There is something I need to disrupt, even in spaces I respect, because respecting something does not mean freezing it in place, and on the little I know of Joe Dispenza’s work, there is a point that has been repeated enough to become almost doctrine: that recalling a traumatic event releases the same stress hormones, that the body relives it, that we must therefore move away from revisiting it in order to heal, and I understand this, I truly do, because the body does respond, chemistry does shift, the nervous system does not always distinguish between past and present when the relationship to the memory is still charged, but what sits beneath that is something far more precise, far more important to name, and that is this—it is not the recall that sustains the stress, it is the relationship to what is being recalled.

Because if recalling alone was the issue, then any memory, joyful or painful, would carry the same weight, and it does not, what differentiates them is not their existence but how they are held, how they are interpreted, how they are integrated, and when a traumatic memory is recalled and the body releases stress hormones, it is not simply because the memory exists, it is because the system has not yet reorganised its relationship to it, the mind has not reframed it, the emotions have not metabolised it, and so the body continues to respond as if it is still under threat, not because it is, but because it has not been taught otherwise.

So yes, the body reacts, but the body is not the origin of the loop, it is the echo, and if the echo is all we focus on, if we attempt to calm the body without addressing the pattern that informs it, we may achieve temporary relief, we may feel lighter, we may feel as though something has shifted, but the pattern remains intact, and what does a pattern do when it is intact—it recreates conditions that match it, not out of punishment, not out of some abstract karma, but out of coherence, because systems seek balance, and if something is unresolved internally, it will find or generate external situations that mirror it, not to harm, but to complete.

And this is where the conversation becomes uncomfortable, because we live in a system that does not just contain trauma, it often reinforces and rewards it, it builds identity around it, community around it, validation around it, and so even when we attempt to heal, we are doing so within environments that subtly or overtly pull us back into the same narratives, the same interpretations, the same emotional loops, and in that context, trying to heal purely at the level of the body can become like placing a band-aid over something that requires deeper reconstruction, it may protect the surface, it may reduce immediate discomfort, but it does not address the structure beneath.

Neuroscience and biology already tell us that the mind affects the body, and that the body, in turn, affects the mind, that this is not a one-directional relationship but a loop, and within that loop, partial healing can occur, the body can release tension, the mind can find moments of clarity, the emotions can soften, but unless the pattern itself is understood, unless the relationship is transformed at the level where meaning is made, there remains an internal scar, not always visible, not always active, but present enough to be reactivated, present enough to influence perception, behaviour, and ultimately the environments we find ourselves in.

And when everything around someone has been shaped by limited perspectives, by simplified narratives of what life is and what it should be, it becomes difficult not to interpret everything through that same lens, difficult not to see every experience as confirmation of what has already been internalised, and in that sense, the world begins to look like the cause and the endorser of the very pattern one is trying to move beyond, when in reality it is both a mirror and a field, reflecting what is still active while also offering opportunities, however subtle, to see differently.

So the question is not whether recalling trauma releases stress, it often does, the question is whether we are willing to change the relationship to what is recalled, to move from reliving to understanding, from reacting to integrating, from being carried by the pattern to seeing it clearly enough that it no longer needs to recreate itself, and that is not something the body can complete on its own, it requires the mind to reorganise meaning, the emotions to be felt without avoidance or attachment, and the body to follow a signal that is no longer rooted in threat but in resolution.

Because healing is not the absence of memory, it is the absence of distortion within the memory, and until that distortion is addressed, we can calm the body, we can regulate the system, we can postpone the reaction, but the loop remains, waiting not in the past, but in the present structure of how we relate to it, and only when that shifts does the body truly stop needing to respond, not because it has been told to be quiet, but because there is nothing left that requires its alarm.