By Sah D’Simone – Founder of the Somatic Dance Institute & Creator of the Somatic Activated Healing™ Method

Recently, I shared a post with some thoughts about nervous system regulation that reached over 2 million people and sparked a lot of conversation. Some got it immediately. Others thought I was saying we should all choose chaos. So I want to clarify what I actually mean when I say we need to rethink "staying regulated."

Your Body Deserves a Space Where Nothing Has to Be Fixed

We need to stop telling people to calm their nervous system.

Concepts and language like "calm down" and "stay regulated" have roots in a colonial fantasy that says a "good" body should be quiet, steady, easy, polite, and not feel or express too much. Anything outside those parameters is frowned upon as dysregulation and judged as "bad."

Emotional Colonization: The Hidden Cost of "Calm"

A body that never shakes, cries, rages, trembles, shuts down, or erupts is not what wellness looks like... It is merely a presentation of emotional colonization.

And that expectation harms the people who are already carrying the heaviest loads of grief, trauma, illness, difference, and intensity.

We must separate the conflation of "calm" with "regulation" in our nervous systems.

Regulation simply means the body knows how to move. It rises, it falls, it contracts, it expands, it heats up, it cools down, it shakes, it softens. It is fluid, alive, responsive.

Calm is only one of many states.

The Colonial Script We're Trying to Unlearn

When we tell people to "stay regulated," the hidden message often becomes "make yourself easier for the world to handle."

And telling someone in pain, panic, grief, or overwhelm to calm down? That's shame disguised as support. Their body is already doing something intelligent, protective, and necessary.

A trembling body isn't malfunctioning.
A crying body isn't failing.
A shut-down body isn't weak.

Telling someone to calm down in a moment of overwhelm is like telling a body to stop bleeding.

This obsession with calmness repeats the emotional rules of the systems that taught us to be obedient, quiet, unbothered, productive, and easy to manage.

Responses that punish emotion and fear aliveness are what we must unlearn.

What Wellness Actually Means (Spoiler: It's Not Stillness)

Wellness culture absorbed this without questioning it. But forcing yourself into stillness is more an act of self-abandonment than it is of healing.

Real wellness is not about controlling your emotions. It does not ask you to be calm... but to stay with yourself, and feel what is true, not what is acceptable. It is permission to stop performing, start listening, and become intimate with your own experience.

The Truth About Bodies That Feel Deeply

For centuries, we've been trained to believe a "good" body is quiet, polite, obedient, pleasant, and manageable. A body that never trembles, cries, rages, shakes, shuts down, or storms. A body that pretends it's fine.

This is why so many of us interpret difficult emotions as wrong, or "too much." Like some kind of moral failure.

That interpretation is the colonization. Not the feeling.

The body isn't misbehaving when it contracts, erupts, freezes, or floods—it's trying to complete a cycle.

Why Pain Becomes Chronic: Interrupted Cycles

Pain becomes chronic, trauma becomes sticky, and stress becomes chaotic because we interrupt the body's natural wave. We don't let it rise, peak, and fall. We don't allow trembling, crying, grieving, or shaking, so the energy gets trapped.

And trapped pain becomes communication. It leaks into our relationships, our choices, our parenting, our work. When the body can't finish a feeling, it turns into behavior.

What Real Regulation Looks Like

Here's what people miss: Feelings are not problems. They are sensations moving through. They're passing phenomena. Temporarily visiting.

When you stop moralizing every emotion, stop giving it extra meaning, and simply let the body complete what it needs to complete, the wave passes. And what returns is a calmness that isn't forced. Rooted in openness rather than obedience. Calmness that comes not from colonialism, but from wisdom.

Let the Body Do What It Knows

Let me be clear: I'm not telling anyone to choose chaos.

But I am encouraging you to let the body do what it knows how to do. Let the cycle complete. Let the storm move, so the awareness beneath everything is felt again.

Rather than thinking of it as the absence of intensity, think of regulation as the freedom to move through intensity without abandoning yourself and without harming others.

That's the teaching.

What the Body Can't Release, It Repeats

Our body deserves a space where nothing has to be fixed, controlled, or hidden... where emotions can be felt, moved, and held with honesty.

What the body can't release, it repeats. Let's complete the cycle.

Want to learn how to let your body complete what it knows how to do?

Join the waitlist for the next Somatic Dance Teacher Training and begin your journey today with my free resource: Dance for Change: 3-Day Dance Challenge