Therapy has always been embodied.
Two people sit in a room, breathing the same air, sensing into each other's physical presence long before the deeper dialogue begins.
Yet while the language of nervous system regulation is now familiar, the lived reality of how we hold ourselves, move and express ourselves in clinical work is perhaps less familiar territory.
This five-part series explores how movement and dance-informed embodiment deepen therapeutic practice — from regulation and embodied cognition to sustainable self-care, agency, and the renewal of joy.
It also traces the natural overlap between therapeutic presence and self-leadership: how grounded listening, relational coherence, and empathic presence build trust in any context where human connection matters.
At its heart, this is not about adding technique.
It is about recognising what is already moving in the room — and learning to cultivate more awareness, bringing to consciousness the somatic field.
Rethinking Embodiment, Agency & Sustainability
Part 1: When Regulation Is Lived
This is the first of a five-part exploration into movement and dance in clinical practice — not as techniques added to therapy, but as a way of understanding what is already happening in the room.
It's almost ironic.
We can recognise a good therapist instantly.
You walk into the room and something settles.
They give you their full presence
They are respectful of your space, voice and needs
They're not trying to project empathy.
They're there.
Open.
Available.
Grounded in themselves.
You feel the space around them.
You feel the steadiness.
And that steadies you.
That is somatic awareness and settling.
We don't always call it that.
But we know it when we feel it.
And what we recognise in a good therapist is not so different from what we recognise in our own self-leadership
Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash
Presence that steadies rather than agitates.
Listening that feels whole-bodied.
A quality of grounded attention that makes people trust what is being said.
Trust is not built by intention alone. It is built in the nervous system.
In a nutshell our nervous system is the connection between our mind and body.
The science now gives us the language — polyvagal theory, autonomic states, co-regulation.
We understand, intellectually, that safety is physiological before it is cognitive. Stephen Porges has articulated what many clinicians have intuitively practised for years.
But the real shift is not in the theory.
It's in whether we are living it. The vagus is the biggest nerve that runs from our brainstem, to wander down into our main organs. And we now know that we have to keep our vagus nerve 'toned' to stay relaxed and healthy, be in our parasympathetic.
And one of the important ways to have 'vagal tone' is through somatic awareness, our breath, our voice and moving our body.
Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash
Because you can understand regulation and still sit in a way that is slightly contracted.
You can speak about safety while your breath is held and shallow.
You can analyse attachment while your shoulders remain subtly lifted.
You can explore trauma while you still feel yourself being slightly triggered.
Your clients feel that.
Two people sitting in chairs is never just two minds exchanging ideas.
It is two bodies in relationship.
Two nervous systems adjusting to one another.
And often the most meaningful moment in a session is a pregnant, quiet, stillness.
It's the moment someone exhales.
It's the moment their weight drops into the chair.
It's the moment their voice slows and lands.
That is regulation lived.
Not explained.
Not instructed.
Felt.
When a therapist is internally supported — spine quietly rising, breathing even, feet firmly planted — there is a different quality in the room. Boundaries are clearer without becoming rigid. Empathy is present without collapse. There is strength, but it is soft strength.
Photo by SHVETS production
Embodiment is not something to follow with a set formula.
Its presence is subtle.
And it shapes trust.
Whether in a therapy room, a supervision group, or a leadership context, the nervous system reads coherence before it reads competence.
So getting out of our heads and into our bodies is a direct way to regulate.
A direct way to connect deeper into ourselves, ground the potential intensity of sessions, hold the relational field with more awareness – I nearly wrote sensitivity, but its more than that. Its having the resilience to hold a space that might be quite charged.
In the next article, we'll move further into this field, to see how if embodiment is the baseline for regulation, we look at how movement is the language through which new choices can begin to form.
Reference
Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. New York: Norton.
Main – Photo by Ahmad Odeh on Unsplash
About the Author: Helene Su
