Why Assess Movement for Trauma?
It may seem unusual to use a movement-based assessment as the starting point for working through trauma. After all, most trauma therapies focus on talking, emotional processing, or cognitive reframing – so why take a different approach?
At NuroActiv, we recognise that any form of therapy is ultimately working with your nervous system – whether or not it is described that way. Your brain is constantly adapting and rewiring in response to experiences, a process known as neuroplasticity. This means that every thought, action, and movement you make is reshaping your brain in real time.
Rather than leaving neuroplasticity to chance, we believe in directly influencing how your brain adapts. By guiding this process through specific movement-based techniques, we can help you reshape the way your brain perceives and responds to threats – including the patterns that keep trauma symptoms active.
Trauma Is Stored in Your Brain, Not Just Your Body
A common phrase in trauma work is that “trauma lives in the body.” While this is true, it’s incomplete. Trauma also lives in the brain and wider nervous system, shaping how you react to certain situations based on past experiences.
When trauma symptoms arise, your brain is detecting and responding to perceived threats, activating areas responsible for threat detection (amygdala), internal body awareness (insular cortex), memory processing (hippocampus), and rationalisation (prefrontal cortex).
Most trauma therapies attempt to alter either the triggers that cause distress or the responses to those triggers. Deliberate movement takes this one step further by directly influencing the brain areas responsible for threat perception and response regulation. Through eye drills, balance work, auditory training, and precise movement exercises, we can stimulate the brain in ways that shift it toward a safer, more regulated state.
Why Movement Quality Matters for Trauma Recovery
Movement isn’t just an output of your nervous system – it’s also an input that shapes how your brain processes safety and threat. If your movement patterns are restricted, inefficient, or associated with past trauma responses, they can increase your brain’s perception of threat without you even realising it.
By improving the quality of your movement, we improve your brain’s ability to process and regulate threat responses. This means fewer involuntary survival-based reactions, greater emotional stability, and an increased ability to navigate triggers in daily life.
What’s Involved in a NuroActiv Movement Assessment?
The NuroActiv Movement Assessment is specifically designed to identify which areas of your brain and nervous system respond positively to threat reduction strategies. In simple terms, it helps us pinpoint the movements that lower your overall threat levels, allowing your brain and body to function more optimally.
Here’s what the process looks like:
Understanding Your History
Before we begin, we review the history you provided in your questionnaire when we arranged your assessment. This allows us to clarify key points and tailor the assessment to your needs.
Foundational Education (Optional but Valuable)
Many people find that understanding how their brain processes trauma helps reframe their experience in a way that promotes recovery. If you find this helpful, we provide a short, clear explanation of how movement impacts your nervous system and why this approach works.
Gait Analysis: A Window into Brain Function
Your walking gait reveals a great deal about how your brain processes movement, balance, and coordination—many of the same systems involved in trauma responses. By analysing how you walk, we can quickly identify patterns that may be linked to your symptoms.
Targeted Movement Drills to Identify Key Areas for Improvement
– Coordination (how well your brain controls movement sequences)
– Error detection (your brain’s ability to adjust and refine movements)
– Accuracy & timing (how well different brain regions communicate)
– Range of motion (whether tension or restriction is contributing to threat perception)
By addressing these areas, we aren’t just improving movement – we are improving how your brain processes, organises, and responds to information. Since thoughts and emotions also require coordination, error-checking, and regulation, these changes go beyond movement, influencing your overall sense of wellbeing.
Why This Approach is Different
Unlike traditional trauma therapies, we don’t require you to revisit past events or engage in extensive verbal processing. Instead, we focus on how your nervous system is functioning right now and how we can help it shift toward greater safety and resilience.
This isn’t about “fixing” trauma – it’s about giving your brain and body the tools they need to regulate more effectively. Movement is the fastest and most direct way to influence your brain, and our approach ensures that these changes are practical, measurable, and designed specifically for you.
If you’re ready to change the way your brain processes trauma, a movement assessment is the best place to start.
👉 Contact us to arrange a free telephone or video call, or to arrange your assessment.