Beyond "The Body Keeps The Score" {part 1}

Emerging neuroscience is reshaping trauma, pain, and change. What that means for how we actually work with the nervous system.

On April 30th, a paper was released called The Body Does Not Keep the Score*, a recent line of work in predictive neuroscience that forces us to look at some of the assumptions we may have made about how the body “stores” trauma.

As educators and practitioners, here’s the important question for us to hold: 

What if one of the most influential ideas in trauma education isn’t wrong, but incomplete?

For years, the phrase “the body keeps the score” -- having been made popular by the Bessel van der Kolk book of the same name -- has shaped how many of us understand trauma, chronic pain, and nervous system adaptation.

It gave language to something people already knew in their lived experience:

• The body reacts before the mind can explain it

• Safety isn’t always cognitive

• Pain and protection don’t always match tissue status

• Experience shows up in physiology, not just memory
  

For many of us teaching movement, embodiment, or nervous system regulation, this idea was a turning point. In fact, and perhaps more importantly, it was a turning point for so many people across the globe looking for answers about their pain and painful experiences. 

It helped shift the field out of purely psychological explanations and into a more embodied understanding of human experience. (Yay, for us!)

And that shift mattered. But science doesn’t stand still.

A newer question is emerging

The paper is not rejecting trauma. It is reframing how we understand it.

Not as something stored in the tissues of the body…but as something shaped through prediction.

In this view: The nervous system is not a passive recorder of experience.

It is a prediction system.

Continuously asking:

• What is happening?

• What is safe?

• What is dangerous?

• What should I expect next?

• What has happened before in situations like this?

And then acting on those predictions often before conscious awareness ever enters the picture.

This changes the conversation

Because if the nervous system is primarily a prediction-making system, then trauma is less about “what is stored inside the body” and more about: what the system has learned to expect from experience.

That distinction is subtle, but it changes everything about how we interpret:

• pain

• tension

• shutdown

• reactivity

• avoidance

• chronic guarding

• emotional overwhelm

• movement limitation

These are no longer best understood as “stored trauma emerging.”

They may be better understood as: well-rehearsed protective predictions that have become rigid over time.

Why this matters in real bodies

If a nervous system has repeatedly learned:

• “This is unsafe.”

• “This movement leads to threat.”

• “This sensation means danger.”

• “This environment is unpredictable.”
  

Then it doesn’t wait for confirmation. It predicts. And prediction drives physiology.

This is where chronic pain science and trauma science begin to overlap. Pain is not simply a signal of tissue damage. It is a protective output shaped by prediction, context, and prior experience.

Which means the experience is real, but the interpretation is constructed.

A shift in focus

Instead of asking: What is stored in the body? We might start asking: What has this nervous system learned to expect? Because prediction is what organizes perception, and perception is what organizes experience.

A quiet but important implication

If symptoms are not “stored trauma breaking through,” but adaptive prediction patterns then the question is no longer: “How do we release what is stuck?”

It becomes: “How do we create experiences that allow the nervous system to update what it expects?”

This is where things get interesting for movement educators, coaches, and practitioners.

Because it suggests something very specific:

• Change does not come primarily from insight

• It comes from experience that disrupts old predictions safely

That’s not metaphorical. That is how learning systems work.

Something to sit with

If this perspective is even partially correct, then a lot of familiar language begins to soften and shift:

• “The body is holding trauma.”

• “This is stuck in the nervous system.”

• “We need to release what is stored.”

Not because those ideas were wrong, but because they may be describing something more dynamic, more adaptive, and more changeable than storage ever implied.

Where this is heading

In Part 2, we’ll go deeper into what this actually means for our practice. We’ll look at what changes in how we work with people in real time, especially in movement, pain, and nervous system education.

And more importantly, what kinds of interventions actually help the nervous system update its predictions. If you're enjoying this conversation, please join the NSW email list. I share on average about once a every week. Topics include the science that supports powerful practice, practice, training, real-life applications and more.