The Radical Therapist #151 — The Body Doesn’t Escape the Story: Somatic Therapy’s Narrative Problem

“Where do you feel that in your body?” What happens after we ask that question?

In episode #151, Dr. Chris Hoff reads his manuscript, The Body Doesn’t Escape the Story, examining the assumptions behind contemporary somatic therapy and the growing authority of nervous system language. Descriptions such as “dysregulation,” “safety,” and “the body’s own intelligence” shape how people understand their experiences. What do these descriptions make possible, and what might they obscure?

The essay explores how bodily experience takes shape through language, relationships, culture, and history, and how therapeutic practices teach us what to notice. It invites somatic practitioners to examine the stories their approaches carry, while asking narrative therapists to attend more closely to breath, movement, silence, and sensation.

A reflection on embodiment, interpretation, and the responsibility therapists hold when helping people make meaning.

“The body can hold the pen too. But the body never learned to write alone.”