Somatic Tracking for Nervous System Regulation: What I’ve Learned in Six Months

For years, my body felt like a tightly wound ball of sensations, pain, fatigue, anxiety, all tangled together and screaming at me. Over the past six months, I’ve been practising somatic tracking for nervous system regulation to help change my body’s relationship with those sensations. I feel like I’m at a point now where I’ve built some key learnings and wanted to share them with you.

My journey into nervous system regulation really began after my late autism diagnosis in my 30s, when many of the patterns in my body and mind finally started to make sense.

What is somatic tracking?

Somatic tracking is a mindfulness-based guided meditation technique that is designed to help reduce or completely stop chronic pain.

Somatic tracking developed from pain reprocessing therapy approaches used in “neuroplastic pain” recovery. Neuroplastic pain refers to pain that isn’t caused by structural damage, but by the brain misinterpreting safe signals from the body as danger.

Your brain can essentially be re-trained to interpret pain and sensations as safe, enabling your nervous system to feel regulated, reducing the feeling of pain or discomfort.

Through regular practice, I’ve found that somatic tracking has not only helped to reduce the chronic pain in my body, but also has helped to change my relationship with other sensations. Such as those caused by fatigue and anxiety, and even strong emotions that I was pushing away.

I first started noticing these sensations more clearly when I was processing grief after losing my grandad.

Somatic tracking has helped improve my quality of life for chronic illness, and for autistic sensory and emotional regulation.

How I practice somatic tracking

Practising alone or with guidance

Somatic tracking can be practised alone or with a practitioner, either in person or online. Choose what feels safest for you. Whether that’s guidance and accountability from a practitioner, or taking the lead yourself.

Personally, I’ve been practising by myself, but also using guided tracks to help me on my way.

Creating a safe environment

I’ve built myself a playlist on the Insight Timer app and typically listen to one track a day. The track lengths I use are between 10 and 20 minutes.

Some teachers’ voices or approaches didn’t appeal to me, so I chose to not include them in my playlist. It’s important that your nervous system feels safe while practising. You don’t want to be tensing up because you dislike the track.

I try to practise daily, but sometimes I skip a day and I don’t berate myself if I do. It’s important to find a structure that fits into your routine that you can commit to, rather than going off of someone else’s timeline.

You can sit or lie down to practice. Whatever is most comfortable for you. I practise laying down in bed first thing in the morning when I wake up. I find it helps me get a grasp on how I am feeling before I start my day, so that I can adapt my day ahead.

Learning to rename sensations

In the tracks themselves, you are guided to be light, inquisitive and explore the sensations in your body as if you were observing from an outside perspective. I’ve learnt to not just categorise sensations in my body as pain, bad or negative, but instead learn new names to describe them, such as heavy, tight, tingling or achy.

I’ve been practising mindfulness and meditation for years, but had struggled when noticing thoughts, emotions or sensations in my body previously. There was always an underlying danger there when approaching the sensations that I couldn’t move away from.

The shift to naming sensations in a gentler way has been a game changer. Especially letting go of the word “pain.”

Before starting somatic tracking, everything in my body and mind felt jumbled. A big tightly wound ball screaming at me.

Slowly, I’ve been able to unwind it. It’s no longer screaming as loudly.

How long does somatic tracking take to work?

Somatic tracking works best when practised regularly. You’re effectively shifting learnt behaviours in your nervous system to a completely different perspective.

If you’re someone that has experienced strong sensations in your body for a very long time, like me, then it’s going to take some time to unlearn those behaviours and build new ones.

Typically you can start noticing some benefit after a couple of months but it can take years for some people to notice a big difference.

If you think about it, we are all unique, experiencing life and processing information differently based on our circumstances and lived experiences. It makes sense for us each to have a different timeline for when our body starts to feel more regulated and safe.

For me, I started noticing a small shift from month three. One day, I felt like I had a bit more breathing space from the pain and strong sensations in my body. They had lessened slightly.

Now I’m six months in and the sensations I feel have reduced a lot. I still have them, I’d say I’m maybe a quarter of the way to being completely pain-free, but it feels incredible after so many years of feeling trapped in a chronic pain cycle.

My recommended somatic tracking tracks

If you’re interested in giving somatic tracking a go, here are three of my favourite tracks that you can access for free on Insight Timer:

What somatic tracking has changed for me

I love the playful, inquisitive mindset that somatic tracking has helped nurture within me. It’s making my everyday life more joyful and fun. I’m able to take a breather and really notice things around me.

In addition, I’m starting to notice sensations in my body at an earlier stage. I’m able to take a look and ask myself, “what is my body trying to communicate with me?”. If I’d asked myself that question six months ago, I probably would have burst out crying because the sensations were too intense, overwhelming and entangled.

I’ll keep you updated as I continue this journey. Six months ago, I couldn’t imagine my body feeling this different. I’m curious to see what another six months brings.

If This Resonated, You Might Also Like

Another approach I’ve explored to help my nervous system feel safer in the world.

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Much love,

Rachael xx

The Invisible Onion