Somatic Shaking
Animals often tremble after a close call, and people do too. Trauma therapists built this practice around that instinct. Whether shaking discharges stored stress is a theory, not settled science; what you can trust is that letting your body move after stress tends to feel like release.
When to use it
For when stress has you buzzing and stillness makes it worse.
Two minutes, kept for you
How to do it
- 1.Stand with feet hip-width apart, knees soft.
- 2.Start gently bouncing on the balls of your feet.
- 3.Let the bounce turn into a loose shake through your arms, torso, and legs.
- 4.Don't force it, just allow it, for thirty seconds to two minutes.
- 5.Then stand still.
- 6.Finish with three slow breaths and a hand on your heart.
What to notice
Warmth, tingling, energy moving. That's the stress leaving, not something going wrong. Trust it.
What the research says
Trembling after a fright is real biology. Mammals do it, people do it. The therapy built on it, deliberately shaking to release stress, has barely been tested: the largest trial had twenty-eight people and cleared significance only after statistical adjustment. The idea that shaking discharges stored survival energy is a theory from trauma therapy, not a measured process. What's left is still worth having: moving after stress tends to feel like release, and there is no wrong way to do it.
If you want to see which of these your body responds to, that’s what the app is for →