Stop the Shaking: Quick Somatic Reset for Trauma

Elisha's Space: your hands are shaking. Maybe they've been for hours or it only happens in certain rooms when a door slams, when someone's voice gets too loud, when a song comes on that you weren't expecting and suddenly your whole body is doing something you didn't ask it to do ⁓ you didn't know why. And you are sitting there in the middle of your day in the middle of your Life just trying to hold yourself together, trying to make it stop. This episode is for you. Stay with me. Welcome to Elisha Space, a sanctuary for healing growth and for the kind of honest conversations that actually change things. I'm Elisha, your host, a counselor, an author, and someone who has sat in the same stuff places you have. If you are new here, welcome home. This is a safe space, not in the way that phrase gets thrown around lightly, but in the way that we actually do the work here. We hold the clinical and the spiritual together, and we don't ask you to choose between them. If you've been listening for a while, I see you, and I'm glad you're back. Today's episode is practical, clinical, but pastoral. We're talking about the shaking, the trembling, the involuntary physical response that your body does when the world has been too much for too long. and nobody has ever told you what it actually means. By the time we're done today, you're going to understand what your body is doing and why. You're going to have a three-step somatic reset you can use today, and you're going to walk away knowing that what your body is doing is not a malfunction. It is, in fact, one of the most brilliant things God ever designed. So stay with me, and let's do this. Let's start here. What is the shaking? Because I know that for many of you, the shaking is the thing you're most ashamed of. It's the thing you hide. You clench your hands under the table. You press your feet hard onto the floor. You leave the room before anyone can see it. And you've been told, maybe explicitly, maybe just through the silence of people who didn't know what to say. that the shaking means something is wrong with you. I want to be the first person to tell you plainly, nothing is wrong with you. Your body is doing exactly what it was designed to do. It's just stuck in a loop. It doesn't know how to exit. Here's what I mean. Trauma. Whether it was one catastrophic event or a thousand small ones leaves an imprint in the body. not just in the mind, in the tissue, in the fascia, in the very cells of your nervous system. And when something in your current world, a sound, a smell, a tone of voice, even a feeling of silence that reminds you of something dangerous, your nervous system does not know the difference between then and now. It fires as if the threat is present. right now in this room. Your hands shake because your body prepared to run and you couldn't. Your chest tightens because your body prepared to fight and it wasn't safe. The shaking is the energy that had nowhere to go. Knowledge isn't just power for trauma survivors. Knowledge is safety and right now I want you to feel the safety of knowing your body has been trying to protect you this whole time. Let me show you what's happening in your nervous system because this part matters. We're going to talk about your autotomic nervous system, specifically your polyvagal system. Polyvagal just means mini Vegas and the Vegas nerve Vegas literally means wandering in Latin. It wanders through your entire body from your brain step down through your heart, your lungs, your gut. It is the primary highway of communication between your body and your brain. Dr. Stephen Porges, whose work I love deeply, identified three states. in our autotonic nervous system. Think of them like gears. The first gear is safe and social. Your heart rate is regulated. Your breathing is easy. You can make eye contact. You can laugh. You are present. The second gear is fight or flight. Something signals danger, real or perceived, and your body mobilizes. Heart rate increases. Blood flows to your limbs. you are ready to run or fight. This is where the shaking lives. The body has activated a survival response. And if the threat is too overwhelming, too prolonged, too inescapable, your nervous system drops into the third gear. Freeze, shut down, collapse, the feeling of being numb, disconnected, unable to move. Here is the part that changed everything for me. The shaking is not the problem. The shaking is the exit from freeze. It is the body attempting to discharge the energy that got locked in during the threat response. In the animal world, you see this all the time. A gazelle that has been chased by a lineman and escapes will literally shake and tremble for several minutes after. And then it goes back to grazing because the trembling is the nervous system completing its biological cycle. returning to baseline. We as humans have been taught to suppress that shaking, to hold still, be strong, to compose ourselves. And in doing so, we interrupt the very process our body designed to heal us. This isn't visualization, this is physiology. So let your nervous system hear this today. You are not broken, you are a body in mid process. And today we're going to help you finish. Before we go into framework, I want to do something with you right now. Just this. Breathe in through your nose slowly, count to four. Hold for one count. And out through your mouth, long, slow exhale all the way out, count to six. One more time, in for four. Out for six. Good. Let your nervous system hear that. Good. Let your nervous system hear that you're not running from it. Now I want to give you the framework. Those of you who have been here know we use the REST framework a lot because it works. REST, regulate, experience, surrender, trust. And today I want to apply each piece specifically to the trembling, to the shaking, to that thing your body does that you've been trying to stop. The first thing we do when the shaking starts is not try to make it stop. I know that sounds counterintuitive. Stay with me. The first move is vagal toning, activating the ventral vagus nerve, which is the part of your nervous system responsible for that safe and social state. Here are three tools you can use anywhere at any time. Tool one, humming. Your vagus nerve runs directly through your vocal cords. When you hum, even just a quiet, sustained hum, you create vibration in the throat that directly stimulates the vagus nerve and begins to down-regulate your nervous system. Five breaths of humming. That's it. Tool two, the physiological sigh. Two short inhales through the nose. followed by one long exhale through the mouth. Your lungs have small air sacs, alveoli, that collapse when we're in stress. The double inhale re-inflates them, and the long exhale triggers the parasympathetic branch. This is what babies do after they cry. Your body already knows this. Tool three, cold water on your face or wrists. This activates The mammalian dive reflex, an ancient built-in mechanism that slows your heart rate. It is a heart reset. 10 seconds of cool water on your wrist or a splash of cold water on your face. It works. The goal of Regulate is not to eliminate the sensation. It is to tell your nervous system that you have resources, that you are not alone in this. This is the part we skip most often, and it is the most important. Experience means getting honest with compassion about what's happening in your body, not analyzing it, not explaining it away, simply noticing it. I want you to practice this language with me. I notice there is tension in my hands. I notice my jaw is tight. I notice something is in my chest that feels like fear or maybe like grief. Is the tension there? Tightness in your forehead, your jaw? Just notice you don't have to fix it right now. Somatic honesty, speaking the truth of what the body is experiencing without judgment is one of the most powerful forms of self-regulation we have because What you can name, you can hold. And what you hold, you can eventually release. S for surrender. This is where we let the body do what it has been trying to do for a very long time. Surrender and the rest framework does not mean giving up. It means giving over, releasing the control that has been exhausting you in a safe moment, sitting feet on the floor in a space where you won't be interrupted. I want you to stop fighting the trembling. Let your hands shake gently. Let your jaw tremble if you need to. Let your legs do that small rhythmic movement they've been suppressing. You can even induce a gentle intentional tremor by doing this. Stand, bend your knees slightly, and hold for 60 seconds. You'll feel a natural trembling begin in the legs. That is your neuromuscular system doing what it was designed to do, completing the discharge cycle. Surrender looks like trusting your body to do what God designed it to do. T is for trust and this brings us to that last piece. Trust. Trust is the anchor. It is what makes all of this sustainable. Surrender without a foundation to surrender can feel like free falling, but surrender into the presence of a God who designed this body, that is safe co-regulation. Psalms 23 says, He maketh me lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He restores the soul. The word in Hebrew, shwab, means the bringing back to its original state, to return. The shaking is your body's attempt at shwab, at return, at restoration. His peace is not dependent. on your circumstances being resolved. It is a regulated nervous system and the presence of a safe God. I want to walk you through your somatic reset right now, the full three minutes. Find a place where you can sit or lie comfortably. If you're driving, save this moment and come back to it. Let your eyes close or soften your gaze to the floor in front of you. Feel the weight of your body in the chair or on the floor. Let gravity hold you. I want you to take a deep breath in through your nose. And on the exhale hum, any note, any tone, let it last the full length of your exhale. again and through the nose. and hum it out. One more time. Let the vibration move through your chest, your throat. Good. Feel that? Now I want you to scan your body from head to toe, starting at the crown of your head. Is there tension there? Tightness in your forehead, your jaw. your shoulders. Are they lifted towards your ears? Let them drop. your hands. Open them, palm up. What do you feel there? your chest. Notice if the breath feels shallow. Just notice. You don't need to force it deeper. your belly, your hips, your feet on the ground. Just name what's there. I notice tightness. I notice warmth. I notice that I'm holding my breath. That's enough. Now I'm going to ask you to do something that might feel strange. I want you to give your body permission, out loud or silently, whichever feels right. Body, I hear you. I'm not going to fight you. You can do whatever you need to do. If your hands want to tremble, let them. If your breath wants to catch, let it. If they are tears, they are not weakness. They are water leaving a place it no longer needs to live. And now the anchor. I want to give you a breath prayer. Breathe in the first time, breathe out the second. Breathe in, I am held. Breathe out, I am safe. Breathe in, he restores. Breathe out, I return. Breathe in, I am not too much. Breathe out, I am not too far. Gently, when you're ready, bring your awareness back to the room. Winkle your fingers, press your feet into the floor. Take one more deep breath in. and let it go. Well done. Will you let me pray with you? Father, I am grateful that you made these bodies, that you knit together the very nervous systems that we are learning to regulate. You knew when you designed us that we would live in a broken world, that our bodies would carry things our minds didn't choose, and you did not leave us without a way back. I pray right now for the person who has been holding themselves still for so long, who is so tired of keeping everything contained, who wonders if they will ever feel peace in their own body again. Lord meet them there, in the shaking, in the tightness, in the moment when their hands won't stop and the shame rises up alongside it. Remind them that they are not a malfunction. They are a masterpiece in process. Lead them beside the still waters, Father. Restore their soul. Not when the circumstances resolve. Not when the relationship heals. Not when the past stops feeling present. Now, here, in the trembling. In Jesus' name, Amen. Here is your challenge. For the next seven days, once a day, just once, I want you to do the rest reset. It's just three minutes. You can do it in your car before you walk into the building. You can do it in the bathroom. You could do it lying down before your feet hit the floor in the morning. Three minutes, four steps, every day for seven days. And at the end of the seven days, I want you to notice one thing that is shifting. Not everything, just one thing. That's the science of titration, small doses of a new experience that slowly, safely reshape the nervous system. If this episode helped you, share it. Text it to one person you know who is struggling. Not because it's a favor to me, but because that's what this community does. We don't heal alone. You can find more resources at ElishaSpace.com. And if you want to go deeper, we do this work together in community, inside the channel, inside our live conversations, and one-on-one. Until next time, you are not too much, and you are not too far, and you are not alone.