Book excerpt: When the central nervous system is calm and safe, the mind becomes clearer. Life becomes more effectively lived. Thriving becomes possible. Everything that shows up in the physical body is feedback. The body is always talking to us, it is our job to learn to listen, honor and respond.Somatization is the name used when emotional distress is expressed by physical symptoms. Everyone experiences somatization at times. Examples include your heart beating fast or butterflies in your stomach when you feel nervous or muscles becoming tense and sore when you feel angry or under stress. Ever since people's responses to overwhelming experiences have been systematically explored, researchers have noted that a trauma is stored in somatic memory and expressed as changes in the biological stress response.The Textbook for Integrative Somatic Practices educates and equips you to help people more effectively deal with stress, anxiety, depression and trauma through effective tools and techniques that empower individuals to increase their capacity for stressors, process and release stuck stress and trauma and even better understand and re-write the neural pathways (behavior patterns) that have developed as a result of current and past stuck emotions.