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By Cheryl Groskopf, LMFT, LPCC · Licensed Somatic & Anxiety Therapist in Los Angeles · About Cheryl
Last Updated April 2026
Most of us walk around carrying a lot — in our bodies, not just our minds. The tight shoulders. The clenched jaw. The chest that never fully expands. The constant low-level hum of "something's off" even when everything looks fine on paper.
That's your nervous system talking. And it's not broken — it's just running patterns it learned a long time ago, in circumstances that probably called for exactly that level of vigilance. The body is intelligent like that.
As a somatic therapist in Los Angeles, the work I do every day is helping people build a different kind of relationship with that intelligence — not fighting it, not overriding it, but working with it. These five exercises are tools I use in session regularly. They're body-first, evidence-based, and designed to help your nervous system find its way back to ease.
You can start right now, wherever you are. No equipment, no experience needed — just a few minutes and a willingness to get curious about what's happening in your body.
If you've been carrying this for a while and want to understand what's happening underneath — my post on what burnout does to your nervous system goes deep on the biology and why these tools work the way they do.
Or if you're already thinking this is exactly what you need — book a free 15-minute consultation here and let's talk about what working together looks like.
Somatic therapy exercises are body-based practices that work directly with your nervous system — through sensation, breath, movement, and awareness — rather than through thought alone. They help your body release stored activation and relearn what safety feels like, which is where lasting regulation tends to come from.
Your nervous system stores the residue of stressful experiences as physical patterns — tension, bracing, shallow breathing, hypervigilance — long after the original event has passed. Somatic exercises work by sending new signals through those same pathways, helping the body update what it knows about safety.
Here's the evolutionary piece worth understanding: your nervous system evolved for a world of immediate, physical threats. Predators. Famine. Danger that was real, present, and eventually passed. It was exquisitely designed to activate fast and — just as importantly — to recover once the threat was gone.
Modern life has changed what threatens us but not how our bodies respond. Chronic stress, childhood chaos, toxic relationships, burnout — these don't give the nervous system the clear "all clear" signal that a passed physical threat would. So the activation lingers. The body stays braced. And over time, that bracing becomes the baseline.
This is why talking about it, while valuable, often isn't enough on its own. The patterns live in the body — in the way you hold your breath, the way your shoulders creep toward your ears, the way stillness can feel more activating than being busy. Research on somatic experiencing shows that body-based approaches produce significant reductions in trauma symptoms — including in people who had already tried other methods.
These exercises work by meeting your nervous system where it actually lives: in your body, in the present moment, one sensation at a time.
Match the exercise to your current state. Wired, anxious, or spiraling → try grounding or orienting. Numb, flat, or checked out → try humming or the parts check-in. Holding tension physically → try the squeeze-and-release scan. When unsure, start with grounding — it works across most states.
Your nervous system isn't in the same place every day — or even every hour. One of the most useful things you can build is the ability to notice where you are and choose accordingly. Here's a simple guide:
You don't have to do all five. Even one, done with genuine attention, is real nervous system work. See what lands. Your body knows more than you think.
The 5-4-3-2-1 technique uses your five senses to anchor your attention in the present moment, interrupting the nervous system's tendency to time-travel into past threat or future worry. It works best when you're feeling spirally, disconnected, or like your thoughts are running the show.
When your thoughts are spiraling or your body feels like it's somewhere else entirely, grounding helps you come back. Back into your feet, your breath, the room you're actually in.
I use this with clients navigating chronic anxiety, burnout, and trauma responses — especially when the system is stuck on high alert and needs something simple, right now. Think of it as a body-level reset that gets your brain and your nervous system back on the same page.
How to do it:
You're not aiming for insight. You're aiming to be present. That's the whole exercise.
Therapist note: Pair this with slow, easy breathing if you can. It works especially well when you're feeling buzzy or like your body wants to move but has nowhere to go. The more consistently you use it, the more your nervous system starts to associate this kind of deliberate attention with safety.
Humming and gargling create gentle vibrations that stimulate the vagus nerve — the primary pathway of your parasympathetic nervous system. This sends a direct signal to your body that it's safe to downregulate, making it particularly useful for freeze states, emotional numbness, or chronic shutdown.
This one feels a little strange the first time. It works anyway.
Your vagus nerve is the main highway of your parasympathetic nervous system — the branch responsible for bringing you back to ease after activation. Humming, gargling, or even cold water on your face creates vibrations that travel that highway and signal your body to shift gears. A 2023 study published in PMC measuring heart rate variability found that humming produced the lowest stress index compared to physical activity, emotional stress, and even sleep — supporting what somatic therapists have observed clinically for years.
This is one I use a lot with clients who feel frozen, flat, or emotionally muted — especially people healing from long-term stress or chronic shutdown. It's deceptively simple and genuinely effective.
How to do it:
You're creating a subtle internal vibration. That's it. Your body does the rest.
Therapist note: If your emotions feel muted or you're living in a kind of fog, this kind of somatic cue can help you come back online. It's low-effort, repeatable, and easy to do anywhere — your car, your bathroom, your desk. Start there.
An IFS-informed somatic check-in involves noticing which "part" of you is most activated in a given moment, then locating where you feel that part in your body. Rather than trying to change or fix it, you simply bring curious, gentle attention to it — which often shifts the activation on its own.
If you've ever felt like one part of you wants to heal and another part wants to hide — that's not inconsistency. That's just how we're built. We all carry different parts: the one that overthinks, the one that shuts down, the one that keeps pushing, the one that's exhausted from all the pushing.
Somatic therapy helps you feel those parts in your body, not just think about them. And often, just being witnessed — even by yourself — is what they've been waiting for.
How to do it:
Sometimes that's all it takes. Parts don't always need solutions. They need to feel seen.
Therapist note: I use this in IFS therapy and attachment work regularly — especially when someone feels torn between wanting to grow and wanting to disappear. It gives language to the stuck-ness. And once a part feels seen, it usually doesn't have to shout so loud anymore.
Does any of this feel familiar?
If these exercises are landing — or if you're realizing your nervous system has been carrying more than you thought — that's worth paying attention to. I offer a free 15-minute consultation where we can talk through what's going on and whether working together makes sense.
Somatic orienting uses slow, deliberate visual scanning to signal safety to a nervous system that's been wired for threat. By letting your eyes land naturally on neutral or pleasant things in your environment, you give your body real-time sensory evidence that this moment is safe — which is different from just telling yourself it is.
When you've lived through difficult things — big, small, loud, or quiet — your nervous system can start scanning the environment for danger even when nothing's wrong. It learned that vigilance kept you safe. And it's good at its job.
Orienting is about giving your body a different kind of information. Not through reasoning or affirmation, but through actual sensory experience. You're training your eyes — and the nervous system they're wired into — to notice safety, not just threat.
How to do it:
That's it. You're not trying to relax. You're just giving your nervous system accurate information about where you actually are right now.
Therapist note: This is one of the first tools I reach for in complex PTSD work when someone's system is wired for survival around the clock. It's gentle, non-invasive, and a great starting point for regulation — especially before doing anything that requires more internal attention.
The squeeze-and-release scan works by deliberately creating and then releasing muscular tension through the body, helping the nervous system discharge accumulated physical stress. It reconnects you to your body without requiring emotional processing — useful when you need support but aren't ready to talk.
Most of us carry tension we don't even know is there. Shoulders that never fully drop. A jaw that's been clenched since Tuesday. A stomach that's been bracing for something for so long it's forgotten how not to.
When you've been through stress or difficult experiences, your body learns to hold tension as a kind of armor. This exercise is about noticing where that armor lives and giving your body permission to soften — not because it has to, but because it's safe enough to try.
How to do it:
You don't have to process anything. You don't have to feel anything in particular. You're just giving your body a little room to breathe. And those small releases tend to add up.
Therapist note: This is a go-to for clients in trauma therapy who are dealing with chronic stress or burnout. It's powerful precisely because it requires so little — no words, no story, no explanation. Just your body, doing what it already knows how to do.
These exercises work because they communicate with the nervous system directly — through the body — rather than asking the thinking brain to reason its way to calm. They send new sensory information through survival pathways that thoughts alone can't reach, helping the body update its sense of what's safe.
These tools work because they don't just tell your brain to calm down. They show your body that the threat has passed. That it's okay to slow down. That it's safe to come back.
When you engage your senses, release held tension, or bring gentle attention to a part that's been running in the background — you're sending a new signal through your whole system. A scoping literature review of somatic therapy research found positive effects on nervous system regulation across both traumatized and non-traumatized populations. This isn't just subjective experience — there's real biology behind it.
And here's the part that surprises people: you don't need to understand it for it to work. You don't need to have insight. You don't need to process your whole history. You just need to show up and be curious about what's happening in your body right now. That's it. That's the whole practice.
Healing doesn't have to be loud or dramatic. Sometimes it looks like humming in your car. Or letting your eyes land on something green. Or putting a hand on your chest and just staying there for a moment.
That's real progress. That's the work.
These exercises are a starting point. For nervous systems that have been in survival mode for years — due to trauma, burnout, or longstanding patterns — working with a somatic therapist provides the depth, pacing, and relational safety that self-guided tools alone can't fully replicate.
These exercises are real tools. And they're just the beginning.
If your nervous system has been carrying a heavy load for a long time — because of trauma, burnout, childhood patterns, or just being a human in a world that doesn't slow down — doing this work solo has real limits. The nervous system heals in relationship. That's not a philosophical position — it's how the biology actually works.
In body-based somatic therapy, we go slow. We build safety first. We work with your body's signals rather than trying to override them. You don't have to retell everything. You don't have to arrive with insight or clarity. You just have to show up. I'll meet you there.
If this kind of body-first work feels like what's been missing — book a free 15-minute consultation here. No pitch, no pressure. Just a real conversation about what your nervous system needs and whether working together makes sense.
If you made it all the way here, that's worth acknowledging.
Most people click away the second things start to feel real. So if you're still reading, you're probably someone who feels a lot — maybe more than you let on. Maybe you've been holding it together for a long time. Maybe your body's tired and your mind won't quiet down.
That's not weakness. That's a nervous system that's been working incredibly hard.
And the fact that you're here, thinking about reconnecting with your body? That's the beginning of something. Not the loud, dramatic kind of change — the kind that actually sticks. The kind that starts with one small moment of noticing. Just like these exercises.
You've already started.
Yes — and the research backs it up. These exercises work because they communicate with your nervous system in its own language: sensation, breath, and physical experience. You're helping your body build a new association with safety, one small repetition at a time. It's not instant, and it's not magic — it's biology.
Absolutely. These tools are safe, accessible, and don't require any prior experience. You can start wherever you are. If you want to go deeper — especially if you're working with trauma or longstanding patterns — having a somatic therapist alongside you can help you track what's happening and move at a pace that feels right for your system.
Think of them as nervous system reps. Consistency matters more than duration. Even 2–3 minutes a day starts to shift things — your body learns, gradually, that it doesn't have to stay on high alert. You don't have to do all five every day. Pick one that resonates and just show up for it.
Both are completely valid responses and neither means something went wrong. Feeling nothing often means your system is still in a protective shutdown — that's information, not failure. Feeling worse can mean you've touched something that's been waiting for attention. Go slow. Skip what doesn't land. Your body is communicating — even when it's uncomfortable.
Meditation typically asks you to observe your thoughts. Somatic exercises ask you to feel your body — which is a different entry point, and often a more accessible one for people whose minds don't easily slow down. They're body-first rather than brain-first. For someone whose nervous system has been running on high for a long time, that distinction makes a real difference.
Cheryl Groskopf, LMFT, LPCC
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist #122530 · Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor #10096 · Los Angeles, CA
Cheryl specializes in anxiety, trauma, somatic therapy, and attachment for high-functioning adults in Los Angeles and throughout California via telehealth. She blends IFS, somatic, and holistic approaches to help clients understand why their nervous system works the way it does — and find their way back to ease. Her work has been featured in Time, Mindbodygreen, Parade, and HuffPost.
