When asked about personal practices for healing trauma, Bessel van der Kolk shares that Rolfing was one of the most helpful things he ever experienced. Born at the end of WWII in the Netherlands where half his generation died of starvation, he grew up with a defensive body — frozen, chest closed, always small. Rolfing involved “no mental process whatsoever” — it simply opened his body, let his chest expand, allowed him to stand big and not be eternally frozen.
His yoga practice was similarly transformative: finding his core, taking care of himself, getting in touch with himself. Both were non-relational — no therapist knew him as a person — yet they were profoundly healing because the trauma wasn’t just in the mind but in the body’s organization.
This underscores that some trauma is stored as physical pattern rather than narrative memory. No amount of talking or insight can unlock what lives in the body’s defensive posture. The body needs its own form of intervention.
Related Concepts
- Body awareness is just attention
- Insight requires embodied integration
- Three brains of transformation