The Body Remembers: When Trauma Hijacks Spirituality
Before I ever walked barefoot into a temple—I walked into clubs.
The bass was my heartbeat.
The crowd, my altar. And the booth? That was my throne.
I was a young, wild DJ—untamed, flame-lit, chasing ecstasy in every form.
I didn’t know trauma. I knew tequila.
I knew how to read a room faster than I could read myself.
So when I met him—a magnetic, flamboyant yuppie with a manic mind and firecracker charm—I mistook his chaos for chemistry. We were electric.The kind of couple people watched from across the room and whispered about.
Brunches.
Afterparties.
Whispered kisses behind the decks.
He matched me drink for drink, thrill for thrill. Party to Party.
But what I didn’t know—what no one ever tells you—is how mental illness can hide beneath charisma.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), 75% of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 24. But many individuals—especially men—go undiagnosed until a full-blown crisis forces it into the light, often in their late twenties or early thirties.
High-functioning people don’t always look sick. They perform. They achieve. They curate perfection while unraveling behind closed doors.
And that’s what he did.
He unraveled slowly.
Then all at once.
One night, he looked at me—and I swear it wasn’t him anymore. His eyes were black like Wes Borland, famously known as a rock musician and member of Limp Bizkit.
His voice cracked into another person’s.
His eyes darkened with a past I couldn’t recognize. Suddenly, I wasn’t his girlfriend—I was a wicked nun who had tortured him in a life he screamed was real.
He threw furniture.
He threw memories.
He threw knives—if not literal, then verbal ones sharp enough to leave scars.
I froze.
My brain tried to process what my body already knew:
This was a breakdown.
A psychic rupture.
And I was standing on the fault line.
I tried to help him.
That’s who I was—a natural caregiver.
Trained by life to absorb chaos and alchemize it into peace.
But if I’m being honest, I didn’t want my world to fall apart. I didn’t want to stop DJing. Didn’t want to lose my glow, my gigs, my identity.
So I put on the mask—like so many do.
I told myself I could handle it. I could fix him, but it took becoming a professional practitioner to realize that we don’t fix anyone because none of us are broken. Life is full of experiences and our experiences are life lessons. I was way in over my head, and I thought I could still play gigs and save a soul at the same time.
Until it wasn’t a mask anymore.
Until it became my face.
Until I had bruises and people asked if I was ok. And by the time I tried to peel it off, it had fused to my skin.
He crossed lines that cannot be uncrossed.
He humiliated me.
Left me with scars—visible and not—that I carry to this day.
Like a scarlet letter.
Like a warning.
Like proof.
I was the girl who stayed too long.
Loved too hard.
Saw too much.
Eventually, I got out.
But I didn’t walk into the light.
I walked into yoga — they say making it to the mat is the hardest step to take.
Hot yoga.
Twice a day.
Once to survive.
Once to grieve.
I didn’t go to find enlightenment.
I went to breathe.
And in that breath, my body finally began to speak.
At first, it whispered.
Then it screamed.
Flashbacks in child’s pose.
Tears in downward dog.
Shaking through warrior two.
Panic during pranayama.
The mat became the only place I could meet myself honestly.
What they didn’t teach you in spiritual circles when I was going through this was that your body is where the trauma hides.
Not your mind.
Not your past.
Not the person who hurt you.
It’s in the hips.
The jaw.
The shoulders.
The gut.
The breath.
And it doesn’t care how spiritual you are.
It only cares if you’re listening.
The body doesn’t lie.
It doesn’t perform.
It remembers.
According to Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, trauma leaves an imprint not only on the brain, but also on the body—especially in the nervous system. Yoga has been scientifically shown to improve heart rate variability, increase GABA levels (which help reduce anxiety), and restore balance to the autonomic nervous system—specifically activating the parasympathetic response, or the body's natural state of rest, repair, and healing.
Yoga became my sanctuary. But it wasn’t soft. It wasn’t gentle. It demanded presence. It demanded breath. It demanded that I feel everything I’d tried to bury.
The same body that danced in stilettos and shook off hangovers—
The same body that curled under fists and flinched at slamming doors—
The same body that once tried to disappear—
That body led me home.
Not to a temple.
To itself.
That was the beginning of my real awakening.
Not the kind you post.
The kind you survive.
Because trauma doesn’t disappear.
But it can move.
And when I practiced yoga, I learned how to move it.
I learned that healing isn’t in your head.
It’s in your spine.
Your sweat.
Your scream.
And the silence afterward.
Yoga wasn’t my detox.
It was my exorcism.
As I found my way back to breath,
my body stopped flinching.
My heart stopped hiding.
Even when my life was sabotaged.
When my bank accounts were frozen.
When people who claimed to care twisted my truth and used it against me.
Even then— I stayed with my breath.
Because I was no longer performing strength.
I was becoming it.
So when I see abusers in power—whether in a therapy office or in the White House—I see them clearly.
I know what they are.
I know what they do.
They don’t just exploit.
They erase.
They rewrite truth for power.
Twist trauma into currency.
And feed on control like it’s communion.
But the body doesn’t forget.
Mine hasn’t.
And because it remembers, I rise.
Because every knife they threw—
Every name they called me—
Every silence they tried to bury me in—
My body caught it.
And my spirit alchemized it.
So if you’re somewhere between collapse and clarity—
if you’ve been hunted, haunted, or hurt by those who said they were here to help—
This is your sign:
Take the mask off.
Let your body speak.
Let it move.
Let it remember.
Let it free you.
Because it will also show you how to survive.
ALEXANDRIA TAVA
10+ year Certified Holistic Producer and Accredited Personal Growth Coach leading radical transformation to inspire the next generational through conscious media.
