my communities. I’m sketching ideas for a playful yoga and somatics class with a local childcare centre; an offering for pregnant and postpartum people — a time when our bodies are most politicised, reduced to incubators, and then suddenly thrust into the disorienting transformation of postpartum life. Birth trauma, bonding through touch and movement, meeting a mind and body forever changed — somatic practice belongs here. And I’m also collaborating with the Neurodiversity Project on a workshop for neurodivergent staff and students at the University of Melbourne.

And yet, I can’t separate this learning from the body I live in. My body is politicised whether I choose it or not: I am a woman of colour, neurodivergent, a person with a uterus who has carried and birthed a child. I live with chronic illness. I have moved through episodes of mental ill-health. This is the body I bring to the room as both practitioner and participant.

Somatics, for me, is not just a practice of returning to myself, but a practice of remembering that healing is always collective. My core value in this work is simple, though never easy: none of us can be liberated until all of us are liberated. I can’t truly heal while knowing others are still struggling to heal.

Like many people navigating complex and long-term trauma, my healing journey began with a book: The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. It was the first time I truly understood that trauma lives in the body — and that healing wouldn’t come from medication or talk therapy alone. Something was missing. For me, that missing piece was movement.

For years, I struggled to understand and live in my body. Yoga was a quiet companion throughout my 20s. I would return to the mat in moments of stress and burnout, drawn to it instinctively. But I didn’t yet know the trauma I carried, nor did I understand how my neurodivergence shaped my experience. I couldn’t grasp why I kept coming back to yoga, yet never fully connected with the practice enough to embody it.

Somatics changed everything. It is a practice of awareness, regulation, and transformation. It helps shift ingrained patterns and supports resilience, aliveness, and connection. It is both resistance and remembrance.

One concept that particularly resonated with me during the training was micro-practice — brief, accessible self-care techniques that can be integrated throughout the day to prevent the build-up of stress and overstimulation. It might be as simple as walking to the printer with intention and steady breath, or pausing at the window while grabbing a coffee to notice what’s outside.

Understanding ADHD and hyperarousal reframed this completely for me: micro-practices aren’t optional add-ons; they are essential ways of interrupting cycles my body would otherwise stay locked in. Self-care is not a one-off intervention, but an ongoing relationship with my nervous system.

Healing cannot be separated from this reality. My guiding value is simple, though never easy: none of us are liberated until all of us are liberated. Healing is not a solo journey. It is collective, relational, and deeply political. In a time when bodies are legislated, marginalised, and commodified, embodiment itself is an act of defiance.

I want to close with gratitude: to Jo, Isy, Alexia, and Shannon, our generous facilitators, and to my fellow somanauts who made this experience so joyful, enlightening, and healing. When our final online session ended and I closed my laptop, I felt a pang of sadness that it was only temporary — but also deep gratitude that we were able to share orbit with one another, even for a little while.