Moving Meditations
Moving Meditations: Somatic Movements for Healing
Somatic movements focus on body awareness, sensations, and movement as pathways for healing, recognizing that trauma affects both mind and body. This can include things like gently shaking or tapping the body, or using gentle body movements to guide your breath.
In Latin, “Soma” means the “body”. In psychology or trauma work Somatic refers to the body’s role in storing and processing experiences, especially trauma.
Somatic movements have been shown to improve the integration of communication between the various parts of our brain, essentially diminishing the symptoms of trauma and fight/flight/freeze/fawn responses (NICAMB, 2025).
The ancient martial art of Tai Chi and healing art of Qigong (pronounced CHEE-gong) are somatic moving meditations that help build balance, coordination, strength, soothe the nervous system, and increase immune function.
Here are some Tai Chi and Qigong movements to try!
Pendulum Arm Swinging and Stretch
Standing: feet shoulder width apart and let your arms hang heavy.
Practice moving just your hips and upper torso from the right corner to the left corner while your legs and feet face forward.
Slowly begin to swing your arms as you move left and right. Let them be heavy, and your right and left arms will naturally start to swing and tap on your belly and back as you turn.
Keep going, building up speed and momentum as you swing your arms, tapping the belly and back with each arm as you turn.
Spinal Cord Breathing
Sitting or Standing: Breathe in deeply, bringing your arms up into a T or cactus pose as you stretch your back.
Breathe out and bring your elbows in to touch and point toward your belly, curving your back (like “cat pose” in yoga). Repeat.
Body Tapping
Sitting or Standing: Lightly make a fist with both hands and tap your arm firmly, moving from your shoulder down to your hand on your left side.
Turn your arm around and tap up the inside of your left arm. Do the same on right arm
Next, tap firmly and quickly on your chest, similar to how a gorilla taps their chest. This releases T-cells and can bring a feeling of confidence and increase immune functioning.
“Shaking the Tree” 🌳
Standing: Let your body and joints go heavy and shake up and down, smile if you can!
Imagine you are a tree shaking off all of your leaves.
Do this for one minute and then stop and pause, feel the rebound in your body.