5 Ways to Release the Stress Your Body Has Been Holding Hostage, According to a Somatic Therapist

If your shoulders live somewhere near your ears, your jaw is permanently clenched, and that 3-second breathing ad on YouTube hit a little too hard, your nervous system is likely trying to tell you something. 

On Tell Me More, host Nicole Walters sits down with somatic exercise therapist Dr. Danielle Griffin to break down how to actually release the stress you’re holding onto—no meditation app required. Whether you’re a “I’ll rest when I’m dead” girlie or you’ve been one minor inconvenience away from a full meltdown since Tuesday, these tips might be exactly what you need to woosah.

Give yourself 90 seconds before you do anything else

“Deep inhales through your nose, exhale out through your mouth,” Griffin explains. “That exhale allows the muscles to relax, the shoulders to drop.” Once you feel your body start to settle, notice where you’re still holding tension and do some movement in those areas. Even just rolling your neck or stretching your shoulders counts. Then take a second to reflect on what you’re actually feeling. Walters admits her brain moves a million miles a minute so meditation has always been hard, but 90 seconds she can do. “And over time, your brain looks forward to it. It’s like, this is my time to not do anything. This is lovely.”

Stop bringing your last role’s energy into your next one

If you go straight from work mode to mom mode to partner mode without any kind of pause in between, you’re bringing the stress of the last role into the next one. “When I’m going from the expectation of being a CEO to getting ready to enter my home—breathwork before I do that really helps me not bring certain people into certain rooms,” Walters admits. It doesn’t have to be a whole ritual. Just a few deep breaths before you walk through the next door.

Actually listen when something hurts

You know when you finally stand up after four hours at your desk and your entire body sounds like a bowl of Rice Krispies? Griffin says to stop ignoring that. Instead of pushing through, take a second to figure out what’s behind it. Is it something you’ve been telling yourself all day? Is it something someone said to you that you swallowed instead of addressing? Once you pinpoint it, move into wherever it’s tight. Roll your neck, stretch your back, unclench your jaw—two minutes of paying attention beats six months of pretending nothing hurts.

You don’t need to be calm—just slightly less wound up

Walters’ therapist once asked her what it would look like to go from a level 10 anxiety to a level 7. Her first thought was still anxious, but then she realized even that small drop would give her room to think clearly and stop snapping at the people she loves. Griffin recommends literally visualizing it: “What would I look like if I was one times more relaxed? Two times more relaxed? Once you start stepping into that, it’s a game changer.” 

Treat this like brushing your teeth, not a one-time reset

The reason somatic work sticks is because you’re retraining your body to do something it already knows how to do—it just forgot. “We trained ourselves to ignore our physical and mental needs and just step right over it and get to work,” Griffin says. And Walters is living proof it pays off: “The things that you’ve seen me do over the past three years would have put me under the ground in the three years prior.” Think of it less as slowing down and more as giving your body a fighting chance to keep up with everything you’re throwing at it.

Listen to the full episode on Tell Me More with Nicole Walters, available wherever you listen to podcasts.

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