143: Inspire Health Podcast with Dr Jason Loken - Episode 143143: Inspire Health Podcast with Dr Jason Loken - Episode 143
UK Health Radio Podcast
Somatic practitioner Nadia Natali talks about how trauma is held in the body and describes her DanceMedicine approach, using sensation and free-form movement to help release frozen responses. The conversation also touches on children, schooling, community life and the value of trust and safe spaces in any healing process.
50:28•4 Oct 2026
Healing Trauma Through Somatic Dance: Nadia Natali on Body, Boundaries and Trust
Episode Overview
- Trauma often arises when a person is overwhelmed, frightened and unable to act, leaving unspent fight-or-flight energy stored in the body.
- Somatic work focuses on staying with bodily sensations, recognising that thoughts and emotions are rooted in the felt sense.
- Moving from freeze to healing usually requires revisiting and safely feeling anger, aggression and the urge to act, rather than suppressing them.
- Trust, safety and genuine relationship between practitioner and client are central to creating a space where the body can complete its responses.
- Free-form dance, supported by carefully chosen music, can help people access resources, feel emotions and practise new, healthier patterns in the nervous system.
“Every thought we have has an emotion, and every emotion has a sensation.”
What drives someone to seek a life that actually feels good in their own skin? This conversation on UK Health Radio’s Inspire Health Podcast zooms in on trauma, the body, and the healing power of dance with somatic practitioner and DanceMedicine creator Nadia Natali. You’ll hear how Nadia’s early love of both psychology and dance led her to realise that talk-focused training “didn’t feel very effective”, and how encounters with Krishnamurti and Peter Levine shifted everything.
Peter’s work on animals shaking off trauma was the spark: “It was like, ding… Peter’s work actually gave me the simple, round tools to work with almost anything under any circumstance.” From there, DanceMedicine was born. Nadia breaks down what “somatic” really means: staying with bodily sensations rather than getting lost in problem-solving. She explains that every thought has an emotion underneath it, and every emotion has a sensation, so bypassing the body leaves most of the picture out.
Trauma, as she frames it, arises when we’re overwhelmed, frightened, unable to act, and that energy stays trapped in the body as fight-or-flight that never completed. The episode digs into how somatic experiencing helps people move from freeze back through the natural stages of fight or flight, with strong emphasis on safety, trust and relationship.
Nadia stresses that anger and aggression often need to be felt, not suppressed, and that a therapist must stay with their own sensations as much as the client’s. You’ll also get a vivid feel for how her free-form DanceMedicine sessions work: carefully sequenced music waves that build from meditative stillness to intense release, then down into tenderness and even tears.
She links this to everyday life, from kids’ tantrums and homeschooling to questioning modern schooling and work cultures that leave no room for emotions. It’s a candid look at how sensation, movement and community can help trauma soften instead of harden. Could paying attention to your body’s signals be the missing piece in your own healing story?
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