The Body Remembers: Where Shame Lives and How We Can Release It

The Body Remembers: Where Shame Lives and How We Can Release It

By Sara Raymond, The Mindful Movement

August 20, 2025

You might not always name it as shame. But your body knows.

It knows when your shoulders hunch before you even realize you’re shrinking. It knows when your breath stops the moment someone questions you. It knows when your voice disappears—even when you have something important to say.

Maybe you’ve done a lot of inner work. You’ve learned to identify the voice of your inner critic. You’ve started meeting your thoughts with more compassion. But the physical weight? The contraction? The tension that lives in your chest, jaw, or gut? That part hasn’t shifted yet.

That’s because shame doesn’t only live in your thoughts. It lives in your nervous system. It lives in your muscles, your posture, your breath. It lives in the way your body learned to protect you.

And while insight and self-awareness are powerful tools needed to begin the journey, healing chronic shame requires something deeper—something slower and more tender. It requires coming back into relationship with the place where that shame still lives: your body.

How the Body Stores Shame

When we experience moments of rejection, neglect, abandonment, or humiliation—especially in early or vulnerable phases of life—our nervous system responds not only emotionally, but physically. These moments don’t just hurt our feelings; they shape our posture. They mold our breath. They inform how much space we feel safe taking up.

Over time, shame doesn’t just become something we feel. It becomes something we embody.

Some of the most common physical signs of stored shame include:

• Rounded shoulders or a collapsed chest
• Tight jaw, clenched throat, or restricted voice
• Shallow breathing or breath-holding without realizing it
• Digestive discomfort, gut tension, or chronic tightness
• A constant sense of physical heaviness or fatigue

These embodied expressions don’t emerge out of nowhere. They often begin as unconscious strategies in response to experiences that felt overwhelming, unsafe, or shaming in subtle or overt ways. They’re intelligent responses. They are your body’s way of making itself smaller, quieter, or less noticeable when it once felt unsafe to be seen.

Consider these examples:

• A young girl, beginning to develop into a woman’s body, is objectified by older boys at school. She starts wearing oversized clothes and walking with her shoulders rounded, instinctively trying to make herself smaller, to hide the body that drew attention she didn’t ask for. Over time, her posture becomes a habit of invisibility.
• A boy who cries easily is teased for being “too sensitive.” Each time he expresses vulnerability, he’s met with mocking or rejection. Eventually, his throat tightens at the first sign of emotion. He learns to hold his breath and clench his jaw to keep the tears in. Even as an adult, his body responds this way before he’s consciously aware of why.
• A child grows up in a home where mistakes are met with anger or punishment. Even small errors result in shaming, blame, or withdrawal. That child learns to walk on eggshells, hyper-aware of others’ moods, with a nervous system stuck in a constant state of “don’t mess up.” As an adult, their belly tenses when they receive feedback, even when it’s kind.
• A teen who speaks passionately in class is told they’re “too intense” or “too much.” The feedback isn’t always cruel, but it lands like a warning. Over time, they speak more softly, hesitate to share ideas, and suppress excitement. Their posture curves inward when they feel enthusiasm rise—an embodied attempt to shrink their presence.

If you’ve ever wondered why you physically shrink when someone raises their voice, or why you freeze up when you have to speak in a group, you’re not weak. You’re remembering. Your body is reminding you of a time when being visible or vocal didn’t feel safe—and it’s trying to keep you from feeling that pain again.

Shame often teaches us not to trust our bodies. To override hunger. To ignore exhaustion. To quiet our truth. But your body was never the problem. It has always been trying to protect you. And with the right support, it can begin to let go.

When Shame Disconnects You from Your Own Body

There’s a lesser-known effect of chronic shame—one that goes beyond posture and tension. It’s the loss of bodily agency.

Bodily agency is the ability to feel at home in your own body. To sense your needs. To follow your impulses. To move and speak and decide from a place of internal clarity. But when you’ve spent years navigating life through the lens of shame, that connection can become deeply fractured.

Many people who carry unprocessed shame experience:

• A sense of floating through life—not quite inhabiting themselves
• Difficulty accessing inner cues like hunger, rest, or intuition
• Detachment from sensation—numbness, disassociation, or over-ride
• A habit of ignoring discomfort until it becomes overwhelming
• A tendency to live from the neck up—analyzing everything, feeling very little

You might notice this in small ways: skipping meals because you don’t register hunger, hesitating to set boundaries because you can’t feel what’s “too much,” or staying busy to avoid the sensation of stillness.

Disconnection isn’t indifference. It’s protection. Your system learned that feeling was too risky, so it stopped sending signals—or you stopped listening.

But here’s the hopeful part: you can reestablish that connection. Bit by bit. Through breath, movement, touch, and presence. You can remember how to feel without fear. You can learn to be in your body again—not as a container for shame, but as a place of belonging. With compassion and understanding.

When Shame Becomes a Bodily Identity

Shame doesn’t just shape how we feel. Over time, it can shape how we see ourselves—and how we imagine others see us. It becomes not just a state of discomfort, but a story we carry in our skin.

You may start to define yourself by the parts you hide. You might move through the world with a constant, subtle sense of being exposed, even when no one is looking at you. This kind of shame lives beneath the surface. It’s in the way you apologize before speaking. The way you avoid eye contact in groups. The way you tense before walking into a room.

Often, this isn’t about something you did. It’s about something you believed—or were told—about who you are.

That your emotions were too much. That your body didn’t look right. That your voice was too loud or not loud enough. That who you were naturally was somehow unacceptable.

Over time, your body internalizes this. You may not think it consciously, but your body carries the memory. And when you move through life with a nervous system that expects rejection or invisibility, it can feel like even your most grounded moments are under threat.

This is why reclaiming your body is about more than self-care. It’s about identity. It’s about saying, “I belong in my body. I belong here.”  Not when you’re perfect. Not when you’re healed. But now.

Returning to Your Body with Compassion

A Somatic Practice + Reflection

This practice is not about forcing anything to change. It’s about opening a quiet conversation with your body. It’s about learning to listen, without trying to fix.

Find a quiet space. Take your time. Let this be gentle.

1. Grounding
   Sit or stand in a position where your feet feel connected to the floor. Bring awareness to the points where your body is supported—by the earth, the chair, the floor. Let yourself feel held.
2. Orienting
   Gently move your head and eyes. Look around your space. Let your gaze settle on five objects. Say their names silently: “Lamp. Book. Curtain. Mug. Plant.”
   This tells your system, “I am here. I am safe.”
3. Supportive Touch
   Place one hand over your heart, belly, or cheek. Offer steady, comforting pressure. No fixing. Just presence. Whisper if it feels right: “I’m with you.”
4. Intuitive Movement
   Notice how your body wants to move. Perhaps gently roll your shoulders back. Lift your chin slightly. Breathe into your chest. Let your spine lengthen—not as a performance, but as an offering. Just enough.
5. Vocal Release (Optional)
   Hum. Sigh. Whisper. Let sound leave your body. Even soft vibration helps soothe the vagus nerve and restore connection to self.

When you’re ready, pause. Let stillness arrive.

Now reflect with any or all of these questions:

- Where in my body do I carry shame the most?
- What parts of me go offline when I feel exposed, small, or afraid?
- What sensations do I avoid—and what would it feel like to face them, slowly?
- What posture does my body take when I feel safe, confident, or seen?
- What would it mean to reclaim my body as mine?

You don’t need the perfect answers. Just honesty. Just willingness. Every breath of presence you offer to your body interrupts the old pattern that said you had to disappear to stay safe.

The Body as Home Again

Your body is not a battleground. It is not an inconvenience. And it is not defined by the pain it has held.

Yes, it remembers shame. But it also remembers laughter. Movement. Stillness. Safety. It remembers who you were before shame told you to hide. And it wants to return you to that place—not by erasing the past, but by rewriting your relationship with it.

As we move into the next article in this series, we’ll explore how to gently rewrite the beliefs shame taught you—about who you are and what you deserve. For now, just know this:

Your body may still flinch, freeze, or fold. That doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you’re healing. And you don’t have to rush.

You can return home—one breath, one touch, one moment at a time.

With care,
 

Sara
The Mindful Movement