Here’s an interesting discovery. When doing Somatic Therapy, I frequently incorporate exercises that involve pushing with the legs and pushing with the arms. The purpose being to uncover and release frozen or truncated flight/ fight energy that originates from past moments when it was not safe or feasible to do the action that the body needed to do, but the impulse to do so is still held in the body memory. In a recent session, while a client was describing a childhood memory, I noticed his leg started doing certain specific movements. When I asked him to follow this movement and investigate what the body wanted to do, he connected with the urge to play tag and run around. In context the realization was highly significant, so to deepen the experience we went to the floor to do some pushing. Doing the physical pushing, led to a deep and meaningful release for the client. When later he asked me what was happening when he was pushing, it got me thinking. It wasn’t a fight or flight response, so I’m calling it a “frozen play response”. This is a new way for me to think about “frozen responses” and what might be held in the body. When doing somatic work, it’s not always about needing to get away or needing to fight.