A Somatic Approach to Inner Child and Wounds

You’ve done years of inner work. You can articulate your wounds clearly. You understand where they came from. You know the patterns they create.

And still, something in the body hasn’t caught up.

That’s not a failure. That’s actually important information. It means the work has been happening at the level of story and understanding — and the body, which is where the wound actually lives, hasn’t been fully included yet.

A somatic approach to inner child work changes that.

Please take this slowly. This kind of work involves the body, and bodies sometimes have strong responses to being attended to in new ways. Go at whatever pace feels right. You can always pause and come back.

Why the Body Holds the Wound

When something painful happened in childhood, your nervous system recorded it — not just as a memory, but as a body state. A particular quality of tension. A held breath. A collapsing in the chest. A tightening in the stomach.

The emotional triggers awareness framework explains this clearly: triggers aren’t primarily cognitive events. They’re somatic ones. When something in your present environment resembles what was threatening in your past environment, the body responds first. The heart rate rises. The breath shortens. The posture changes. And then the mind looks around for a reason.

The body’s response precedes the story. Which means that to truly address an inner child wound, you have to go where the wound lives — not just in the narrative, but in the sensations that narrative left behind.

What Somatic Inner Child Work Looks Like

This is not about reliving what happened. Let that be very clear. You are not trying to re-experience childhood pain. You are learning to notice where childhood pain is still active in your body right now — and to bring adult resources to it.

Here is a practice you can use.

Step 1: Choose a recurring business pattern.

Pick something specific. The way you deflect when someone asks your rates. The invisible shrinking before you send a piece of content out. The tightening when you think about a particular kind of client interaction.

This business pattern is the entry point. It’s where the somatic signature of the wound is most reliably accessible.

Step 2: Imagine the pattern in your body, not your mind.

Close your eyes if that’s comfortable. Bring the scenario to mind — not to analyse it, but to let your body respond to imagining it.

Notice what happens. Where do you feel it? Is there a tightening in the throat? A heaviness in the chest? A rising feeling in the stomach? A holding of breath somewhere?

Stay with the sensation. Don’t reach for the story yet.

Step 3: Ask the sensation what age it is.

This is a somatic technique that many people find surprisingly effective. Without forcing it, simply notice: if this sensation had an age, what age would it be?

Often a number comes. Sometimes an image. Sometimes a memory of a specific setting — a kitchen, a classroom, a specific chair.

You’re not going to that place to relive it. You’re simply noticing that the sensation in your body now is connected to something from then.

Step 4: Bring adult resources to the sensation.

Now, as the adult you are — with the steadiness and resources you have now — turn your attention toward the sensation in your body. Not to fix it. To be present with it.

Place a hand gently on the area where you feel it, if that feels okay. Breathe slowly. You can say internally, or aloud: “I feel you. You don’t have to hold this alone anymore.”

Stay there for a few breaths. Notice if anything shifts — a slight softening, a deeper breath, a release somewhere.

Step 5: Let the body lead the update.

The most important thing in somatic work is that the body leads. You’re not thinking your way to a new belief. You’re letting the body have a different experience.

After the contact — after staying with the sensation and bringing adult presence to it — notice what the body wants. Sometimes it wants to stretch. Sometimes to take a deep breath. Sometimes to cry. Sometimes it simply settles.

Let it do what it needs.

Somatic Signs of Progress

You may not have a dramatic breakthrough. Progress in somatic inner child work often looks quiet.

You notice that the familiar tight response to sending a proposal is slightly less tight. Not gone — slightly less.

You find that you took a fuller breath during a conversation about rates than you usually do.

You notice that after being visible — posting something, speaking publicly — the collapse of energy that usually follows didn’t arrive, or arrived softer.

These are signs of the body updating. They’re not small. They’re the actual work.

What This Changes About Inner Child Work

When you include the body in the work, something different becomes possible. You stop working around the wound and start actually meeting it.

The inner child didn’t have words for what happened. They had sensations. Feelings in the body that had nowhere to go. Bringing attention — careful, unhurried, adult-steadied attention — to those sensations now is a form of completion.

It’s not about finally fixing a broken part. It’s about bringing presence to a part that was left alone too long.

If you want to explore somatic inner child work alongside a community of conscious entrepreneurs who understand what it means to know all the right things and still feel something in the body that hasn’t caught up — the Abundance GPS community on Skool offers a free trial. Come as you are, at whatever stage you’re in.