Show Notes
If you’ve tried everything to heal but still feel stuck, this one crucial starting point can save you years in therapy.
If healing still feels out of reach, it’s not because you’re broken. It’s because healing doesn’t happen in isolation—it happens in a relational space your trauma therpist ( or you ) need do the on somatic embodied level between systems in your body and/or space around you.
In this episode of Exiled & Rising, Ana Mael, somatic therapist specializing in PTSD and trauma recovery, reveals the one fundamental truth that most people miss:
✔ Healing is not about doing more—it’s about finding a space where your body feels safe enough to release.
That space Ana Mael is calling Sacred Site Where Your Healing Begins.
Exctracts:
“Collapse is when the body resigns. Release is when the body trusts.”
“Healing is not about one massive transformation. It’s about accumulating small moments of safety and trust until they become your new reality.”
“When trauma lives in the body, urgency feels normal. But urgency does not heal. Safety does.”
Many trauma survivors mistake collapse for release, believing they are "letting go" when they are actually shutting down. True healing happens not in isolation but in a relational field—a space of trust where the body can finally exhale and using somatic tools. somatization is crucial to accelerate your trauma recovery.
If you start here, you can save yourself years of frustration, missteps, and surface-level healing.
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Core Thought: Healing starts not with effort, but with safety. Give your body a space where it feels safe to release, and watch how everything changes.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✔ Why healing requires a relational field—NOT just body awareness or external techniques
✔ The difference between collapse and release—and why this distinction is critical for recovery
✔ How trauma convinces us that we must heal alone—and why this belief keeps us stuck
✔ What a relational field is, and how to access it—even if you don’t trust people
✔ Why your body cannot heal in isolation and how to create safety outside of traditional relationships
✔ A simple yet powerful somatic practice to start experiencing the shift from collapse to true release
If you’ve tried everything and still feel stuck, this episode will show you why.
Who This Episode is For:
- If you’ve been in therapy for years but still feel like something is missing, this episode will explain why.
- If you are a therapist and feel stuck with your clients
- If you feel deeply alone in your healing process, you’ll learn why trauma makes us withdraw—and how to reconnect safely.
- If traditional healing methods haven’t worked, you’ll discover what’s actually needed for your nervous system to feel safe enough to heal.
- If trusting people feels impossible due to past betrayal, you’ll learn alternative ways to build relational safety.
- If you’ve confused exhaustion with healing, you’ll finally understand why collapse is not the same as release.
Stay Connected & Support the Show
Ask a question or share your story: VideoAsk
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The Somatic Trauma Recovery Center: Visit the Website
Join Premium Membership – What You Get in the Private Community
Exclusive healing content, deeper insights, and practical recovery tools.
- ✔Bite-Sized Learning Summaries – Distilled micro-lessons from every episode, bringing you the most impactful teachings on trauma recovery, resilience, and somatic healing.
- ✔ Therapy Takeaways – Actionable insights designed for therapy, journaling, and self-work—cutting straight to the core of trauma recovery.
✔ Keynotes & Detailed Summaries – Concise, research-backed insights extracted from each episode to help you apply lessons directly to your healing journey.
✔ Full Transcripts – Never miss a moment. Read, highlight, and integrate key lessons at your own pace for deeper understanding, easier note-taking, and quick reference.
✔ Extended, Deep-Dive Episodes – Unfiltered personal survivor stories & expert insights for deep trauma healing.
✔ The Science of Trauma & Nervous System Healing – Research-backed techniques to understand & reset survival mode.
✔ Listener Q&A & Expert Sessions (AMA) – Submit personal trauma recovery questions & get direct, trauma-informed solutions and answers from Ana.
✔ Ad-Free, Junk-Content-Free Experience – No distractions, no unnecessary content—just focused healing insights.
Meet Your Host: Ana Mael
Ana Mael is a genocide and war survivor, somatic therapist, and founder of the Somatic Trauma Recovery Center. She has dedicated her work to helping survivors reclaim their identity, dignity, and self-trust.
She is the bestselling author of The Trauma We Don’t Talk About—a #1 book in over 10 categories, including Mental Health, Personal Testimonies, and Memoirs.
Ana lives in Toronto, Canada, where she works directly with clients and educates mental health professionals and counsellors on displacement, exile, and war trauma recovery. She leads training programs, provides trauma-informed therapy, and conducts research to bridge the gap between somatic therapy and global crisis trauma care.
Timestamps – Key Takeaways at a Glance:
⏳ [00:00] – Welcome & why healing remains out of reach for many
⏳ [00:05] – The common mistake: Seeking healing in isolation
⏳ [00:06] – Why trauma makes us disconnect—and why reconnection is necessary for true healing
⏳ [00:07] – Collapse vs. release: Why your body may be shutting down instead of healing
⏳ [00:10] – The relational field: What it is and why your nervous system needs it to feel safe
⏳ [00:13] – A somatic practice to experience a safe relational field—without needing to rely on people
⏳ [00:18] – Why micro-moments of safety rewire trauma patterns faster than any single breakthrough
⏳ [00:19] – How to integrate this into your healing practice
