Why We Don't Go to the Mind to Fix the Mind in Somatic Work

In my own healing and in the work that I do with clients, I've learned something that changed everything. You can't think your way out of a dysregulated nervous system. You can't talk your way out of stored survival patterns. And you definitely can't use the mind to fix issues that were created long before the mind had language.

Somatic work invites us to go somewhere deeper.

If you're only addressing the mind, the thoughts, the stories, the spirals, you're only touching the surface. Thoughts aren't random, they're coming from a patterned nervous system that has spent years, sometimes decades, adapting to stress, trauma, and their environment.

When someone has looping thoughts or limited beliefs, it isn't just "negative thinking." It's the body speaking. It's their internal state shaping the story the mind tells.

This is why mapping sensations matters. Tracking emotions matters. Helping clients notice tightness, heat, pressure, numbness, or collapse, it all matters. These patterns are the language of the nervous system. When we ignore the body, we miss the root. We miss the doorway into real change.

Working with the body is one of the most powerful ways to shift the mind. when we regulate the nervous system, when we increase capacity, when we meet the body where it is instead of forcing it into it where we want it to be, the mind naturally begins to settle. Clarity returns. Old beliefs loosen. People finally feel the shift they've been trying to talk themselves into for years.

Somatic work reminds us that the body isn't the obstacle.

The body is the pathway!

With Love

Carrie Payne