The Reason So Many Of Us Have A Hard Time Getting Out Of Bed, Sit In A Towel For 20 Minutes After A Shower & No Longer Enjoy Going Out
Pixel-Shot / Shutterstock In a TikTok post, a somatic practitioner offered a simple yet complex answer to people questioning why they struggle to do things that seem easy, like sitting in a towel for 20 minutes after a shower rather than getting dressed.
Liz Tenuto has built a huge following on TikTok by sharing somatic exercises designed to release stress and trauma. With over 1 million followers on the social media platform, Tenuto calls herself “The Workout Witch,” promoting 30-day online courses that she claims will take anyone “from pain to power.”
The reason why so many of us feel stuck doing basic things is because of a chronic freeze trauma response.
Tenuto shared a video of herself, dressed in black athletic gear, lying on her side, gently rocking back and forth. The text overlaid on the post read, “When you realize the reason you sit in your towel for 20 minutes after you shower, you no longer enjoy going out, and you disassociate frequently is because you’re living in freeze response due to dealing with extreme amounts of stress and it’s also the reason you have a hard time getting out of bed, have tense muscles, and you hold your breath all the time.”
On her website, Tenuto shares her story, integrating her personal background with her methodology. She introduces herself as “a somatic specialist, narcissistic abuse survivor, and someone who knows, first hand, that your chronic pain, your anxiety, and your past trauma are all related.”
“I learned what rage was at an unusually young age from a narcissistic parent,” she explained. “It was something that became an unfortunate constant for the duration of my childhood — affecting me in ways I could clearly recognize, but also in ways I never could.”
Tenuto illustrated her experience as someone who had “chronic, unexplained pain and muscle tension” starting when she was 10 years old. She described the physical discomfort as something that was initially manageable, an inconvenience that “became [her] new normal... But as the years went by, that inconvenience became intolerable. My pain became unbearable. And the life I was living genuinely felt unlivable.”
In the caption, Tenuto declared that people can 'get out of freeze response' and experience 'full body release' by practicing somatic exercises.
For Tenuto, it took until her mid-twenties to find relief from chronic pain and anxiety. She discovered that somatic exercises, which she defines as ‘gentle, therapeutic movements that connect your physical body to your emotional body,’ relieved her chronic pain by addressing the root causes of her trauma.
“It turns out, your body can feel much better than what it’s used to,” she declares. Tenuto transformed her own journey toward healing to help others do the same. She received a degree in psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, along with somatic certifications in Feldenkrais and Pilates, specializing in injuries and pathologies. She champions her 15 years of clinical teaching experience as “changing the conversation around how trauma and anxiety affect the body.”
She focuses specifically on the ways that “trauma, anxiety, stress, and emotional experiences are all connected to the aches and unexplained pains we’ve been generationally programmed to just ‘put up with.’”
Tenuto's somatic practices and online presence uphold the belief that people can live without pain and be healed.
She offers various 30-day online courses, focusing on exercises to release tension in the hips, lower back, and shoulders. She maintains the programs do more than solely address the physical manifestations of stress that cause pain — they “will allow your body to eliminate the deep-rooted cause behind where your pain is stemming from in the first place.”
Roman Samborskyi | Shutterstock
As she explained it, chronic pain is an indicator of a deeper issue, one rooted in the stress and trauma a person holds in their body. All humans have experienced some level of trauma. The past three years of a global pandemic have laid bare that reality. Tenuto’s work aims to heal the physical and emotional wounds we as humans carry.
As more people become versed in the realities of generational trauma, these conversations are amplified, allowing for greater access to healing modalities that everyone deserves.
Alexandra Blogier, MFA, is a writer who covers psychology, social issues, relationships, self-help topics, and human interest stories.
