Some stories live quietly inside us, waiting for the right moment to be spoken. This is one of mine.
A few years ago, a client came to me with a very specific fear. Let’s call her Katy.
Katy was preparing for a major public presentation, one that would place her squarely in the public eye, in front of thousands of people. On the surface, it appeared to be stage fright. Yet as we slowed things down and listened more closely to her body, it became clear that this fear ran much deeper.
Even imagining herself walking onto the stage sent her nervous system into high alert. Her body reacted as though she were walking toward annihilation, as if the stage were a guillotine and speaking meant certain death. Terror lived not only in her thoughts, but in her muscles, her breath, and her spine.
My grounding for this work comes from many years of practicing and teaching Taichi and Qigong, alongside Somatic Experiencing® (SE™) and touch-based work. Most meaningful, however, has been the privilege of learning and walking alongside teachers and peers within the Somatic Experiencing community. My training and assistantship with Dr. Peter Levine deeply shaped my understanding of trauma and healing, particularly through explorations of the Eye of the Needle -near-death experiences, dreams and imagination, and developmental trauma retreats. These experiences supported a deepening relationship with the subtle intelligence of the body and its innate capacity for self-regulation and healing.
I was also profoundly influenced by assisting Peter and Betsy Polatin in Trauma in the Public Eye, where voice, embodiment, and nervous system regulation meet through subtle shifts in posture, movement, and breath. Witnessing how small, titrated changes in the body can support presence, expression, and resilience continues to inform and inspire my somatic healing journey.
With Katy, we began simply.
Before touching the fear, we oriented toward safety.
We spent time discovering her resources, people, places, sensations, and memories that brought even a small degree of ease. A softening in her belly. A steadier breath. A sense of being accompanied rather than alone. Slowly and gently, her system began to learn that not every activation required collapse or flight.
As trust and safety grew, I also worked with subtle, attuned touch at her back, always with consent and careful tracking. My hands offered gentle contact along her spine, inviting support rather than correction. Almost immediately, Katy began to sense something she had rarely felt in moments of fear.
As her body registered this steady presence, her breath deepened. Her shoulders softened. Her posture shifted from bracing to yielding. I could feel regulation beginning to come on board. Something fundamental changed. Her spine lengthened not because she was trying to stand tall, but because her body no longer needed to protect itself as much.
From there, in a careful and respectful way, we began to approach the stage, first only in imagination. She pictured herself surrounded by friendly faces, loving and compassionate presences, in an environment that felt supportive rather than threatening. We went at the pace her body allowed, always tracking sensation and honoring pauses.
We continued working with posture and movement.
How would she stand.
How would she walk onto the stage.
Where would her weight rest.
What would her spine want to do if it felt just a little safer?
Each small adjustment carried meaning. Confidence emerged not as a performance, but as a natural consequence of inhabiting her body. Grace arrived quietly, without effort.
Next came the voice.
We played with sound, gentle tones and vibrations, allowing breath to drop into the gut and rise back up through the lungs. As her body opened, her voice changed. It became fuller, warmer, melodious, yet undeniably powerful. Not forced. Not projected. Simply expressed.
Over the next few sessions, she imagined delivering her talk from this embodied place. Each time, the fear loosened its grip. What once felt like terror slowly transformed into aliveness.
And then came the day of the actual presentation.
Katy stood on that stage, in front of thousands of people, and she did not need to imagine them naked or disappear into dissociation. She could see them. Make eye contact. Orient to the space around her. Feel the energy of the crowd and let it move through her, back and forth, like a dance.
It was no longer her versus the audience.
It was relationship.
It was resonance.
A living field of shared breath and shared attention. A current moving between her body and theirs. She could feel them listening. She could sense the subtle shifts in the room, the softening, the leaning in, the quiet recognition. And she responded not from fear, but from contact.
There was rhythm in it. A natural cadence. A dance of energy flowing outward and returning again.
She was not performing for them. She was present with them.
The stage was no longer a place of threat. It had become a place of connection. Of aliveness. Of exchange.
In that space, her nervous system was not bracing for danger. It was engaged. Curious. Open. She was standing in her body, with agency, feeling her feet on the ground, her spine long, her breath moving, her voice rising from deep within. And the audience was no longer an anonymous mass. They were human beings. Faces. Eyes. Presence.
What once felt like walking toward annihilation had transformed into stepping into communion.
And there was joy in it.
The kind of joy that comes when survival energy reorganizes into vitality. When fear metabolizes into presence. When the body realizes it is safe enough to be seen.
This is why I love telling this story.
Because it reminds me, again and again, that healing does not come from overriding the body, but from listening to it. From inhabiting it. From allowing the wisdom that lives beneath words to guide the way.
I hold deep gratitude for Somatic Experiencing International, for my teachers, my peers, my colleagues, and the many clients who have trusted me with their stories. This work has been a warm, generous, and deeply fulfilling journey for me over the past decade.
In a world that feels increasingly complex and challenging, I remain grateful for the body, for community, and for the quiet transformations that unfold when we slow down enough to truly listen.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
Cicily Thomas,
SEP™, Transforming Touch® Practitioner, Taiji & Qigong
Master Specialist in Sexual trauma, Somatic movements