When I first picked up The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, I expected a clinical take on trauma. What I found instead was a deeply human reminder: healing isn’t just about the mind.. it’s about the whole body, spirit, and the spaces we choose to create safety in.

And when I think about this book, I can’t help but connect it to my own journey. Years ago, I was diagnosed with lung cancer. On paper, it was a medical condition. But deep down, I knew it was more than that. It was the first time I truly witnessed how years of grief I had carried, unspoken, unprocessed, and stored away.. had manifested in my body.

My lungs, the very place of breath and life, had become the container of sorrow I never gave myself permission to release.

1. Trauma Lives in the Body, Not Just the Mind

The book reminds us that trauma isn’t just “a bad memory.” It lodges itself in the body.. in our nervous system, in the way we breathe, flinch, or even shut down.

Looking back, I can see how my grief lived in my lungs long before the diagnosis. My body had been carrying what my mind couldn’t.

Takeaway: If your body feels like it’s betraying you, you’re not broken. It’s your body protecting you the only way it knows how. Healing starts when we listen to these signals rather than fighting them.

2. Talk Alone Isn’t Enough

Trauma often sits beyond words. That’s why healing requires practices that reconnect body and mind: yoga, breathwork, movement, exercise, art, music.

For me, it meant learning to breathe again, not just physically but spiritually. To let out what I’d kept trapped. To allow tears, expression, and the life force to move through me.

Takeaway: Healing may look like sitting quietly with a crystal in your hand, noticing your breath, or allowing movement to release what’s been stuck. What matters is presence, not perfection.

3. Safety Is the First Step

Before any transformation can happen, we need to feel safe, in our bodies, in our homes, in our relationships. Safety isn’t a luxury. It’s the foundation that allows the nervous system to relax and rewire.

When I was in recovery, I realised safety didn’t come from pretending everything was fine. It came from creating spaces where I could be honest with myself, where I could admit that I was scared, grieving, and yet also willing to heal.

Takeaway: Ask yourself gently.. where in my life do I feel most safe? Can I create more of that for myself daily, even in small ways?

4. Community Heals What Isolation Can’t

Trauma disconnects us from others, making us feel alone in our pain. But healing is often relational: found in supportive communities, trusted friendships, and spaces where we can be seen without judgment.

During my healing journey, I realised I couldn’t do it alone. Letting others walk with me, whether friends, healers, or supportive communities, helped me remember I was more than my pain.

Takeaway: You don’t have to carry it alone. Sharing space with others who hold compassion can be one of the most powerful medicines.

5. The Body Can Learn to Trust Again

The beauty of the human body is its resilience. Even after years of carrying pain, the body can relearn what safety and joy feel like.

For me, healing from cancer wasn’t just about medical treatment. It was about learning to trust my body again; that it could be my ally, not just a battleground.

Takeaway: Healing is not linear, but it is possible. Your body has an innate wisdom that remembers how to come home to itself.

Closing Reflections..

Reading The Body Keeps the Score helped me put words to what I had already lived through: that grief and trauma, when ignored, will always find a way to speak through the body. But it also reminded me of something even more important.. that the body can heal, too.

Crystals, astrology, tarot.. they don’t “fix” us. But they can be companions on the path, gentle anchors as we learn to breathe again, release again, and return to life.

Your body remembers, yes. But it also remembers how to recover, how to grow, how to feel joy again. :)