This episode of FUCK Anxiety is for the woman who feels the anxiety in her body right this second and just wants it out. Maybe your chest is tight. Maybe your heart is racing and your thoughts are going with it. Maybe you have done the breathing and the talking and the therapy, and it is still sitting there in your body like it has nowhere to go.
If that is you right now, this one is for you, and I am going to give you something you can actually do in the next two minutes. Here is the thing almost no one tells you. Anxiety does not just live in your head. It lives in your body, and if you want to let go of anxiety in the body, you have to give it a physical way out. Talking about it is not always enough. Sometimes your body has to move it.
This week I brought on a guest I adore, Jenny Cohen. She is an author, a speaker, a cancer survivor, and a dancer who believes movement is your birthright to heal. I was a trained dancer growing up, and my anxiety did not actually show up until I stopped dancing, when all that energy suddenly had nowhere to go. So I know in my bones what she is talking about.
Let's get into it.
What You'll Learn in This Episode
- How to let go of anxiety in the body tonight: a two minute movement tool you can use the second the anxiety hits, no experience needed
- Why anxiety gets stuck in your body in the first place: your head from the neck up is conscious, everything below is subconscious, and that is where the stored stuff lives
- Why movement releases what talking cannot: how dance and shaking give trapped survival energy an actual pathway out
- Why anxiety is a messenger, not a monster: the signal in your body that is trying to get your attention, not ruin your life
- Why your body is an ally and not the enemy: the one part of you that has been with you since before you were born, keeping score and asking for help
- How masking hides anxiety even from yourself: why so many high functioning women do not even know they are having anxiety attacks
- Why you stopped dancing freely, and how to take it back: the inner critic that stole your birthright, and how to reclaim it
Listen to the full episode here
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SpotifyTop Takeaways on Letting Go of Anxiety in the Body
1Your anxiety lives in your body, not just your head
Here is something I say all the time on this show. Your conscious mind is from your head up. Your subconscious mind is from your head down. The head is the thinking part. The body is where everything else gets stored.
So when you have done all the therapy and read all the books and you still feel anxious, it is not because you failed. It is because the understanding happened in your head, and the anxiety is still living in your body.
This is not just my theory. The whole field of somatic work describes anxiety as survival energy that gets stuck in the body when it never gets to complete. Your fight or flight kicks in, the adrenaline floods you, and if that charge has nowhere to go, it stays.
Jenny said it beautifully. Your body is not your enemy. It is the only entity that has been with you from before you were born. The work was never only about understanding your anxiety. It was about moving it out of the body that has been holding it for you.
So if the insight alone has not set you free, you are not doing it wrong. You just have not given your body a way out yet.
2Anxiety is the messenger, so stop treating it like the monster
For years I treated my anxiety like a monster that was running my life. Then I got to the other side of it and realized the truth. It was never the monster. It was the messenger.
Anxiety was just delivering everything I had piled up and refused to feel. Every emotion I would not let myself have. It was the accumulation, knocking on the door.
Jenny called it the canary in the coal mine, and I have not stopped thinking about it since. For some people anxiety is the third canary. For some it is the first. Either way, when it shows up, something in you is asking for attention. Your body keeps score. When it starts sending warnings like anxiety, or trouble sleeping, or a mood you cannot manage, that is not betrayal. That is a system that is overloaded, asking you to step in.
I did a whole episode on the whisper, the brick, and the Mack truck if you want to go deeper on how the message just gets louder the longer you ignore it.
Anxiety is not proof that something is wrong with you. It is proof that something inside you is finally trying to be heard. So the real question is not how do I make this stop. It is what is my body trying to tell me.
3Movement releases what talking never could
This is the part that lit me up. We store so much survival emotion in the body, especially low in the gut and the pelvis. Talking about it is not always enough to move it. Sometimes the body has to physically shake it loose.
And here is what I love. This is not just a spiritual idea. When you look up how to calm anxiety in the moment, movement is one of the first things the doctors and the research point to. A brisk walk, jumping jacks, dancing it out. It works because it gives your activated nervous system something to do with all that mobilized energy.
Jenny shared a moment from a dance camp where she was doing the same simple hip movement over and over, and ten minutes in she started sobbing uncontrollably. She did not want to stop dancing. She just let it move through her. And afterward she felt free and light, like something old had finally left her body.
When I was a kid, the dance studio was where I moved all my chaos. The second I stopped dancing, it had nowhere to go. That is when the panic showed up.
One thing worth knowing. If you are ever moving and the emotion starts pouring out, or you see someone else in that release, do not touch them. Do not hand them a tissue or start talking. Just witness and hold the space. A touch in that moment can anchor what is trying to leave. Your body has been waiting for permission to move this out of you. It does not need words. It needs motion.
4You have the right to dance, and the critic that says otherwise is not yours
Somewhere along the way, most of us picked up a message that we do not have the right to dance. My feet do not point the right way. I cannot hold a rhythm. My body is the wrong shape. So we stopped.
But Jenny reminded me of something simple and true. When you were a baby and someone put on music, you moved to it. No one taught you. That was your birthright, and the critic that took it from you was never really yours.
Think about the kids in Harry Potter learning to dance at the ball, boys on one side, girls on the other, frozen with self consciousness. That is the exact moment it happens for so many of us. The hormones, the fear of being watched, the terror of being seen.
Here is the reframe I love. When you watch a three year old dance, you do not critique their technique. You think, look how cute, look how free. That is exactly how you get to look at yourself. You were born with the right to move your body, and no inner critic gets to revoke it.
How to Let Go of Anxiety in the Body Right Now
Here is what I want you to actually do the next time anxiety shows up in your body. This is simple, and you can start the second you finish reading.
Step 1: Put on one song and move for 120 seconds
I teach that it takes about two minutes to move the chemical wave of anxiety, the adrenaline and cortisol, out of your body. So instead of white knuckling it, put on your favorite song and let your body move however it wants for those two minutes. No choreography. No mirror if you do not want one. Just motion.
Step 2: Do not perform. Just feel.
This is not for anyone watching. Jenny put it perfectly, we are all vibrating meatbags flying through space, and your body wants to move whether or not it looks good. Let the point be release, not performance.
Step 3: Check in before and after
Notice how you feel before you move, then again right after. The problems will still be there, but you will feel different, because you moved. That small piece of evidence teaches your nervous system that it is safe to do this again.
Step 4: Ask your body what came up
After you move, grab a pen. Write a question with your dominant hand, something like what was I releasing. Then switch the pen to your other hand and let it answer. It may be messy at first. That is your subconscious getting a word in.
And one honest caveat, because Jenny was brave enough to say it. Movement can become an escape if you only use it to release and never to process. So move to let it out, and then take one small moment to ask what it was. That is how release becomes healing instead of just another way to run.
Common Patterns to Watch For
- Thinking your way in circles. If you are trying to understand your anxiety out of your body while it stays stuck below your neck, the insight alone will keep looping. At some point the body has to move.
- Masking so well you fool yourself. So many high functioning women are having anxiety attacks that no one sees, including them. If you are always the composed one, check whether you have gone numb to your own signals.
- Using movement to bypass instead of process. Dancing to release is powerful. Dancing only to escape, and never asking what came up, just buries the message in a prettier place.
Reflect on This
- Where in your body do you feel your anxiety right now, and when did you stop letting it move?
- Why do you still feel anxious even after you have done all the therapy and read all the books?
- What message has your body been sending that you keep talking yourself out of hearing?
- When was the last time you moved your body just because it felt good, with no one watching?
I would love to hear. Send me a DM and tell me where anxiety lives in your body, and whether you have ever let yourself move it out.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Jenny Cohen, this episode's guest. Find her on social media under Jenny C. Cohen, and join her free monthly master classes and daily movement challenge at Movetobloom.com
- The idea of interoception, your sense of what is happening inside your own body
- Left hand right hand writing as a way to reach the subconscious
- My previous episode on the whisper, the brick, and the Mack truck
- Your free tool: If the anxiety feels loud right now and you need something that helps in this moment, start with the Free 5 Minute Nervous System Reset. It is a guided hypnotic meditation you can use the second anxiety shows up, to interrupt the old pattern before it takes the wheel.
Work With Me
You can understand every concept in this episode and still feel the anxiety sitting in your body. That belief that insight alone should have fixed it by now is exactly the kind of program we get to rewrite.
In my 1:1 sessions we go on custom hypnotic journeys built around your exact situation. Not a generic recording. We go straight to the subconscious, from the neck down, where the patterns actually live, and we change your relationship to the ones that learned to protect a younger version of you who needed them. That is where the knowing finally turns into feeling. That is where the freedom lives.
If that lit something up in you, let's map it out together on a Freedom Roadmap Session. No pitch. No pressure. Just clarity.
And if this episode met you where you are, do me a favor. Follow the show, download it, and leave a review on Apple Podcasts so another woman who feels exactly like you do can find it.