How To Regulate Your Nervous System For Stress, Anxiety, And Trauma | Peter Levine
10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Media, LLC
4.6 • 12.9K Ratings
🗓️ 5 September 2025
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The creator of somatic experiencing shows Dan how to heal trauma through the body.
Peter A. Levine, Ph.D., has spent the past 50 years developing Somatic Experiencing. He holds a doctorate in Biophysics from UC Berkeley and a doctorate in Psychology from International University. His work has been taught to over 30,000 therapists in over 42 countries. He is the author of the new book, An Autobiography of Trauma.
Content warning: This episode includes discussions of rape and violence.
In this episode we talk about:
- How to do somatic experiencing. You'll see Dan play the role of guinea pig + make weird sounds
- The difference between somatic experiencing and talk therapy
- Somatic experiencing practices we can implement into our lives
- Why some people feel horror/terror at the thought of re-occupying the body and how to overcome those fears
- What the research says – and how these practices around body awareness have gone from the fringes to entering the scientific mainstream
- And how to move through ancient wounds – and enrich our lives (whether we have trauma or not)
- Practices to fortify us in times of difficulty
- Facing mortality
This episode was first published in April 2024.
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- How to Live with the Worst Things That Ever Happened to You | Stephanie Foo
- An Ace Therapist Gives Dan A Run For His Money | Dr. Jacob Ham
- How to Get Out of Your Head | Willa Blythe Baker
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On Sunday, September 21st from 1-5pm ET, join Dan and Leslie Booker at the New York Insight Meditation Center in NYC as they lead a workshop titled, "Heavily Meditated – The Dharma of Depression + Anxiety." This event is both in-person and online. Sign up here!
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. |
| 0:18.4 | Hello, my fellow suffering beings, how are we doing? In the circles in which I run, which include a lot of therapists and meditation teachers, plus also, of course, lots of regular people who are patients and clients have said therapists and teachers. In these circles, I have for years heard about a kind of therapy called somatic experiencing. And to be honest, I usually nodded my |
| 0:39.2 | head politely when I heard about this, half pretending to know what people were referring to. But now, |
| 0:44.9 | I actually know what they're talking about because I had a chance to interview the dude who |
| 0:48.7 | created somatic experiencing, or SE. He describes it better than I can, but it's a kind of therapy |
| 0:54.1 | where you learn how |
| 0:54.8 | to regulate your nervous system as a way to reduce your stress and anxiety and depression and chronic |
| 0:59.5 | pain and trauma. And there's been some research into somatic experiencing and the initial results |
| 1:04.8 | are quite promising, although of course more research needs to be done. So the guy who invented this |
| 1:10.1 | is Peter Levine. He's my guest today, |
| 1:12.2 | Peter A. Levine, Ph.D. To be formal about it, he spent the last 50 years developing SE. |
| 1:18.4 | He holds a doctorate in biophysics from UC Berkeley and a doctorate in psychology from |
| 1:22.8 | International University. His work has been taught to over 30,000 therapists in over 42 countries, and his most |
| 1:29.7 | recent book is called an autobiography of trauma, and it was published in 2024. In this conversation, |
| 1:36.0 | we talk about how to do somatic experiencing. You're going to hear me play the role of guinea pig, |
| 1:41.2 | which involves making some weird sounds. We'll talk about the difference |
| 1:44.3 | between somatic experiencing and talk therapy. SE practices you can implement into your life. |
| 1:50.5 | Why some people feel terror at the thought of reoccupying their body and how to overcome those |
| 1:56.8 | fears, if that's you. What the research says and how these practices around body awareness |
| 2:02.2 | have gone from the fringes to entering the scientific mainstream and how to move through ancient |
| 2:08.6 | wounds and enrich your life, whether you have trauma or not. |
| 2:12.7 | A couple of things to say before we dive in here. First, we originally ran this episode back in April |
... |
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