How Trauma Lives in the Body: Psychedelics, Inflammation & Healing

We often hear about trauma as something psychological — a memory, an emotional scar, a story we tell ourselves. But what if trauma is also a physical imprint, embedded in the body’s systems, shaping inflammation, immunity, and overall health? In a thoughtful and wide-ranging conversation, host Sam Believ speaks with holistic health expert Lauren Sambataro about how unresolved trauma can manifest as chronic inflammation — and how psychedelics may play a role in opening pathways toward deeper healing.

This isn’t simplistic mind-body dualism. It’s about understanding how biology, psychology, nervous systems, and lived experience converge — and how healing emerges from that intersection.

Trauma Isn’t Just in the Mind — It’s in the Body

Lauren explains that trauma lives first in the body’s nervous system and immune system, not merely in conscious memory. When someone experiences stress, fear, loss, abuse, or emotional injury, the body adapts. The nervous system shifts into survival mode. The immune system kicks into high alert. Chemical pathways are activated to protect and to endure.

Over time, if these survival responses don’t resolve, the body can remain in a chronic state of activation. That sustained tension fuels inflammation, hormonal imbalance, and immune dysregulation — often without the person realizing what’s happening or why.

This is why so many people show up with chronic pain, autoimmune symptoms, gut problems, or unexplained fatigue — even though standard medical tests don’t find clear “disease.” The body, in essence, is still carrying the unresolved echoes of past stress.

The Hidden Cost of Survival Mode

From an evolutionary perspective, short-term stress responses are life-saving. But when survival mode becomes chronic, the body pays a price. The inflammatory pathways that once protected you in a short-lived threat end up operating long after the threat has passed. This can contribute to:

• persistent inflammation

• mood dysregulation

• anxiety and hypervigilance

• compromised digestion and gut-brain communication

• immune system overreactions

• chronic pain syndromes

• poor sleep patterns

Lauren points out that western medicine often treats the symptoms — inflammation, pain, digestion issues — without addressing the underlying driver: the nervous system’s unresolved survival response.

Psychedelics: Opening the Door to the Unresolved

So where do psychedelics come in? Lauren doesn’t describe them as miraculous “cures” — but she does see them as catalysts. Psychedelics — especially in guided, safe and integrative contexts — can help people access deep layers of memory, emotional imprinting, and psychological defense structures that the conscious mind can’t reach with talk therapy alone.

In a psychedelic state, the nervous system can temporarily loosen its rigid survival structures — opening a window into the unconscious. For many people, memories, fear patterns, relational wounds, and buried emotions show up vividly or somatically. When these emerge into awareness, they can finally be felt, witnessed, and processed — instead of remaining locked in the body.

This is significant because unresolved emotional patterns often fuel sustained inflammation. When the nervous system finally feels what it has been avoiding, it can begin to reframe and regulate — not through cognitive insight alone, but through somatic release.

The Gut, Trauma & Body-Mind Communication

Lauren emphasizes the role of the gut in this dialogue between experience and biology. The gut-brain axis — the bidirectional communication system between the digestive tract and the nervous system — plays a central role in emotional and physical regulation. Trauma-induced inflammation in the gut can influence mood, sleep, immune function, and energy levels.

She suggests that psychedelics can help reset not just the nervous system, but the gut-brain communication by allowing old emotional material to move out of suppression and into awareness. This doesn’t happen automatically, but in therapeutic contexts where people are prepared, supported, and integrated afterward.

Why Integration Matters

Integration is a word that comes up repeatedly in the conversation — and with good reason. Psychedelic experiences can be intense, emotional, somatic, or revelatory. Without proper integration, the insights may not translate into meaningful change, and the nervous system may simply revert to old patterns.

Lauren explains that integration work includes:

• somatic awareness practices

• emotional processing

• somatic therapy or body-oriented therapy

• lifestyle adjustments (sleep, diet, movement)

• community support

• honest reflection and journaling

Integration helps the body learn what the psyche has glimpsed. Without this learning, the nervous system can remain stuck in its survival mode even after a psychedelic experience.

Safety and Context Are Essential

One of the strengths of Lauren’s approach is that she frames psychedelics as tools — not solutions detached from the rest of one’s life context. For trauma survivors, entering a psychedelic experience without preparation, support, or follow-up can be destabilizing rather than healing. Proper context — emotional maturity, supportive environment, skilled facilitators — is essential.

She also notes that psychedelics aren’t suited for everyone — especially if someone is in the midst of acute instability or lacks relational support. Medicine without container, intention, or integration can become confusing or retraumatizing.

Supporting Physical Health Beyond Psychedelics

Psychedelics can open doors — but long-term physical healing requires sustained care of the nervous system and the body. Lauren highlights practices that support physical health and nervous system regulation:

• movement practices (yoga, walking, stretching)

• breathwork and mindfulness

• sleep optimization

• nutrient-dense, anti-inflammatory diet

• meaningful social connection

• emotional expression and creative outlets

• body-oriented therapies

These practices help the body recalibrate after the nervous system has been opened through experience. Healing isn’t only emotional or cognitive — it’s embodied.

A New Relationship to the Body and Self

One of the most poignant realizations Lauren shares is that healing is not about erasing trauma — trauma becomes part of the body’s story, not a villain to be vanquished. Psychedelics can help people rediscover their bodies as living, responsive, meaningful systems, instead of battlegrounds of pain and defense.

When someone can finally feel what they have long suppressed, and then respond with presence rather than avoidance, inflammation decreases, stress responses calm, and the nervous system learns new patterns of regulation.

Final Reflection: Healing as Emergence, Not Annihilation

The conversation reframes healing not as erasing pain or forgetting trauma, but as integrating what was once unconscious. The body remembers. The nervous system stores. The immune system reacts. And the psyche protects.

Psychedelics — when used with intention, preparation, safety, and integration — can help bring those unconscious drivers into conscious awareness, offering a chance for the nervous system to reframe. But that is just the beginning.

True healing — reduction of inflammation, regulation of nervous systems, embodied presence — comes through ongoing care of body, mind, and relational context. It’s a lifelong journey, not a quick fix.

What emerges through this work is not a rejection of pain, but a reconciliation with it — an ability to feel, process, and move through sensation rather than be driven by it. And in that reconciliation lies the possibility of lasting health — physical, emotional, and soulful.

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Based on the Ayahuasca Podcast episode “Psychedelic and physical health” with Sam Believ and Lauren Sambataro.