Finding Safety in the Body After Trauma - from a physical activity and exercise perspective

An image of me - locating body safety at Maria Widdows Yoga - trauma-informed practice in action

This is the fifth in a series of blog posts about taking a trauma-informed approach to exercise. The other blogs are linked at the end of this article.

In this post, we will take a closer look at how exercise practitioners can support people who have experienced life trauma to feel safe in their own body during exercise – or at the very least, to avoid creating situations that may exacerbate symptoms of trauma.

As a reminder, experiencing life trauma may have a significant impact on the nervous system. This might make a person more likely to experience triggers, less likely to be able to regulate and a more sensitive ‘always-on’ nervous system.

This includes hypervigilance, and an over-expression of the four survival responses fight, flight, fawn and freeze.

When the nervous system is dysregulated, the ability to detect and respond to threat is impaired. This means that situations that may be otherwise neutral to other people appear to represent a threat to the individual who has experienced trauma. Triggers may also appear in the form of reminders of things that caused the trauma, leading the person to feel unsafe.

In previous posts, I discussed the importance of fitness professionals and health coaches taking a trauma-informed approach to working with clients. This includes not making assumptions about a person and being sure to ask how a client would like you to work with them.

Of course, we cannot realistically remove all triggers - but we can apply some basic foundations to our practice that create safe and healthy spaces to give our clients the best opportunity to thrive.

A key element of this approach is building trust and confidence, the foundation of which begins with a feeling of safety within the client’s own body. In this post, I will explore some ways that we can work to support this.

Again, a reminder that it is always vital to work within our scope of practice. It is important not to try to ‘heal’ the trauma nor to attempt to provide any kind of therapeutic intervention, unless you are qualified to do so. Otherwise, it is always a case of referring to a qualified practitioner or healthcare professional.  Naturally, where we are working closely with clients, it is possible that things will come up for that client and we must always hold space for that and support in a non-judgmental way, whilst being clear about the boundaries of our scope and ensuring that we signpost to relevant other sources of support.

It is important that if we market ourselves as trauma-informed, that we do understand how to work with clients who have experienced trauma (seeking out tailored fitness-related certifications provided by organisations such the MOVEment is highly recommended).

Client’s Body Safety and Bodily Autonomy

As mentioned in previous blog posts, feeling safety within the body is vital in terms of our response to trauma. Because trauma dysregulates the nervous system and because physical sensations may be triggering, it is crucial to understand how to work with a client.

Navigating the Client’s Window of Tolerance and Interoception

It is important to understand a client’s 'Window of Tolerance': this concept describes the optimal zone of physiological arousal where an individual can safely function, learn, and process experiences without overwhelming the nervous system. When a client is pushed outside this window, they can tip into hyperarousal (characterised by fight-or-flight responses, panic, or protective muscle tension) or hypoarousal (characterised by numbness, disengagement, or dissociation) (Neff, n.d.; Vancampfort, 2026).

In a fitness context, a client's window of tolerance is going to dictate how hard they are comfortable working and for how long. The physical sensations of intense exertion (such as a heavily raised heart rate, rapid breathing, sweat, and muscular burning) can closely mimic the physiological architecture of a panic attack or a past traumatic threat response. For a client who has previously experienced their autonomy being removed, feeling breathless or physically unable to talk can be incredibly dysregulating.

Furthermore, trauma often disrupts a client's interoception, the brain's perception of internal bodily sensations, such as heartbeats, muscle tension, and respiration (Payne et al., 2015). A client may be completely disconnected from their body, or conversely, hyper-vigilant to every minor sensation (Kuhfuß et al., 2021).

Therefore, it is important to progress clients at their own pace and have open conversations about what goals they want to achieve and how you will best proceed.

For some clients, working at maximum output may be desired and empowering, which is why it is vital not to make assumptions but to keep communication entirely transparent (Vigue et al., 2023).

Evidence-Based Approaches for the Fitness Environment

To support bodily autonomy and safety within a fitness framework, coaches can integrate practices:

Collaborative Monitoring Over Proscriptive Scales: While tools like the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale are standard in personal training, they can sometimes fail trauma survivors. If a client is disconnected from their interoceptive awareness, or if they are experiencing a fawn response (feeling pressured to over-exert to please or impress the coach out of fear of speaking up), a rigid scale might cause them to push past their window of tolerance. Use RPE as an open-ended dialogue rather than an absolute rule. Keeping an open dialogue with a client and understanding how hard they are comfortable working, and the best way for them to communicate this to you is key. For some clients it might help for them to suggest a way that they are able to communicate with you, using certain words or phrases or physical signals to indicate when they reach their limit.

Embodied Choice and Invitational Language: True bodily autonomy requires shifting the power dynamic from an authoritarian 'instructor' to a collaborative partner. Evidence highlights the importance of 'voice and choice' in trauma-sensitive strength and conditioning environments (Vigue et al., 2023).

Use invitational language (for example, 'If you feel comfortable, you can try...', or 'you have the option to alter the intensity of this movement') and always obtain explicit verbal consent before giving any physical cues or hands-on adjustments.

Predictable, Rhythmic, and Somatic Movement: Simple, rhythmic exercises can be highly beneficial in regulating a dysregulated nervous system. Long, slow cardio, predictable lifting patterns, and repetitive movements allow the brain to establish a sense of environmental predictability and safety. Directing a client’s attention gently to their proprioception (their body's position in space) can create positive corrective somatic experiences that contradict feelings of overwhelm (Payne et al., 2015).

Regulating Breathwork: Incorporating deliberate breathing exercises into the workout (either as a grounding tool at the start, an anchor during rest periods, or a regulation strategy at the end) directly engages the vagus nerve to support autonomic balance and expand the client's window of tolerance (Neff, 2023).

These can be simple breathing patterns such as 4-7-8 or box breathing (4-4-4-4). You can find more information about breathing exercises here 3 breathing exercises to relieve stress - BHF and I will cover this topic and the application of breathwork in a future blog post.

By embedding these principles into our physical instruction, it is possible to transform exercise from a potential stressor into a predictable, empowering space where clients can safely reconnect with their bodies.

You might also be interested in reading:

Trauma as a Barrier to Lifestyle Change. Why does trauma matter?

Trauma Response & Lifestyle Change - how the four Fs can show up as barriers.

Creating Safe Spaces for Trauma Survivors - how to support lifestyle, fitness and habit changes

How trauma has shown up for me as a health coach , PT and business owner

References

The Window of Tolerance and PTSD – PTSD UK

Kuhfuß, M., Maldei, T., Hetmanek, A., & Baumann, N. (2021). Somatic experiencing – effectiveness and key factors of a body-oriented trauma therapy: a scoping literature review. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 12(1).

https://doi.org/10.1080/20008198.2021.1929023 Cited by: 259

Neff, M. A. (n.d.). The window of tolerance. Neurodivergent Insights. https://neurodivergentinsights.com/window-of-tolerance/

Payne, P., Levine, P. A., & Crane-Godreau, M. A. (2015). Somatic experiencing: using interoception and proprioception as core elements of trauma therapy. Frontiers in Psychology, 6. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00093

Vancampfort, D. (2026). How arousal regulation shapes our work with patients: a Window of Tolerance perspective for physiotherapy – editorial. Physiotherapy Theory and Practice. https://doi.org/10.1080/21679169.2026.2640295

Vigue, D., Rooney, M., Nowakowski-Sims, E., & Woods, S. (2023). Trauma informed weight lifting: considerations for coaches, trainers and gym environments. Frontiers in Psychology, 14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1224594 

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Tonia Dunn is a CIMSPA member, an Associate Member of the Faculty of Public Health, Advanced Personal Trainer Practitioner, Boxercise Instructor and Preventative Healthcare Coach based in Birmingham, UK.