While connecting with the body can be an essential part of nervous system regulation and trauma healing, it’s also important to approach this process in a way that honors where each person is in their process.

In this short excerpt from our upcoming Somatic Approaches in Therapy Summit, somatics teacher and innovator Staci Haines shares a gentle practice of tension and release—designed to help trauma survivors safely reconnect with their bodies.

Through intentional contraction and relaxation, this practice supports regulation, acknowledges protective survival patterns, and gently deepens embodied presence.

Join our FREE Somatic Approaches in Therapy Summit! 

From April 24–26, The Somatic Approaches in Therapy Summit will feature some of the most respected voices in the field — Get FREE Access Here >>

Join our FREE Somatic Approaches in Therapy Summit!

From April 24–26, The Somatic Approaches in Therapy Summit will feature some of the most respected voices in the field, including: Peter Levine, Pat Ogden, Linda Thai, Deb Dana, Bessel van der Kolk, Ann Weiser-Cornell, Chinwé Williams, Manuela Mischke-Reeds, Dan Siegel, and more!

If you’re a mental health professional—or someone working in a healing role—and you’re interested in integrating somatic and body-based approaches into your work, we hope you’ll join us and help spread the word!

14 CE credits are available for Psychologists, Counselors, MFT’s, Social Workers and others with an optional upgrade.

Learn More and Get Free Access Here >>

About Staci Haines

Staci Haines has been working at the intersection of personal and social transformation for over thirty years through somatics, trauma healing, embodied leadership, and transformative justice. She is the author of The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing and Social Justice and Healing Sex: A Mind–Body Approach to Healing Sexual Trauma. An innovator in the field of somatics, she focuses on how it can expand transformative capacity within social and climate justice movements and help heal the effects of trauma and oppression.

Staci runs both online and in-person programs and teacher trainings, and she partners with social and climate justice organizations. She co-founded Generative Somatics, a multiracial organization dedicated to building social justice capacity, and she serves as a senior teacher at the Strozzi Institute, where she plays a central role in shaping its methodology. In 1999, she founded generationFIVE, a transformative justice nonprofit committed to ending child sexual abuse within five generations.

Learn more about Staci

Check out Staci’s new course offering