100 Body-Based Exercises for Stress
Management and Nervous System Regulation
The
SOMATIC HEALING Workbook
C H E R Y L G R O S K O P F, L M F T, L P C C
100 Body-Based Exercises for Stress
Management and Nervous System Regulation
The
SOMATIC HEALING Workbook
C H E R Y L G R O S K O P F, L M F T, L P C C
for Iris, Gordon, and Michael— my first home, my blueprint for love.
Copyright © 2026 by Cheryl Groskopf
DISCLAIMER:
Published by Blue Star Press PO Box 8835, Bend, OR 97708
This book is for informational and educational purposes. This book is not intended to be a substitute for the medical advice of a licensed physician. The reader should consult with their doctor in any matters relating to their health.
contact@bluestarpress.com www.bluestarpress.com The authorized representative in the EU for product safety and compliance is Authorised Rep Compliance Ltd., Ground Floor, 71 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin, D02 P593, Ireland. www.arccompliance.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Trademarks of third parties are used for purposes of identification and information only, and no endorsement is claimed or suggested. Design by Louise Swindells Exercise Illustrations by Kate Francis Front cover gradient image © NKate Licensed via Creative Market Printed in Columbia 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN: 9781969889158
The information in this book is not intended to treat, diagnose, cure, or prevent disease. This book is not sponsored or endorsed by any organization or company. The information in this book is based on experience and research done by the author. Neither the publisher nor the author accepts any liability of any kind for any damages caused, directly or indirectly, from the use of the information in this book.
Contents IV
INTRODUCTION
PART I 02
CHAPTER 1: Understanding Your Body’s Stress Responses
30
CHAPTER 2: How Your Brain Processes Experience
40
CHAPTER 3: Reconnecting with Your Body
PART II 53
CHAPTER 4: Fight Exercises
70
CHAPTER 5: Flight Exercises
87
CHAPTER 6: Freeze Exercises
104
CHAPTER 7: Collapse Exercises
111
CHAPTER 8: Fawn Exercises
123
CHAPTER 9: Exercises for When You're Activated and Don't Know What State You're In
140
CHAPTER 10: Coregulation Exercises
153
CHAPTER 11: Safety Reinforcer Exercises
PART III 172
CHAPTER 12: Living a Regulated Life
180
CHAPTER 13: From Survival to Flow
186
CONCLUSION
189
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
APPENDIX 190
Daily Triggers Tracker
192
“When You Feel _________” Cheat Sheets
195
Reflection Prompts for Different Stages of Nervous System Healing
197
Resource List and Further Reading
198
INDEX
208
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
INTRODUCTION
SOMATIC HEALING WORKBOOK
Living in a constant state of stress has become our society’s new version of normal. There’s always something to respond to, track, or anticipate.
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Even when you’re not actively doing anything, your attention gets pulled in a dozen different directions. In just the first two hours of being awake, many of us check our work email, skim texts, scroll social media, and take in at least one heartbreaking headline or video we didn’t even mean to click. And even though everything may technically be fine, it can feel as if your nervous system is constantly scanning for what might go wrong. You might find yourself holding your
breath throughout the day. Maybe your chest gets a little tight. Perhaps your jaw has been clenched for hours, but you don’t notice it until later. The sensation is subtle sometimes, but it’s persistent, and it can start to feel like your baseline. You may call it burnout or anxiety. And you’re absolutely right, but it’s not fully naming what you’re really experiencing: a dysregulated nervous system.
Now we’re asking that same system to track everything, all the time. Never-ending to-do lists. Constant information coming at us through screens. Texts, Slack messages, the tone of an email, a change in someone’s vibe. None of these things is life-threatening, but they tap into the same ancient wiring your body has always used to stay safe.
So, in the background, your body stays on guard by monitoring, bracing, and preparing. Looking for what might go wrong next. You might feel a knot, heaviness, or a dropping feeling in your stomach. Or you might feel a tight, constricted sensation in your throat. Over time, that all adds up. Small things start to feel big, and stillness can feel uncomfortable. Even on good days, it’s like your body is in a constant low-level state of “almost.” Almost calm. Almost present. Almost fine. But never fully there.
Introduction
Our nervous systems evolved for a very different world, where danger came from real situations. Our ancestors tracked slow, steady signals: the way someone’s posture changed before a fight, staying alert while hunting and gathering, or moving through genuinely dangerous situations.
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WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK As a Los Angeles-based licensed therapist working with anxiety, attachment, and trauma, I kept seeing the same pattern in my practice: people who were self-aware, who’d done the therapy, taken the supplements, read the books, yet they still felt like their body was stuck in survival mode. Why? Because no one had shown them how to work with their nervous system, not against it, or how to make sense of their experience and feel more at home in their own bodies.
SOMATIC HEALING WORKBOOK
SELF-CARE AND NERVOUS SYSTEM REGULATION DO DIFFERENT JOBS
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Self-care and nervous system regulation both play a major role in healing, yet they’re often talked about like they’re the same thing. But they aren’t. Self-care refers to things you do to take care of yourself, while nervous system regulation is about how you manage how your body responds to stress and safety. When that difference isn’t
clear, people who are sleeping well, exercising, and going to therapy may wonder why they still feel anxious or exhausted even though they’re doing all the right things. Self-care includes the basics: sleeping enough, eating nourishing meals, drinking water with electrolytes, moving your body, and resting before burnout hits. It also includes relational and psychological care: for example, going to therapy, setting boundaries, spending time laughing with friends, or doing things that genuinely feel good. Self-care is absolutely necessary, as it supports the body’s ability to function, recover, and tolerate stress. Nervous system regulation is the internal state of the body. It’s how your body is functioning in real time, especially how easily it can move out of survival responses, such as fight, flight, freeze, or fawn (which we will discuss in the next chapter), and return to a state that supports safety, connection, and flexibility. This is physiology you can usually feel in your breathing, muscle tension, range of emotion, and how quickly your body recovers after stress. When the nervous system is regulated, emotions can move through you without overwhelming the body. There’s more room to pause, respond, and recover. When
Self-care is helpful, but it just isn’t enough by itself. When the body is stuck in survival mode, it prioritizes protection over peace. Sleep can happen and still feel unrefreshing. A workout can be completed and still feel unsatisfying. Even rest can feel edgy because stillness gives the body a chance to notice anxiety or stress. This is why self-care and nervous system regulation need to work together. As the body starts to feel safer, the same self-care practices begin to hit differently. If any of this feels familiar, it’s worth pausing here. A lot of people have been doing sincere, meaningful work to take care of themselves. When relief doesn’t come as expected, it’s easy to assume something is wrong with them. But the body is usually just asking for support at a deeper level than behavior alone can reach. Let’s take a look at a few common and powerful supports, such as talk therapy, supplements, and meditation, and explore how each one helps in a specific way, without asking any single tool to do a job it wasn’t built for.
TALK THERAPY Talk therapy can be absolutely life-changing. It gives you actual language for things you didn’t even realize had names. For example, you might share that you always find yourself on autopilot throughout the day, and your therapist is like, “Yep. That’s called a functional freeze.” And suddenly, what you’re experiencing in your day-to-day life makes more sense. But healing doesn’t stop there. You can identify your patterns and understand them but still feel anxious. Talk therapy works top down: It helps your brain understand the why. But anxiety, burnout, fatigue, and tension come from the bottom up. They live in the body. And if the body doesn’t receive any signals that it is actually safe, it just keeps running on the same survival loop.
SUPPLEMENTS I’m a big fan of supplements. Magnesium glycinate can help support sleep, ashwagandha can help lower your cortisol levels, and vitamin D can improve your mood. All these things matter to your health, as they give your body extra support.
Introduction
regulation is limited, the body tends to stay activated or shut down, which can look like chronic anxiety, numbness, irritability, exhaustion, urgency, or collapse.
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But even the best mix of vitamins won’t teach your nervous system a new baseline. While supplements can help shift your chemistry, they don’t give you that felt sense of safety that your body needs to truly feel regulated. So you might feel some relief, but your body still reacts the same way under stress.
MEDITATION Meditation is a practice that many people turn to—and for good reason! It can be grounding. It can create moments of quiet. It can help you slow down and notice what’s happening in your body. For some people, it’s genuinely supportive.
SOMATIC HEALING WORKBOOK
And for others, it’s complicated.
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You might sit down to meditate and feel more restless, not less. Your thoughts might get louder. Your body might feel uncomfortable or agitated. You might wonder why something that’s supposed to help you relax feels so difficult. This is common and not a sign that you are incapable of relaxing. Meditation can create stillness, but if your body doesn’t yet feel safe in that stillness, it can actually bring more awareness to your tension.
THE DARK SIDE OF NOT PERSONALIZING SELF-CARE IF YOU’VE EXPERIENCED TRAUMA A lot of self-care advice assumes that stillness equals calmness, that slowing down and pausing to be present in the moment can help you feel more grounded in your body. But believe it or not, that may be true for you one day, but not the next. Stillness can actually be triggering if it’s done too fast. A guided body scan, where you slowly bring your attention to different parts of your body and notice what you feel without trying to change it, might sound gentle, but if you’ve learned to disconnect from your body to get through difficult situations (such as times you didn’t feel emotionally or physically safe and had to stay alert), dropping back in too fast can feel extremely unfamiliar . . . and unsafe. Now, let’s say someone lives in a constant state of urgency and then finds themselves in a high-energy environment, such as a dance class at the gym with tons of sensory input. All that stimulation can push their already activated nervous system into overdrive. Their heart starts pounding, they can’t think straight,
This is the part that many online “wellness” platforms miss: The nervous system doesn’t respond to what should feel good. It responds to how your body interprets safety in that exact moment. So even if you have a lot of energy to shake out of your body, doing so in an overstimulating environment when you’re already overwhelmed can make you feel, well . . . even more overwhelmed.
REFLECTION PROMPT:
What Still Feels Hard Even Though It’s Safe Now? Write down one thing that technically feels safe, but your body still struggles with. Here are some examples: ◊ Saying no without overexplaining ◊ Letting yourself rest before everything is done ◊ Showing emotion in front of someone ◊ Accepting help without guilt ◊ Feeling happy without waiting for the crash Your body might trust these things eventually, but not if you shame it for struggling. Start by just noticing what still feels hard.
Introduction
and they start to feel trapped. So, for someone in fight mode or flight mode, anything that adds more intensity can feel like too much.
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WHAT IS THE NERVOUS SYSTEM? Think of your nervous system as your body’s command center. It’s constantly taking in information, scanning your environment, your relationships, even your own thoughts. If it had a voice, it would say something like, Are we safe right now, or do we need to protect ourselves?
SOMATIC HEALING WORKBOOK
When your nervous system senses safety, you can relax. You can breathe deeper, think clearly, and actually feel connected to yourself and others. But when it senses a threat, it flips into survival mode: alarm bells back on, threat detection on max capacity, ready to respond in whatever way it deems necessary.
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When you’ve been stuck in this hyperalert state for too long, your nervous system stays focused on getting through the day. Your body develops tunnel vision, focusing on everything that feels off, and with constant hypervigilance comes chronic anxiety, exhaustion, irritability, trouble sleeping, or disconnection from everything. You might go to your favorite workout class, only to focus on how you’re stuck at the back or how the person next to you is breathing too hard. Our bodies may have forgotten
what true safety feels like because modern life doesn’t give us many chances to experience it.
FIRST SAFET Y, THEN EVERY THING ELSE Before your body can focus on joy or rest, it prioritizes safety. Not your preferences, not your goals, not your friendships or connections, just pure safety. Once your body has determined there are no threats, it checks if your basic needs have been met: ◊ Have you eaten? ◊ Do you need to drink more water? ◊ Are you warm enough? ◊ Do you need to pee? ◊ Do you need more sleep? Only once all your basic needs have been met can it start considering the things you want: calmness, connection, creativity, joy, even rest.
TRY THIS: Safety Sequence Check-In
□ Do I feel like I could be
This check-in helps you figure out where you are in terms of safety. Check off any that are true for you in this moment:
□ Can I imagine doing some-
□ Am I holding my breath? □ Am I scanning my environment? □ Do I feel on edge even if nothing is wrong?
□ Does the idea of stillness feel uncomfortable right now?
THEN NEEDS: What does my body need right now?
□ Am I hungry? □ Do I need water? □ Do I need to use the restroom but haven’t gone yet?
□ Am I too cold, too hot, or uncomfortable?
□ Am I physically tired? □ Am I emotionally overstimulated?
THEN WANTS: Is there any space for choice?
□ Do I feel curious, playful, or open to something new?
□ Is there any part of me that
wants connection right now?
thing for pure pleasure?
Look at where most of your check marks landed. ◊ If you checked mostly items under Safety First, your body is focused on prioritizing staying alert right now, so asking yourself to relax, be productive, or enjoy the moment can feel frustrating or impossible. ◊ If you checked more items under Needs, your body may feel safe, but it’s still asking for basic support. Meeting these needs often creates more space on its own. ◊ If you checked several items under Wants, then your body is safe enough to have the capacity to explore creativity, connection, or pleasure. You don’t need to be in the Wants category all the time. Most of life happens somewhere between Safety and Needs. Simply notice where you’re starting from so you’re not pushing your body to do things it’s not ready for. The more often you check in like this, the easier it gets to meet your nervous system where it actually is . . . and then build from there.
Introduction
SAFETY FIRST:
creative or expressive?
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WHAT IF ANXIETY ISN’T THE PROBLEM? There’s so much advice out there on how to “get rid of anxiety for good.” Every time I see it, it makes my skin crawl. The harder you try to silence anxiety, the louder it becomes. Why? Because it is literally trying to get your attention. When you tell anxiety to “stop,” your body hears: Something’s wrong. You must fix it now. So you wind up in a loop: ANXIETY → JUDGMENT → TIGHTER ANXIETY → SHUTDOWN. Anxiety isn’t about something being wrong with you. It’s about your body wanting you to survive.
That question alone pulls you out of the reflex to fix or silence it. From there, pay attention to what your body’s doing. Is a part of your body clenching? These physical sensations are your body’s reactions to perceived danger. Instead of overriding it, work with it to release the part of your body that is clenching.
TRY THIS: What Was My Anxiety Trying to Protect Me From? Think of a recent moment when you felt anxious. Now complete this sentence: My anxiety was trying to protect me from ________________________. Was it one of the following? ◊ Being misunderstood ◊ Getting something wrong
SOMATIC HEALING WORKBOOK
WHAT WORKING WITH ANXIET Y LOOKS LIKE
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Working with anxiety doesn’t mean you like all the uncomfortable sensations. It’s not dismissing the pain and struggle you’re experiencing. Instead, you’re listening to it. So, rather than asking, Ugh, why is this happening again? you shift into curiosity, speaking to the anxiety directly: Hey, anxiety, what are you trying to protect me from? What feels scary right now?
◊ Not being prepared ◊ Something bad happening ◊ Feeling out of control ◊ Disappointing someone ◊ Being too much (or not enough) ◊ All of the above, honestly
Note: Many anxious responses are tracking multiple threats at once.
What Is Somatic Therapy? Somatic therapy is a body-based approach to healing that focuses on the connection between the mind and body. It recognizes that trauma, stress, and emotional pain don’t just live in our thoughts—they live in our bodies and emotions.
HOW THIS BOOK WILL HELP YOU UNDERSTAND AND TRAIN YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM
That’s why somatic therapy doesn’t start with why you feel the way you do. It starts with what’s happening. Instead of focusing only on your thoughts or the details of a story, somatic work tracks how your responses show up in the body from moment to moment.
This book focuses on what your body can feel and do (instead of focusing just on thought patterns). On the pages that follow, you’ll learn what safety feels like in your body and walk away with:
As you reorient yourself, these experiences help the nervous system become more flexible so that you’re better able to move between alertness, rest, connection, and engagement as life changes. Slowly, your body starts learning that it doesn’t have to stay on guard all the time.
◊ A real understanding of how your nervous system works— and why your body reacts the way it does ◊ Tools to help you notice when you’re in a survival state (even those sneaky ones that look like people pleasing or zoning out) ◊ Exercises to bring your body back to safety (without forcing yourself to calm down or pretend you’re fine) ◊ Small, doable ways to build a new baseline that isn’t shaped entirely by survival
Introduction
Identifying and naming physical sensations, such as tightness in the chest, hollowness in the stomach, numbness, or heat, can help slow things down and keep you anchored in the present (rather than spiraling into analysis or self-judgment). When you understand your body’s responses, you can begin to feel safe.
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THE TEN-MINUTE METHOD
This isn’t about doing everything right. It’s about helping your body feel safer bit by bit . . . even if only by 1 percent.
Regulating your nervous system can be done in ten minutes or less using a combination of the exercises in this book. Your body learns safety through reliable cues: small, repeated signals that communicate, This moment is safe or This moment is different from the past. Just a few minutes a day is enough to begin sending those signals in a way that feels clear, grounded, and accessible for your nervous system.
You’re allowed to:
SOMATIC HEALING WORKBOOK
HOW TO USE THIS WORKBOOK: A FEW THINGS TO KNOW BEFORE YOU START
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Some of these exercises will feel easy. Some may feel difficult or weird. And others may bring stuff up. That’s okay. If you skip a page, you didn’t mess up! It just means that you weren’t ready for that exercise in that particular moment. If something doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean you did it wrong.
◊ Take breaks ◊ Feel weird halfway through a practice ◊ Stay exactly where you are for as long as you need
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK WHEN YOU FEEL STUCK If your brain goes blank or your body goes numb, just pause. Then: ◊ Come back to your breath even if it’s tight. ◊ Name one thing your body physically feels. ◊ Identify what emotion you feel (even if it’s nothing). ◊ Put a hand on your chest, belly, or leg to ground yourself. ◊ Remind yourself: I’m allowed to take my time.