Most of what we call "figuring yourself out" happens in the head: therapy, journaling, conversations, trying to think your way to clarity. All of that has real value. But there’s a second, older form of knowing that lives underneath thought entirely, in the body itself, and most of us have lost the habit of listening to it. That’s what somatic work is for, and it’s what AURA, a small body based space in Cologne, was built around.
"Somatic" comes from the Greek word for body, soma. Somatic work simply means working with the body as the starting point, rather than starting with talking or thinking and hoping the body eventually catches up. In practice, that looks like movement, breath, touch, and attention to physical sensation, used to access and process what’s actually stored in the nervous system, not just what’s stored in memory or language.
This isn’t instead of understanding yourself mentally. It’s the part that mental understanding alone usually can’t reach.
There’s an actual term for this in the research: interoception, your nervous system’s ability to sense what’s happening inside your own body, your heartbeat, your breath, tension, hunger, a tightening chest. Researchers increasingly think emotions themselves are built from these internal signals rather than existing as purely mental events: your brain reads your racing heart and shallow breath, adds context, and that combination becomes what you experience as anxiety, excitement, or calm.
What this means practically is that you cannot regulate a feeling you cannot sense. Interoceptive awareness, in other words, actually noticing your body’s internal knowing, is one of the foundations of emotional resilience. It’s also worth being honest that more sensitivity isn’t automatically better. The goal is calibration: learning to sense clearly, not to feel everything at maximum volume, and this remains a genuinely developing area of research rather than settled fact.
When something overwhelming happens, especially something that happens faster than you can process it in the moment, your nervous system often stores the physical charge of it (the tension, the bracing, the held breath) even after your mind has moved on and built a story around it. That stored charge doesn’t always resolve through talking, because talking happens in a different part of the system than where the charge is held. It often needs to be felt and moved through the body itself to actually complete.
This is the part of the work BBTRS training gave real structure to: a way to help the body finish what it started, instead of staying braced indefinitely.
I’m trained in BBTRS (Biodynamic Breathwork and Trauma Release System), and I hold space for people in Cologne, both in small groups and 1:1, using breath, movement, and real stillness. This isn’t therapy and it isn’t medical treatment. It’s a room where your body gets to be the one leading, with support, instead of your mind trying to manage everything alone.
A typical session moves through a few real phases: arriving and settling, a movement or breath portion to help release the thinking mind’s grip, and then extended quiet, sometimes far longer than people expect, where the actual felt sense of the body gets room to surface and move.
Follow the circle for a few breaths before reading on.
In the 1:1 Journey, we start by getting to know each other and sharing what’s present in your life right now. Together we first find a safe space and common ground. If you’d like, the first session can include a chakra reading as well, though this doesn’t need to be part of the experience. We can focus mainly on the somatic work instead.
People carrying chronic stress or burnout that talking alone hasn’t fully shifted. People who notice they live mostly in their heads and want back into their bodies. People working through old patterns, the ones that keep repeating no matter how well they understand them intellectually. And people in Cologne looking for an actual physical space to return to regularly: not a single workshop, not an app. A place.
The ideas here reflect current research on the body and nervous system, and my own training and experience.
AURA is not therapy, medical treatment, or a diagnosis of any kind. If you’re managing a significant mental health condition or you’re unsure whether this is right for you, please check with a qualified professional first.
The vagus nerve: a simple, scientific look at why breathwork calms your body
The physiology behind why somatic work reaches what talking alone often can’t.
Ready to work with this in your own body?