There’s a moment I love witnessing in my work — when a person’s body finally exhales. Their shoulders drop, their face softens. A feeling of peace shows up where fear or constriction used to live.
For decades, most trauma therapy has centered on talking or exposure — revisiting painful memories to process or desensitize them. But new research in neuroscience and emotional regulation is showing there’s another way.
Havening Techniques® is a gentle, touch-based approach for emotional healing and stress release. It uses soothing touch on the arms, face, or hands to generate delta brain waves — the same slow waves that occur during deep sleep.
In everyday terms, the brain learns that what once felt dangerous is now safe — and the old emotional charge begins to fade.
In my own work, I’ve seen how this moment — when the body finally feels safe — isn’t dramatic. It’s quiet. The mind and body can finally relax. That’s what excites me about this research: it validates what so many of us have quietly witnessed for years: Sometimes talking is not enough.
A peer-reviewed paper in the New Zealand Medical Journal explores this process in depth. It outlines how delta wave activity may help “unwire” the molecular bonds that maintain distressing memory patterns, offering a potential explanation for why Havening and other psychosensory approaches, such as EMDR, can bring about rapid emotional relief and transformation.
The study compares exposure-based methods vs. psychosensory methods, highlighting how sensory-based approaches — like touch or eye movements — engage the body’s own healing mechanisms rather than relying only on thought or discussion.
This reflects what many somatic and integrative practitioners have observed for years: when the body feels safe and supported, deep shifts can happen naturally and gently.
I share this not as a scientist, but as someone who has sat with hundreds of people who thought they’d have to relive their pain to heal. Watching them soften through gentle touch and presence reminds me how wise the body really is.
For anyone living with lingering fear, anxiety, or chronic stress, this research offers a hopeful perspective — bridging somatic approaches and neuroscience-based understanding of how the mind and body can heal.
If you’d like to explore the science behind it, you can read the full study here:
👉 A Novel Theory of Trauma Offers New Treatment Possibilities — New Zealand Medical Journal
Healing doesn’t have to be hard. It often begins with something as simple as human touch, compassion, and a little space for the body to remember its own intelligence. That’s the heart of what I love about this work.