Healing ADHD Trauma Through Gentle Somatic Movement with Manuela Mitevova
🌟 My new book, The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit, is available to preorder here 🌟
In this week's Wisdom Episode, we’re exploring the powerful connection between trauma and the body, and how gentle movement can help us release what’s been stuck for years.
I’m joined by Manuela Mitevova, a somatic movement teacher who specialises in helping women release trapped emotional energy through simple, restorative movement practices.
Whether you’re dealing with chronic pain, anxiety, insomnia, or emotional overwhelm, this episode offers a gentle invitation to reconnect with your body and begin healing, one breath and one movement at a time.
What You’ll Learn:
- Why trauma is often stored in large muscle groups built for fight and flight, e.g. the hips, core, back, and pelvis
- How the core holds emotional energy due to vital organs and energy pathways (meridians)
- How somatic movements (like pelvic tilts and neck rolls) can support emotional release
- Why chronic pain may be linked to unresolved trauma held in the body
- How to begin with safe, small, simple movements to avoid burnout and maintain consistency
- Why self-acceptance, awareness, and patience are key
Understanding that healing takes time, but gentle opens the door to long-term wellbeing
Timestamps:
- 01:57 – How trauma shows up in the body
- 05:20 – Understanding the body’s physical response to emotional stress
- 08:00 – Getting started with somatic movement
- 11:19 – Why gentleness is key in healing
- 11:49 – Creating accessible movement rituals at home
This episode is a must-listen if you’ve ever felt emotionally ‘stuck’ in your body or want a more holistic way to heal and support your nervous system.
Connect with Manuela Mitevova via her website, https://www.manuelamitevova.com/ or on Instagram, @manumitevova
Links and Resources:
Book on to the next ADHD Wellbeing Workshop about Creating ADHD 'Routines' and 'Structures' - Stability in Choppy Waters! Click here to book.
Catch all the previous ADHD Women’s Wellbeing Workshop Series workshops here. Available to buy now as on-demand.
If you love the podcast but want more ADHD support, get a sneak peek of my brand new book, The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit and pre-order it here!
Find all of Kate's popular online workshops and free resources here, including ADHD nervous System and Poly Vagal workshops here: https://www.adhdwomenswellbeing.co.uk/regulate-adhd-nervous-system
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Kate Moryoussef is a women's ADHD lifestyle and wellbeing coach and EFT practitioner who helps overwhelmed and unfulfilled newly diagnosed ADHD women find more calm, balance, hope, health, compassion, creativity and clarity.
Transcript
Hi, everyone.
Speaker A:Welcome back to another wisdom episode.
Speaker A:And I'm really happy to share with you a clip from one of my favorite guests.
Speaker A:It was Manuela Mitovova.
Speaker A:Now, Manuela is a movement teacher who specializes in releasing stuck emotions through our body.
Speaker A:She also specializes in the nervous system and helping people with chronic pain, autoimmune problems, anxiety, and insomnia.
Speaker A:And this conversation I've really sort of put pulled out a big part of the conversation that really resonated with me.
Speaker A:And it's around why trauma energy is often stored in our large muscle groups.
Speaker A:And I know lots of us deal with hypermobility and chronic pain and stiffness.
Speaker A:And so I really wanted to bring this reminder back to you.
Speaker A:We also talk about the significance of gentle somatic movement in emotional physical healing.
Speaker A:Just the power of gentle exercise and movement can help release quite significant stuck energy.
Speaker A:And using these specific movements, movements and practices can help us release this tension and these stored emotions, which often manifest in things like migraine and gut problems and anxiety and sleeplessness.
Speaker A:So I'm really happy to bring back this clip with Manuela.
Speaker A:Here it is.
Speaker A:Until we're diagnosed, until we understand, we will have had a history of chronic pain, chronic fatigue, autoimmune issues, gut issues, anxiety, sleeplessness.
Speaker A:I mean, the list just goes on and on, and the dots have never been connected.
Speaker A:And I'm not saying that if you go and do half an hour of like, gentle somatic movement, everything is cured, but it's a really lovely gentle exploration to seeing if that potentially could help you begin this new journey of letting.
Speaker A:Letting things go and being really sort of compassionate and gentle in yourself.
Speaker A:And I want to ask you, do you notice an area in the body that holds the most trauma?
Speaker A:And I wonder, is it the hips?
Speaker A:Because I hear this so much.
Speaker A:And why, if it is the hips, why is it the hips?
Speaker B:So for this question, I always answer that every person is completely unique and different, and at the same time, we are built in a very similar way.
Speaker B:So we all have certain muscles that are much bigger muscles.
Speaker B:So for example, your hip muscles, your glutes, and your hip flexors and so on, they're much bigger than, for example, the muscles on your wrists, right?
Speaker B:So just because of the surface area, just because of energetically where they are positioned around your, below your organs, your pelvic floor and so on, there's a lot going on there.
Speaker B:So there is a much bigger energetic charge to your core, to your back, to your pelvis, rather than to your limbs, for example.
Speaker B:Of course, it's Easier to think about it that our core, which is basically our torso, is the part where the most amount of energy is being stored.
Speaker B:That's where our organs are.
Speaker B:And if you go into traditional Chinese medicine, you will see that the organs are what holds the energy.
Speaker B:We have the meridians, which go through the whole body that are basically moving this energy, dispersing it.
Speaker B:But the meridians are the energy holders.
Speaker B:So the torso is very important.
Speaker B:And I also, I always like to focus on the torso, on, as I said, the back, the core, and the pelvis.
Speaker B:So these are the three big areas for me that can potentially hold so much tension.
Speaker B:And if we go to back to polyvagal theory, the reason for that is that these are the biggest muscles, the big muscles that we need to fight or flight.
Speaker B:Of course, if you want to start running, you need to brace your core.
Speaker B:You need to start.
Speaker B:You know, you need to create that movement in your body.
Speaker B:And how you do that is by engaging the biggest muscles.
Speaker B:Of course, if you want to run or fight, this is how you do it.
Speaker B:So it's not so necessary to kind of engage your.
Speaker B:Your fingers or your wrists or your.
Speaker B:Or your forearms, right?
Speaker B:So it's the bigger muscles in the body that are directly connected to our survival response.
Speaker B:And therefore, if we experience trauma or events that potentially can be traumatic to us that we were not able to process at the time, that energy, of course, as you know, does not dissipate out of these muscles.
Speaker B:And then it's as if you're stuck trying to run, but there's a wall in front of you.
Speaker B:I really like to use this example because it really exemplifies very well what that feels like in the body.
Speaker B:So if you're trying to run as fast as you can, but then just as you're about to begin, there's a wall in front of you, and you can't.
Speaker B:And your body still holds all of this energy, but it needs to go somewhere.
Speaker B:However, when we experience these events, we are not necessarily given a way to process that.
Speaker B:So we are not or trained or shown how to, for example, do the natural shake or to scream or to stomp our feet and to shake off the body, right?
Speaker B:We are not allowed to do this.
Speaker B:And therefore, that energy just has no way of dissipating, and it stays in the muscles and mostly around the muscles of the core, the back, the hips, the hip flexors, and so on.
Speaker B:So this is why it's so important to talk about the big muscle groups and how they're connected to our Survival response.
Speaker B:Because this is then how we begin to understand how stretching them, moving them, activating them can help release all of that tension that has been stuck there because of that traumatic or potentially traumatic experience.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's so fascinating.
Speaker A:And I was just.
Speaker A:When you were saying that, I was thinking about like when, you know, a child has a tantrum, you know, like a two year old, and they will not hesitate to throw themselves on the floor and stamp and bang the their fists and shake and cry.
Speaker A:And then you kind of think, oh my goodness, like in 20 minutes they're like a different child.
Speaker A:They are laughing and they're joking and they're hugging you and you kind of go from day to night so quickly with kids who are not afraid to release those emotions in the moment.
Speaker A:And that's why we as parents say it's okay, let them experience it, let them do it.
Speaker A:Don't shush them, don't tell them to be quiet, don't be embarrassed if it's happening in the supermarket, because let them just move through that, that.
Speaker A:But as we especially as women are told to contain ourselves, to not go crazy, you know, all these words to, you know, to not be hysterical and we are frozen in the moment, like you say, and then we don't have any place or space or safety to then process them, you know, with somebody that can handle it.
Speaker A:And very often in a traditional male, female relationship, the male can feel maybe quite threatened or scared or not.
Speaker A:Not know what to do with us if we want to process.
Speaker A:So I agree with you.
Speaker A:I wish that we had taught from a really young age, you know, from our, from the age of like whatever age it is that we're told as girls especially to keep a lid on it, to keep quiet.
Speaker A:That actually some hip stretches or shaking, whatever is like a really healthy way to process emotions.
Speaker A:I wonder what you could say to somebody that's listening right now.
Speaker A:And they want to start with very gentle movements, somatic movement, whether they're experiencing, you know, the jaw release or the neck pain.
Speaker A:For me especially, I have had years and years of lower back pain, tight hips.
Speaker A:It's something I have to work on pretty much every day to kind of loosen it all up.
Speaker A:And I know that's a lot of stored emotion, a lot of childhood stuff that I've kind of like stored.
Speaker A:What would you say or kind of like where would someone begin and what resources do you have if someone's saying, yeah, I would love to just start very gently.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So starting very gently, as I mentioned at the very Beginning, it's extremely important because I wouldn't want people to think that movement means that they're going to do a sweaty session or they're going to do a super bendy session where it just becomes unaccessible to even begin and then it becomes unsustainable to keep doing it for more than once.
Speaker B:So setting the bar kind of low for yourself in terms of what you're willing to do, I think is very important.
Speaker B:And especially with people who live with trauma or chronic stress in burnout, or with live with anxiety or chronic fear, it's really important to start being very accepting of yourself or where you are and not comparing yourself to others and saying that you now need to do a one hour movement session.
Speaker B:That's not realistic, that's just not happening.
Speaker B:It's enough to do two minutes.
Speaker B:That's all that you need to do.
Speaker B:Maybe it's even a one minute, maybe it's even 30 seconds.
Speaker B:It's just that moment that you dedicate to yourself and to spending some time with your body.
Speaker B:It's not the length is the quality.
Speaker B:So even if you just sit in your chair in your work, in your office and you just do those neck rolls or you just do some gentle pelvic tilts, it's the practice.
Speaker B:That's it.
Speaker B:There doesn't need to be anything else.
Speaker B:And I have some wonderful resources for free on my YouTube channel about somatic movement, expressing emotions, moving emotions.
Speaker B:And they are very gentle.
Speaker B:They're extremely accessible to any beginner who has never moved in their life, who cann sit on the floor, do a downward dog from yoga.
Speaker B:It's, it's, it's just moving energy.
Speaker B:It's energy work.
Speaker B:This is what we need to do at the very beginning.
Speaker B:And it's not, it's not difficult to get into.
Speaker B:So I invite people to just start with very small movements.
Speaker B:One of my favorite ones, and I have this a lot in so many of my classes on YouTube, is just the pelvic tilts.
Speaker B:So it's just laying on your, on your back and just tilting your pelvis up and down so you're kind of arching your back and then flattening your back.
Speaker B:I find that a lot of people are almost unable to do the movement.
Speaker B:If I tell them tilt your pelvis up and down like they cannot move the pelvis, it's so stuck.
Speaker B:And there's so much stuck energy there that is so difficult for them to do that.
Speaker B:So I usually lead with actually doing flattening the back and rounding it because that seems to be a little bit more easy and it kind of moves into the same shape that we want to get the body into.
Speaker B:And it's such a deeply restorative and awakening movement for the body.
Speaker B:And that's all that there is to it.
Speaker B:You can just spend a few seconds to a minute or a few minutes just tucking and untucking your pelvis.
Speaker B:It's just like doing a small wave with your lower back and that unlocks so much stuckness around your hips and, and lower back as well.
Speaker B:So many people are struggling with lower back issues and they don't realize it's actually tight hips.
Speaker B:We have so many students like this.
Speaker B:It's just crazy.
Speaker B:So there's always a gentle way to start, then.
Speaker B:You think there is.
Speaker B:I think that would be my biggest advice to anyone who's listening and who's just finding the prospect of, oh, now I have to start moving.
Speaker B:Daunting.
Speaker B:If that is daunting to you, then please know that there's a very simple way to do that, very accessible way to do that.
Speaker B:You don't even have to have a yoga mat.
Speaker B:You don't have to have space.
Speaker B:You can do it in your bed, you can do it on, on your couch.
Speaker B:It is all accessible and it is there.
Speaker B:And it's.
Speaker B:It's a portal to something that is potentially so extremely healing to you.
Speaker B:And as you, as you mentioned at the beginning, it's not that one session is going to heal all of your problems all of a sudden.
Speaker B:Of course not.
Speaker B:But it's a portal.
Speaker B:It's about choosing the right way to move your body rather than just having this umbrella term of now I need to be moving in order to heal my trauma and my, my stuck emotions and my pain.
Speaker B:So, yeah, it's always starting like this.
Speaker B:Just very, very simple and accepting towards your body that you're not.
Speaker B:No one's asking you of anything.
Speaker B:You don't own anyone anything.
Speaker B:You don't have to show up for one hour.
Speaker B:Practice.
Speaker B:It's all your choices.
Speaker A:So I hope you enjoyed listening to this shorter episode of the ADHD Women's Wellbeing podcast.
Speaker A:I've called it the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Wisdom.
Speaker A:Because I believe there's so much wisdom in the guests that I have on and their insights.
Speaker A:So sometimes we just need that little bit of a reminder.
Speaker A:And I hope that has helped you today and look forward to seeing you back on the brand new episode on Thursday.
Speaker A:Have a good rest of your weekend.
