The Pain Body: Physical Symptoms of Stored Trauma

Introduction

You've been to the physio. The chiro. Maybe even the GP who ran tests and found "nothing wrong."

And yet your body still hurts.

The ache that moves around. The tension that never fully releases. The mysterious flare-ups that seem to come out of nowhere — or everything at once.

What if I told you that your pain might not be purely physical?

I'm not saying it's "all in your head." Quite the opposite, actually. I'm saying it's all in your body — stored there, held there, waiting to be acknowledged.

Eckhart Tolle coined the term "pain body" to describe the accumulation of old emotional pain that lives within us.¹ But this isn't just a spiritual concept. Modern trauma research has confirmed what somatic practitioners have known for decades: **unresolved emotional experiences get stored in the physical body.**²

Your pain is real. And it might be trying to tell you something your mind hasn't been able to say.

What Is the Pain Body?

The pain body isn't a medical diagnosis — it's a way of understanding the relationship between your emotional history and your physical experience.

Think of it as the residue of every overwhelming experience that didn't get fully processed. Every time you swallowed your tears, pushed through exhaustion, or told yourself to "just get over it" — your body kept the receipt.

Tolle describes the pain body as an energy field that carries the weight of past suffering.¹ It can lie dormant for a while, then suddenly "wake up" — triggered by stress, conflict, or even seemingly small events that echo old wounds.

From a somatic perspective, we understand this as incomplete stress responses held in the nervous system and tissues.³ Your body started to fight, flee, or freeze — but the response never got to complete. So it stayed. Locked in your muscles. Humming in your nervous system. Waiting.

How Trauma Gets Stored in the Body

When something overwhelming happens — whether a single event or prolonged stress — your body responds automatically. Your nervous system kicks into survival mode: heart racing, muscles tensing, breath shortening.⁴

In an ideal world, once the threat passes, your body would complete the stress cycle. You'd shake, cry, move, discharge the energy — and return to baseline.

But we don't live in an ideal world.

We live in a world that says "calm down," "be strong," "don't make a scene." A world where we learn very early to override our body's natural responses because they're inconvenient or embarrassing or unsafe to express.

So the energy stays stuck. Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing, calls this "frozen residue of energy" — survival responses that got interrupted and never completed.³

Over time, this frozen energy can manifest as:

Chronic muscle tension
Persistent pain without clear medical cause
Fatigue that doesn't improve with rest
Digestive issues
Autoimmune flare-ups
Heightened sensitivity to stimulation

Your body isn't failing you. It's holding something for you — until you're ready to meet it.

Physical Symptoms of a Stored Pain Body

The pain body doesn't always announce itself with obvious trauma memories. Often, it speaks through sensation — physical symptoms that seem disconnected from any emotional cause.

Here are some common ways stored trauma shows up in the body:

Chronic Pain That Moves or Has No Clear Cause

One week it's your lower back. The next, your neck. Doctors can't find structural damage, but the pain is very real.

This "travelling pain" often reflects the nervous system's attempt to discharge stuck energy.⁵ The body is trying to process something, but without a clear pathway, the activation keeps surfacing in different areas.

Tension You Can't Release

You're constantly told your shoulders are up around your ears. You stretch, you massage, you foam roll — and within hours, the tension is back.

Chronic tension patterns are often bracing responses — your body's way of staying prepared for danger that it still perceives as present.⁶ Relaxing feels unsafe because your nervous system hasn't received the "all clear."

Digestive Distress

IBS, bloating, nausea, chronic constipation or diarrhoea — especially when they correlate with stress or emotional triggers.

Your gut holds more nerve cells than your spinal cord.⁷ It's deeply connected to your emotional state via the vagus nerve. When trauma is stored in the body, digestion often takes the hit.

Unexplained Fatigue

Bone-tired exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix. Feeling like you're running on empty no matter how much rest you get.

A dysregulated nervous system burns enormous amounts of energy just maintaining its hypervigilant state.⁸ Your body is working overtime beneath the surface, leaving little left for daily life.

Heightened Startle Response and Sensory Sensitivity

Loud noises, bright lights, crowded spaces — things that others handle easily feel overwhelming to you.

This hypersensitivity reflects a nervous system stuck in high alert, constantly scanning for threats.⁹ Your body's protective systems are turned up too high because they haven't learned it's safe to dial back down.

Breathing Restrictions

Shallow breathing, chronic breath-holding, or the sensation of not being able to take a full breath.

Breath and trauma are intimately linked. When we experience threat, breathing often becomes restricted as part of the freeze response.¹⁰ Over time, this pattern can become habitual — even when the danger has passed.

The Pain Body and Emotional Triggers

One of the most confusing aspects of the pain body is how it can "activate" — seemingly out of nowhere.

You're having a normal day, and suddenly your lower back seizes. Or your chest tightens. Or you're hit with exhaustion so heavy you can barely function.

Often, these flare-ups are connected to emotional triggers — situations, people, or dynamics that echo old wounds.¹ Your conscious mind might not recognise the connection, but your body does.

This isn't weakness. It's your pain body asking for attention. Something got activated that hasn't been fully processed. The body is bringing it to the surface the only way it knows how.

Why Treating Symptoms Isn't Enough

Here's the hard truth: if your pain has roots in stored trauma, no amount of massage, medication, or stretching will fully resolve it.

These approaches can provide relief — and they have value. But they're working on the surface while the deeper pattern remains untouched.

As Bessel van der Kolk writes in The Body Keeps the Score: "The body keeps the score... long after the actual event has passed, it can be reactivated at the slightest hint of danger and mobilise disturbed brain circuits and secrete massive amounts of stress hormones."²

Healing the pain body requires going into the body — not just working on it from the outside.

This is where somatic work comes in.

Healing the Pain Body: A Somatic Approach

Somatic healing doesn't ask you to relive your trauma or analyse it endlessly. Instead, it works with your body's innate wisdom — helping complete the stress responses that got frozen, and teaching your nervous system that it's safe to let go.

Here's what this process often involves:

Building Safety First

Before your body can release what it's holding, it needs to know it's safe.¹¹ This means establishing resources — people, places, sensations — that help you feel grounded and supported.

Titration: Going Slow

Healing isn't about catharsis or dramatic releases. Effective somatic work moves slowly, touching into activation in small doses (called titration) so the nervous system doesn't become overwhelmed.³

Completing Incomplete Responses

Sometimes the body needs to finish what it started. This might look like shaking, trembling, pushing, or moving in ways that allow stored survival energy to discharge.³

Developing Interoception

Learning to feel your body again — to notice sensation without judgement — is a crucial part of healing.¹² Many people with stored trauma have disconnected from their bodies as a protective strategy. Somatic work gently rebuilds this connection.

Compassionate Witnessing

Often, what the pain body needs most is to be seen. Not fixed, not analysed — just acknowledged with compassion. "I see you. I feel you. I'm here."

Why This Matters

If you've been chasing relief for physical symptoms that don't seem to respond to conventional treatment, it might be time to consider what your body is holding, not just what it's showing.

Your pain body isn't your enemy. It's not a punishment or a sign that you're broken. It's a messenger — carrying the weight of experiences that didn't get to complete their natural cycle.

Healing is possible. Not by fighting your body or overriding its signals, but by learning to listen. To slow down. To meet yourself with the same compassion you'd offer someone you love.

What You Can Do Next

If this resonates, here are some gentle starting points:

Notice without fixing: Next time pain or tension arises, try simply noticing it. Where is it? What does it feel like? Can you be with it for a few breaths without trying to change it?
Track the triggers: Start noticing if your pain correlates with certain situations, people, or emotional states. The pattern might reveal something.
Prioritise safety: Do things that help your nervous system feel safe. Warm baths, gentle movement, time in nature, connection with trusted people.
Explore somatic support: Working with a trained somatic practitioner can provide the guidance and safety needed to process what your body is holding.

Ready to Heal Your Pain Body?

At Somatic Body, I work with women who are tired of chasing symptoms and ready to address the root. Through my SomaCycle™️ Method and 4-Body Healing System, we gently explore what your body has been holding — and support its innate capacity to release and restore.

You don't have to carry this forever.

Learn more about working with me → Book An Embodiment Session

Written by Shannon Harrison — Somatic & Energetic Integration Specialist, foundress of Somatic Body™️

References

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Van der Kolk BA. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. New York: Viking; 2014.
Levine PA. Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books; 1997.
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Levine PA. In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books; 2010.
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Price CJ, Hooven C. Interoceptive awareness skills for emotion regulation: Theory and approach of Mindful Awareness in Body-Oriented Therapy (MABT). Front Psychol. 2018;9:798.
Dana D. The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation. New York: W.W. Norton & Company; 2018.
Craig AD. How do you feel? Interoception: The sense of the physiological condition of the body. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2002;3(8):655-666.