Permission: The Nervous System’s Most Overlooked Healing Mechanism

Most people try to heal themselves through resistance.

“I shouldn’t feel this.”

“This emotion needs to go away.”

“This pain is wrong.”

“This part of me shouldn’t exist.”

Internal resistance creates internal pressure.

Pressure amplifies pain.

The system becomes stuck.

Somatic Inquiry offers a radically different orientation:

Give everything inside you full permission to be exactly as it is.

Permission Regulates the Nervous System

When a sensation, emotion, or part receives genuine permission, the system no longer feels threatened internally. This immediately lowers defensive activation.

Examples include:

• Letting an anxious sensation be tight

• Allowing sadness to swell without suppressing it

• Letting a protective part continue doing its job

• Allowing anger to exist without judgment

• Giving the body permission to be overwhelmed

Permission doesn’t mean indulging, escalating, or dramatizing.

It means recognizing that what is happening is already happening, and allowing it to be felt without inner conflict.

Why Permission Works

The nervous system is not afraid of sensation.

It is afraid of internal rejection.

When resistance disappears, even for a moment, the held tension begins to loosen. Emotions that felt unbearable begin to shift the moment they are given room to exist.

A system that is allowed simply to be itself begins to reorganize naturally.

The Deepest Form of Healing

Permission is not a technique, it is a relationship to oneself.

It is the moment the inner world is no longer divided into acceptable and unacceptable experiences.

When everything within us is allowed to exist, nothing needs to fight for space.

This creates:

• internal softness

• emotional fluidity

• somatic clarity

• psychological openness

• and a deep sense of belonging to oneself

Permission is the gateway to wholeness.