What the Body Reveals in Stillness

I was standing still this morning. I love doing this, and I practice it often. I get lost in it — standing, breathing, just resting in Mountain Pose.

I’m continually amazed by how much is revealed when I stop moving. How much I’m bracing, without even realizing it.

As I stand, I begin to feel how much tension is contorting me — in my torso, my legs, my shoulders, my neck. It’s not dramatic or obvious at first. It’s subtle. Layered. Quiet. And it makes me wonder: How long have I been ignoring this?

I’ve always known I carry tension. Pain. But for a long time, I resisted simply being here with it. I practice stillness in many ways, but something about standing reveals so much more. When I allow myself to pause, time seems to soften. My breathing lightens. My attention sharpens. I become deeply interested in sensation — every ripple, every pull, every holding pattern.

Standing still becomes anything but still — a complex story of the past woven into unconscious contractions, ebbing and flowing.

The Body Tells Its Story

As awareness deepens, I can feel layers of contraction spiraling through my body, subtly bending and twisting me into awkward shapes. When you pause long enough, you begin to sense that every tissue carries a story — a history written into muscle, fascia, breath, and bone.

This morning, my body began to draw forward and twist — a familiar cringing, protective shape. I noticed a leftward pull, a subtle leaning and rotation. I didn’t resist it. I didn’t try to correct it. I followed it with curiosity.

The pathway felt magnetic — like every fiber knew exactly how to take that shape. It was powerful. Natural.

And suddenly, I wasn’t just in my body.
I wasn’t in an accident or out of surgery.

I was back in the kitchen.

How Work Shapes the Body

I could feel it clearly — I was working at our family restaurant, Mr. Pizza in Rochester, Minnesota. I could sense everything: the sounds, the smells, the intensity, the pace. My body subtly adjusted as if reaching across the counter, pivoting, turning.

My mind whirled through memories of throwing pizzas into the oven, pivoting back and forth. Pivoting again. Cutting. Boxing. Moving.

Over and over.
The same pattern.
The same posture.
Year after year.

I had shaped my body to be efficient.

Leaning forward.
Twisting.
Reaching.
Reacting.

My nervous system learned every detail of that environment — how to move quickly, how to respond instantly, how to stay in overdrive. Add in past injuries, illness, stress, and exhaustion, and over time pain became normal. Burnout became normal. Drinking became normal — a way to cope with pain I didn’t yet understand.

I stretched. I exercised. I rested. I sought help.
But the pain always came back.

Because I was never addressing the pattern beneath it all.

Learning to Feel What Was Hidden

It wasn’t until I discovered somatic yoga and breathwork that I began to understand what was actually happening inside me. And even then, I had no idea how thick the layer of resistance was — the resistance that prevented my mind from seeing the tension that was holding me so tightly.

It’s so difficult to sense our own body. Profoundly difficult.

Somatic practice taught me something humbling:

I didn’t know myself nearly as well as I thought I did.

Six years later, I can honestly say something surprising — I feel like I know even less now. Not because I’ve gone backward, but because awareness has expanded. The deeper you look, the more complexity you discover.

Life is like that.

A leaf looks simple… until you study it.
An ant seems small… until you observe it closely.
Everything unravels into infinite detail.

Turning inward is no different.

The body is like that.
The breath is like that.
The mind is like that.

The more subtle the awareness, the more layers reveal themselves.

A Universe Within

That’s why Mountain Pose continues to feel so fresh and alive for me. The stiller I am — the longer I stay — the more truth reveals itself: there is an entire universe within.

And the more I unravel it, the better I feel — not because I’ve “fixed” anything, but because I’m getting out of the way… because I am finally listening.

There is always more to discover.
Always more to refine.
Always more to feel.

And instead of that being discouraging, I find it deeply exciting.

A Mirror for You

If you’ve ever felt stuck in one posture, one pattern, one way of holding yourself — physically or emotionally — your body may be telling a story too.

You don’t have to fix it.
You don’t have to stretch it away.
You don’t have to force change.

Sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do is pause… stand still… and listen.

We are not meant to break down as we age.
We are meant to refine, enhance, and deepen ourselves.

That is the heart of this work.
That is the dedication behind Pneuma Yoga.

Simple practices.
Honest awareness.
Turning inward.
Reshaping health and vitality — not by force, but by presence.

Sometimes, all it takes…
is standing still.

The Twist and the Cringe

How a Split-Second Trauma Shaped My Body for Twenty Years

My body reacted before I even knew what was happening.
One instant I was racing down the road on my Triumph Daytona — the next I was tumbling across the asphalt. My head tucked, my shoulders shrugged, and my entire body curled sharply to the left. I didn’t choose any of this. My nervous system did.

I remember the world spinning: sky, fields, asphalt, gravel — over and over.
I felt myself rolling like a stone skipping across water. I wasn’t resisting; I felt nothing, but saw everything. I was witnessing it happen as if it were a dream playing in the background.

My only conscious thought was, “Just stop rolling. just stop rolling…”

When I finally came to a stop, I stood up in shock. My shoes and socks were gone. My shirt shredded. My pants torn. And my motorcycle — the one I had so many close calls on — lay twisted on the ground in front of me. I had rolled directly behind it the whole way, watching it flip through the air as I tumbled after it.

I couldn’t believe where I stopped rolling — and that I did — for that matter. It was endless, I rolled so far, how I lived, I have no idea.

The Place I Crashed Was the Place I Once Found Peace

As I stood there shaking, adrenaline flooding my system, I looked around and realized exactly where I was.

The crash had happened right at the entrance of the Isaac Walton Wetland and Conservation Area — the place where I walk my dog, Murphy, almost every single day. I was here all the time, I loved this space, and would get lost there for hours. As I stood in the parking lot I looked back, the curve where I whipped out, was a long way away. How far did roll?

I knew that area so well.
I knew the fields, the river, the forests.
I had walked that path countless times.

Every time I drive there I come from the east, always entering the lot from the opposite direction — never from the side I rode in from that day. The curve was sharper than I anticipated, I hit gravel, and my bike disappeared from underneath me.

I was surprisingly unbroken, barefoot and trembling, I stood in the parking lot where my daily walks used to begin… except this time, my motorcycle was lying wrecked beside me, and my body was buzzing with shock, and ripped with road rash.

A place that had once been part of my routine, a place of familiar comfort, suddenly became the scene of a violent trauma.

And after that day —
after the rolling, the tumbling, the impact, and the month in the hospital —
I never returned.

It wasn’t a conscious choice.
My nervous system made that choice for me — drawing a boundary around the place where danger became real. Even years later, I stayed away without fully understanding why.

It would take two decades before the deeper significance of this accident, finally revealed itself.

The Imprint That Never Left

It wasn’t until twenty years later that I began to feel the echo of this trauma.
One day, while practicing Mountain Pose, I felt a subtle internal pull. I let it happen — curious, patient, open — and my body moved on its own:

My chin tucked left.
My shoulders spiraled left.
My abdomen cinched and braced left.
My entire left side curled inward.

And instantly, the memory of the motorcycle accident rushed back.

I had completely forgotten how violent the crash was. I always focused on cancer as the major trauma of my life. I never considered that this accident had shaped my posture, breath, and health just as much — maybe even more.

But in that moment, it was undeniable.
My body had been remembering all along.

Trauma Changes Posture

The protective shape I curled into during the crash became the pattern I lived in for decades. It became the hidden blueprint for how I stood, moved, breathed, and coped.

That twist became:

• chronic low back pain

• shoulder and neck tension

• emotional heaviness

• fatigue and depression

• digestive issues

• breath restriction

• a constant sense of imbalance

Working in a kitchen amplified it.
Cancer amplified it.
My lifestyle amplified it.

I believed that training hard, eating paleo, and pushing myself mentally would heal me.

It didn’t.
It made the trauma pattern stronger.

I didn’t understand that trauma lives not in memory but in shape.
I didn’t understand that the nervous system stores protection in posture, and breathing.
I didn’t understand that the body keeps reenacting the moment it braced — until it feels safe enough to unwind.

The Nervous System Never Forgets

Even when the mind forgets, the body doesn’t.
When trauma goes unresolved, the nervous system keeps replaying the event — not through conscious memory, but through:

• tension

• posture

• reflexes

• breath

• emotion

• movement patterns

Mine replayed as a leftward spiral.
A kink.
A guard.
A cringe.

A shape learned in a split second and practiced unconsciously for twenty years.

Somatic Awareness: A Way Back

When I finally let my body show me its truth, something shifted.
Somatic practice taught me to:

• feel the twist instead of collapsing into it

• follow the pull without fear

• explore the protective shape gently

• unwind the trauma pattern slowly

• retrain my breath and posture

• rebuild a sense of internal safety

It’s not easy to sense misalignment when it’s all you’ve ever known. Even after a tremendous amount of practice. It can veil itself from our focused awareness with ease, and requires patience, persistence and positivity to shine the light into our darkest areas.
And, as awareness grows, the body reveals its story.

And with that story comes the possibility of change.

We can reprocess old experiences.
We can rebuild safety.
We can retrain the nervous system to let go.

A Shape of Protection, Not Failure

That twist — that cringe — was not weakness.
It was survival.
It saved my life. And is deeply ingrained in my being.

But survival mode is not meant to be permanent.

Yoga therapy, somatic movement, and breathwork helped me release the imprint, retrain my system, and come back toward center.

I’m still working on it.
Twenty years of a trauma pattern doesn’t disappear overnight.
But with consistent, dedicated work I continue to learn a new way, a way that not only feels great, but is reshaping the entire fabric of my well being. I know I will only continue to improve up until the day I die.

Healing isn’t magic. Your body IS the magic.
And every step — every breath — every moment of awareness can reshape your existence.

Living in Fight-or-Flight

When “Go Mode” Becomes a Way of Life

For the longest time, I lived in constant go mode.
I couldn’t slow down — not mentally, not physically — no matter how loudly my body cried out. I had just come out of a brutal motorcycle accident, and instead of rehab or any real recovery, I went straight back to work. No rest. No therapy. No pause. Just back into the chaos of restaurant life as if nothing had happened. I did as I always did, bury it. I was in pain, so what, keep going, you have work to do. I never recovered.

Something had happened.
A lot had happened.

I never healed after the motorcycle crash.
I never healed after cancer.
I never healed after years of pushing, grinding, and living under stress.

I just went back to life as if survival was the only path forward. And in many ways, it was — but not in the way I needed.

The Slow Descent

Deep down, I was in pain.
My body was deteriorating, and I didn’t even realize it. I tried to push through it — physically, mentally, emotionally — but my system was slowly collapsing under the weight of unresolved trauma.

I dissociated from my body because it hurt too much to feel it.
The subtle signals were there all along, warning me, begging me to stop, to rest, to listen — but I had no awareness of them. My mind was noisy. My breath was tight. My body was bracing in ways I couldn’t perceive.

To sleep, I drank.
To get through work, I drank.
Numbing became easier than feeling.

Everything became daunting.
Everything became a battle.

I tried every exercise routine, every diet, every “wellness strategy” I could find, hoping something would fix me. But my stomach kept getting worse. My energy dropped. My body felt heavy, toxic and exhausted. My mind never settled. My back pain was endless. And the tension… the tension became my baseline.

I looked healthy enough from the outside.
I ate “healthy” (or so I believed). I “exercised” (and greatly over did it).
But inside, I was hurting.
Inside, I was slowly shutting down. My candle was burning out.

Years of this — bracing, gripping, pushing, overriding — created deeper patterns I couldn’t see. My thinking, my breathing, my posture, my digestion… everything was shaped by stress. Everything was shaped by fear.

The Turning Point

It wasn’t until I found SomaYoga that something shifted.
Something cracked open inside me.
For the first time, I felt like I had found something that could actually help me — something that made sense, something that wasn’t about forcing or fixing, but about listening.

Slowly, through yoga, somatics, and breathwork, my body began to open. My mind began to lighten. A sense of ease — something I hadn’t felt in decades — began to return.

But healing isn’t a straight line.
Some days I would feel major breakthroughs.
Other days, I would fall backwards into old patterns.

Healing is a challenge.
Coming out of twenty years of pain and suffering doesn’t happen overnight.
It happens in waves.
It happens in spirals.
It happens through repetition and patience.

It has taken me years — years of practice, awareness, stumbling, learning, and trying again — to begin unwinding the deepest layers of tension and holding in my body. And honestly, I’m still unwinding. I’m still learning.

The Paradox of Awareness

As I became more aware, everything became more complex.
People think awareness makes things easier — but it doesn’t.
It reveals the truth. And the truth, is challenging to face.
It reveals the subtle bracing, the unconscious habits, the hidden fear, the ways we’ve been moving through life on autopilot.

The more we observe something, the more refined it becomes, thus more complex.
The inner world is no exception.

When you truly dive in — when you feel deeply, honestly, without numbing or distracting — things get confusing before they get clear. The somatic landscape is layered, intelligent, mysterious. And when you start paying attention, you realize just how much you’ve missed.

But this is where the real journey begins.

This is where healing shifts from “fixing” to “experiencing.”
From controlling to sensing.
From striving to allowing.

This is where you learn to get out of the way of the mind and perceive from the deeper, quieter place within — the observer.

Breaking the Spell of Fight-or-Flight

Living in fight-or-flight had been my normal for so long that I didn’t even know there was another way to live. I was always tense, always vigilant, always bracing for something — even when nothing was wrong.

To heal, I had to break the spell.
The spell of stress.
The spell of memory.
The spell of trauma that had been shaping my every breath and movement.

And to break it, I had to practice one thing:

Safety.
Creating it.
Feeling it.
Returning to it.
Again and again.

When the body feels safe, it can surrender.
When the body feels safe, it can soften.
When the body feels safe, it can heal.

This is the work.
This is the path.
This is the journey I’m still on.

And this is the journey I now help others walk — slowly, gently, with awareness and compassion — out of fight-or-flight and back into their lives.