What a New Neuroscience Paper Means for How We Teach

My Personal Story

As someone who experienced childhood trauma and sexual abuse, the phrase "trauma is held in your body" did not feel empowering. It felt like my body held dark secrets that betrayed me, and my sense of shame became visceral. Every area of hip pain or SI joint tightness felt like a residue I could not reach and was powerless to change however hard I tried, or however flexible my hips became! 

I had already begun to shift that narrative for myself before I came across this research. I came to understand that the trauma lives in the nervous system, and the nervous system manages the body. The body is not a passive container of old pain. Once that clicked, I had something to work with, because I know how to support my nervous system- yoga practice has given me movement, breath, philosophy, and even self- love slowly became possible.

A Significant New Paper on trauma & the Nervous System

But this week I came across a new paper making exactly that argument, backed by brain imaging studies, mathematical models of brain function, and large-scale population data. So i was thrilled to see these ideas finally being challenged at a serious scientific level and to share it with you. The paper is still a theoretical paper and hypothesis but based on some good factual research. 

The paper It is called The Body Does Not Keep the Score: Trauma, Predictive Coding, and the Restoration of Metastability, published in Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience by Steven Kotler, Michael Mannino, Grace Fox, and the neuroscientist Karl Friston. It is a significant paper and every yoga teacher should know what it says.

How the Research Was Put Together

Before we get to the findings, it helps to understand what kind of research this is, a lot of the research on trauma is based on qualitative data- personal experiences. This study take a different approach looking at previous studies and analysing images of the brain.

The paper draws on three bodies of evidence.

The first is neuroimaging: brain scans, specifically the kind that show which areas of the brain are active and how strongly they are communicating with each other. These studies have now been done with thousands of people with PTSD, and the patterns are consistent enough to tell us something real about what trauma does to brain activity.

The second is computational modelling: mathematical models of how the brain processes information, makes predictions, and updates its understanding of the world. The core idea is that the brain is not a camera passively recording events. It is constantly generating predictions about what is going to happen next, checking those predictions against incoming sensory information, and adjusting. These models help researchers understand what goes wrong in trauma at a precise, mechanistic level.

The third is resilience research: large-scale studies tracking populations of people over time after traumatic events, asking who recovers, how quickly, and what the different trajectories look like. The systematic review the paper draws on covers 54 studies across multiple populations.

Together, these three strands point in the same direction.

The Key Findings

1. Trauma is a prediction problem, not a storage problem

The brain's primary job is to predict what is going to happen next. It generates an expectation, checks it against what the senses are reporting, and updates when something does not match. In a healthy system this process is fluid and continuous.

In trauma, the updating process breaks down. The brain becomes focused more on threat prediction, focusing on danger signals even when the danger has long passed. This creates a loop - the brain predicts threat, the body responds with arousal, and the brain reads that arousal as confirmation of danger, and the loop repeats.

The neuroimaging evidence is consistent: in PTSD, the brain's threat-detection centre, the amygdala, is chronically overactive, while the area responsible for context-reading and regulation, the medial prefrontal cortex, is underactive. The system has lost its balance.

The body is absolutely involved. But it is the messenger, not the storage location.

2. Most people recover without any intervention at all

One thing that has bothered me for a long time about discussions of trauma in the yoga world is that we tend to talk about trauma as if we will ALWAYS be traumatised. But a systematic review* of 54 studies (Bonanno et al., 2015) found that approximately 65% of people exposed to trauma follow a resilient trajectory and do not develop chronic PTSD. The brain, given ordinary life conditions, tends to rebalance itself. Recovery is not the exception, it is part of the process.

This does not mean that trauma is not serious, or that the 35% who do struggle are somehow failing. But it does mean that chronic, treatment-resistant PTSD is not the default outcome of trauma exposure. The nervous system is oriented toward recovery, and the language we use with students should reflect that. There is a meaningful difference between "your body is holding something that needs to be released" and "your nervous system is working to find its way back to balance."

 *a study that looks at other relevant studies to create a more thorough accurate piece of work.

3. The brain loses flexibility, and practices that restore flexibility work

The paper uses the concept of metastability to describe what trauma disrupts: the brain's ability to shift fluidly between different network states in response to context. Metastability describes the brain's large-scale neural networks, groups of brain regions that activate together, and how fluidly they can assemble and reassemble in response to context. Think of it as the brain's ability to shift between different processing modes: threat mode, rest mode, focused attention. Think of it as neurological range of movement. A healthy brain can move between states of alertness and calm, focus and openness, activation and settling. Trauma narrows this range, trapping the brain in a defensive configuration.

The paper's argument is that what all effective treatments share is the restoration of this flexibility. 

4. Flow state is the neurological near-opposite of PTSD

Flow is what happens when you are completely absorbed in something that matches your ability: thinking drops away and you are fully focused- what Patanjali called dharana or concentration. In neurological terms, the brain's circuits that generate rumination, threat-scanning and self-criticism, go quiet. Instead the networks that handle attention, coordinated action and adaptive response come into play/

PTSD is the opposite configuration. Threat circuits are loud, regulatory circuits are quiet, and the brain's flexibility is narrow.

The paper argues that exposure therapy, EMDR, mindfulness, exercise, psychedelics, flow-based movement, succeeds through the same process. They all restore the brain's capacity to shift between states, to move out of rigid threat-prediction and into a wider range of responses. Flow is not just one option among many. It is the underlying mechanism.

A randomised controlled trial assigned 96 active duty service members to six weeks of either surf therapy or hiking, both known to produce flow states. Both groups showed significant improvements in depression, with surf therapy participants more likely to achieve full remission at three months. The researchers note that exercise, nature exposure, and social connection are likely contributors- inother words its not entirely understood.

5. In trauma, the brain loses the ability to filter sensation

The brain normally manages prediction errors by giving them less precision, filtering out signals that do not need full attention. The paper calls this sensory attenuation. In trauma, that capacity is lost so a racing heart becomes confirmation that danger is real, feeding directly back into the prediction loop.

The good news is that this works both ways. When people practise directing their attention, the brain gets better at managing sensation rather than being overwhelmed by it. The paper cites research showing that people with stronger attentional control have less severe intrusive symptoms. The brain that can focus can also filter.

6. The interpretive story can make things worse

The paper also discusses interoceptive awareness- "listening" to the body, while it can be valuable for some, it can also exacerbate the sense of "something wrong". The clinical literature, and in particular David Treleaven's work on trauma-sensitive mindfulness (2018), documents clearly that body scan and interoceptive practices can increase distress in people with active trauma when delivered without careful attention to the student's regulatory capacity. And the predictive processing framework in this paper offers a precise explanation for why.

If a student's brain is already in a threat-prediction loop, directing their focused attention toward uncomfortable sensation while framing it as "trauma coming up" or "the body releasing what it has been holding" gives that loop exactly what it is looking for: confirmation. The brain predicts danger, finds the sensation, and the prediction strengthens. The body is not releasing anything. The nervous system is being handed more evidence for a story it was already telling.

The problem is not interoceptive attention itself. The problem is the combination of interoceptive attention and the interpretive story that something is stored in the tissue, waiting to be found. Guiding students to notice sensation with curiosity, to observe without immediately interpreting, and crucially without suggesting that sensation equals stored trauma, is a meaningfully different practice. It trains sensory attenuation rather than threat-scanning.

7. Approach, not avoidance, is part of what heals

In trauma the nervous system tends to get stuck in avoidance; to brace against sensation, and withdraw from anything uncertain. The paper makes the point that the opposite response, moving toward uncertainty rather than away from it, recruits completely different brain systems. Approach activates the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that can think, contextualise and regulate.

What This Means for How We Teach

1. Use optimistic language about the nervous system and recovery.

Replacing language about holding and releasing trauma with language about learning, flexibility, and rebalancing helps students (and us) feel empowered and resilient; making it easier to lean into "approach" and enhance the process of neuroplasticity. 

2. Design for flow state

Flow arises when challenge and capacity are well matched: demanding enough to absorb full attention, manageable enough not to trigger overwhelm. It is not one fixed experience. For one student it might arise in a dynamic breath-led sequence. For another it might be the absorbed inward attention of yoga nidra. For another it might be the focused, unhurried attention of slow somatic work. Practically: vary the challenge across a session, use rhythm and breath as an anchor, give enough repetition that students can drop into movement rather than spending the whole class in effortful learning, and leave space between cues rather than filling every moment with instruction. 

3. Move between states to enhance adaptability

A uniformly calm and slow class may feel safe, but a sequence that moves between dynamic and gentle, effort and ease, activation and settling is asking the nervous system to keep shifting, and that shifting is exactly what restores flexibility. The evidence supports including bouncing, swinging, or dynamic movement before slower somatic work, not just as a warm-up but as a therapeutic sequence in its own right.

4. Guide interoceptive awareness as one option

We can invite students to notice their internal experience without the interpretive story- about how tension relates to something "wrong". Alongside the internal cues we can give the alternative to notice something outside the body- connection to the ground or the space around. 

5. Include simple pranayama and moments of stillness

Breath practices and meditation are fantastic to train cognitive control, but they are also incredibly challening in active trauma states. So start with mini moments of stillness and option to feel the breath- or not. 

6. Acknowledge "you can do hard things"

This relates to what the researchers call the "approach response". Invite your students notice- I came to class even though I didn't want to! Or this is not easy but I did it anyway. So that we build the resilience in both the conscious networks of the brain and in the physical experience. 

Conclusions

I know from experience that when the research changes it is easy to feel threatened. But what this research gives us is a more accurate and more hopeful account of why yoga works.

Yoga, with its full spectrum of practices from movement to breath to bandhas to meditation, has always worked with the nervous system as a whole. We know that there can be real and lasting impacts of traumatic stress on the body, because metabolically, mental stress places the systems of the body under strain. But trauma is not an archive buried in tissue. It is a nervous system caught in a loop it cannot yet update.

The nervous system is always adaptable. We can support that adaptation through varied, embodied, absorbing practice, through the repeated demonstration that arousal and safety can coexist. When we teach yoga that prioritises awareness over achievement and ease alongside effort, we give the nervous system exactly what it needs: evidence, repeated and felt in the body, that it is safe to move again.

Train with Laura If this resonates with you, the Laura Gilmore Yoga 300-hour training is built around exactly these ideas. A trauma-sensitive approach to yoga and somatic movement, breath and bandhas, anatomy and fascia, the nervous system and creative sequencing for flow. Because better science makes better teachers. Find out more - here. 

Key references

Bonanno, G.A., et al. (2015). Trajectories of resilience, recovery and distress: a systematic review and quantitative meta-analysis. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology.

Kotler, S., Mannino, M., Fox, G. and Friston, K. (2026). The body does not keep the score: trauma, predictive coding, and the restoration of metastability. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 20:1812957. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2026.1812957

Shin, L.M., et al. (2006). An fMRI study of anterior cingulate function in posttraumatic stress disorder. Biological Psychiatry.

Treleaven, D.A. (2018). Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing. W.W. Norton.

Walter, K.H., et al. (2023). Surf therapy versus hike therapy for active duty service members: a randomised controlled trial. Journal of Affective Disorders.