Somatic Empathy: The Hidden Superpower Your Body Uses Before Your Brain Reacts

Ep 120.  The Hidden Power of Somatic Empathy: How Your Body Feels Before Your Brain Thinks

Empathy is more than just understanding someone’s feelings—it's a core human superpower that shapes every interaction, both at home and in the marketplace. But what if true empathy doesn’t start in the mind? What if it begins in the body?

Enter somatic empathy—a powerful, often unconscious form of empathy that happens in the body before the brain even registers what’s going on. This pre-verbal, gut-level awareness lets you feel the emotional energy, vibe, or atmosphere of a person, room, or situation. It’s the sixth sense we’ve all experienced but rarely talk about—the moment you "just know" something is off, or when someone’s presence instantly makes you feel safe, anxious, or energized.

Somatic empathy is the neurobiological foundation of emotional intelligence. It's the internal signal that influences your perception, your reasoning, and even your behavior—before logic ever gets a chance. Whether you're reading body language in a negotiation, connecting deeply with a loved one, or sensing danger before it’s visible, your body knows first.

Understanding somatic empathy isn't just helpful—it’s transformational. By tuning into these embodied signals, we can strengthen emotional resilience, make better decisions, and build more authentic connections. This inner awareness empowers leaders, healers, creators, and everyday people to communicate more effectively, avoid burnout, and live with deeper alignment.

💡 Learn how to master your inner vibe, decode energy in any room, and rewire how you experience human connection—from the inside out.

This is the Science of Vibes: Why Your Gut Feels Things Before Your Mind Understands

Feel It First: Learn how Somatic Empathy Shapes Your Emotions, Decisions, and Relationships

Take care and walk well. 

Transcript

Welcome back folks to episode 120 of the running man self-regulation skills project podcast with me, your host, Dr. Armando Dominguez, PhD in health psychology, licensed professional counselor, and an adjunct professor at a local community college. And what we're going to be discussing today is somatic empathy. Now somatic has to do in term definition with the body and many of

the alternative methods of health that involve like massage, deep massage tissue release, as a myofascial release, deep tissue massage, and even methods such as rolfing that deal with straightening the structure by starting at the feet and how we stand and working on the way up. They work with this idea of somatic memory, also a somatic state that has to do with how our body is. Now, if you want to look at what

psychology does, it's very much paralleled in what is done in these body work methodologies such as Rolfing and also other ones that involve not only motion of the body, but also how we conceive of ourself.

As a result of trauma and that sort of stuff So the reason I say stuff is because sometimes not always traumatic that it could be experienced could be An assumption vicariously learned this sort of thing that shapes how it is that we are now That's kind of a big hairy introduction. I do it on This topic this way on purpose because it it's it is broad but at the same time it is one that is very simply Embodied in the body so to speak and we can pair it down to some very

simple things that are very much involved with not only self regulation, but how we self regulate if we do and how we do. to kick this off, we're going to be speaking once again of somatic empathy. Whenever we use the term empathy, it's usually considered an idea that has to do with how we may feel what other people do, so to speak. And we're going to separate some details here. One is that empathy generally, when we're speaking of feelings has to

armando (02:52.696)
do with my body responding to a stimulus that says my neighbor is not happy, is angry or sad. And therefore I recognize it in my mind and this is the subjective or the cognitive process of it. And I can have an idea as to what I'm supposed to respond like and have empathy towards them in a cognitive sense, but not necessarily in quotes, feel it where my body responds and I'm feeling what they're feeling. The true empath will actually feel what a person is feeling.

And if somebody's feeling a little little uncomfortable in their stomach and nervous Maybe it'll anxious and we may mirror that if we have that true empathic quality going on And it doesn't mean that one is disingenuous because one does not feel such things I'll cover the reason why we may not but it also is a self-protective factor to not always just get knocked off your saddle when somebody comes in feeling sad and then all of a sudden you're Balling your eyes out next to them and you're sharing a box of Kleenex. That's not

necessarily what we're talking about, but it is involved in the extreme sense Whenever we have people that are very empathic and have to be careful as to whom it is that they interact with now the idea or the cognitive empathy that I'm talking about That has to do with the process of seeing in our mind what it is that somebody may have told us about and Recognizing that man. That's not good. I feel for you man and maybe even wanting to extend a hand to a

to hand up for instance and that's okay but still not falling to pieces next to them now we're going to shift gears a little bit and talk about the embodied empathy and this can happen shortly after we realize the the information that is shared with us that may be tragic may be sad or we may hear somebody's misfortune or maybe even see somebody experiencing anything tragic painful traumatic for that matter or unfortunate

And feel bad for them and we have what the French would call coup vade and that's the pain of the mother where in the case of a husband and a wife, let's say having a pregnancy and then mom is Experiencing new mom is experiencing Let's say morning sickness this sort of stuff and then dad experiences as much some would say that even the weight gain That dad parallels with mom is part of that. I would say not so much I think that's just like the self-control

armando (05:22.256)
control and lots of Cheerios on, on availability. But, what I'd to point out is that whenever we have that sense of care for somebody else and we like somebody else, for instance, and if it's not somebody I have a relationship with, we have gone through an estimation of perception of information that we see, in the individual, in the environment, they are part of our external environment and we've judged them and people say, don't judge. Well, that's a really nice idea, but it's really kind of wishful

washy factor of the matter is everything that we experience is a process of

Perception and interpretation at that perceptive signal and determining whether or not it's good or bad We've just cast judgment at that point whether or not it's an approachable or avoidable thing So it's based in a very deepest hedonic nature to judge and even in the social scheme We must because there are people that are not good for us that are situations with people involved that aren't good for us And we have to determine whether or not we want to go home to mama so to speak So we have to make those judgments and it's not necessarily an ethical more

failing or a sense of superiority but rather the idea of survival in its most basic sense and the quick and dirty sense we have to make that judgment if I'm going to live or die we're gonna make that judgment then it's based in our biology but also our biology and our environment our external experience that our body embodies a certain quality of empathy from we have determined what that signal meant and then we're judging it

to whether or not it's helpful or useful to us. Now this has a lot to do with self-regulation because what we're regulating occurs in our body. The embodiment of a stress does not occur just in our brain. It's interpreted there, but it's involved in the body where we have a drop of stress hormone, where we have adrenaline flowing through out of our body. And then we're responding as a result to whatever state we're experiencing. If we have adrenaline in a good experience where we're jumping in the bouncy house at a

armando (07:27.204)
birthday party, we're going to get cake and ice cream afterwards. Whoa, that's a lot of fun. It's kind of a high, to speak. But whenever we're experiencing a self-defense situation, or we're walking into terrain unknown to where there's a lot of unknowable detail, novel isn't always happy. Novel is interesting. The novel is new, but it's also an experience that I have no experience with. And the unknown, the unknowable can become a very dark, negative place to be, especially when it's a very sudden onset. And I have to interpret signal very quickly.

it comes on too quickly close to that subliminal level to where we're at about 150 to 300 milliseconds presentation, I may be able to recognize render foe, but it's faster than that 60 seconds to 160 milliseconds to a hundred milliseconds. Now we're talking everything by default is considered a threat and could be damaged if in response to it, even though it may be a friendly force, so to speak. So we have to be very careful in recognizing that all the judgment and subjective awareness that we have in all this

mental

very volatile, very quick and it starts to evolve at a speed that we don't have answers for in many cases. And one of the best things we can do is run, but we don't always have that opportunity to run. And sometimes we may have to stand and fight or climb if we must. And if we're overwhelmed, then we may fall prey to the situation where we may freeze and some of us may even pass out. Some of us may fawn, however we're starting to basically

negotiate for our safety with the foreign force and say hey I'll do anything I need to do to make sure you don't kill me or hurt me or my loved ones this sort of stuff and even though some people would interpret that in quotes as cowardice that is a term that came about within an honor culture and honor once again is an idea and Musashi the 15th century swordsman basically knew that that was a BS idea because he also knew that whenever he was

armando (09:56.793)
chased from running after losing side of two wars that he was being chased down because they didn't want the likes of him to add to the gene pool when in actuality that was the most natural thing was to run in the face of a larger force and survive and fight another day it wasn't about honor he saw that the blood owes and dying for honor and to save the the face and the thoughts of people and what they would think of a family were wrong it wasn't a

True survival that was about ego that was about a farcical account that was empowered and became very dangerous no less just because it was a Twisted idea did not sit and did not necessarily make it true But he was seeing things very clearly through a lens that most of us don't have the luxury of seeing through and we get stuck in the Eagle and then we wonder why our lives are unfulfilling but back to somatic empathy So what is this that we're talking about? Well, it's a reality that's a foundation

precedes all our best thoughts and philosophies and strategies that we like to think are very high-minded ideals. We can't have those things without the foundation and base that occurs in our body. Our brain is basically housed in this little box of sorts and it is basically shielded from the world and has nothing other than the information that our body is bringing in. So our body starts to develop this sense of self that is a 3D representation of self.

and This isn't an idea of mine, but one of a really great body worker in the UK named Dr Barbara Engel and she wrote a book called the other self and in one of her interviews with another great body worker martial artist and and she going and meditation practitioner who lives in Bali now his name is Daymo Mitchell he has quite a few books out there, but

was interviewing her and she made a very distinct point to the fact that her body and its signals represent this sense of almost like a little avatar of Armando in this case that I put out in my world in my mental world and my representation of that and that this is not the true self but the idea that I keep of myself and this is not necessarily egoic but rather almost like a predecessor to what we start hanging ego on so this is the little mannequin that I dress out so to speak

armando (12:20.993)
that I push out into my world that I call my social self, so to speak, as we develop from very young to older and our current state where we consider ourselves not only sophisticated, but smart and likable, dislikeable, whatever the situation might be. But the idea of another self is basically it's our brains representation of what we consider me and it's experienced through our body. So the embodied sense of empathy that

Somatic empathy is something that we're gonna move more into and Whenever we're discussing this I'm gonna give you a very distinct experience that I've had in particular and I actually was able to talk to a friend that was He's now a retired psychiatrist but the archer also a martial artist with more experience than I had at the time whenever I started training with him, but whenever the movie the hunt it came on with a Venetian del Toro, I remember seeing that in the theaters and it was phenomenal the

sound and the experience of course the popcorn but whenever they were showing the knife fighting scenes between Benicio del Toro and Tommy Lee Jones they were very up close and personal and the shots that the way they did them was over the shoulder kind of a point of view the POV view that one would experience if you were embodied in the experience doing the first person viewer experience once again the idea of you being there and it triggered

physiological responses in my body where my muscles started twitching in my body and spine started moving in ways that were evasive because not only was it compelling and It looked real like experience but it's so parallel to why I experienced whenever I've had people coming at me and training with knives not unlike what I was seeing on the screen that my body started responding and my friend said, know, I had this experience. It's like wow crap I did too and it would kind of laugh but at the same time we realized what it was that was occurring but this term

armando (14:42.363)
And so, I important thing

But now I'm experiencing by watching and observing someone else's experience not unlike a learned experience But it's instead of learning something new what we're doing is we're experiencing something a new because We've already done this and it's like wow I'm having this experience based on what I've already done before and it's a it's a similarity. There's a similitude in What they're doing versus what I've done and now my body's firing because it's so compelling and real and let's go back to the very fundamental

exercise that I talk about frequently is the lemon.

Which lemon did you experience biting or seeing somebody else bite that you wind up salivating as a result that your body responded? Not so different. So there is a somatic embodiment of memory that we have that actually is a recollection that brings our body to respond as if it's real, even though I may be seeing something on screen or just remembering it. Now, whenever we're entering into a live situation, a social scheme, wherever, maybe I'm going to a business meeting, maybe we're going to a birthday

party where there are going to be other people who are ongoing somewhere such as out in public at a grocery store and you know there are others there these somatic empathic memories that are going on in our body are shifting moment to moment and much of this calls on experience that is very subconscious because it's not something that we're bringing up whole situations and all of sudden using those as a template to determine if somebody meets the need or fits into those little spaces kind of like we're

armando (16:23.735)
tracing

only is it the noise, it's the overwhelming number of signals that are coming up that put one in defense because it's too much. That's beyond the bandwidth of the individual experience and whatever it is that they're doing at the store, at the marketplace, trying to pick up oranges, this sort of thing. And all of sudden somebody comes up beyond one's back corner and the periphery, our subconscious periphery to where our visual is picked up, is picking up movement. And therefore we may not only respond, but we

may overreact, get angry and upset and feel like people are sneaking up on us, then we leave without our arm just because it feels overwhelming. Now, when in actuality it was just my overwhelming response from a somatic experience that caused me to feel really bad in that moment. Now, there's some other things that we really have to look at. We're going into a social scheme. We have to understand that our state, the way I arrive, the way I am, the way I be at the moment that I enter,

be a house or the stream of movement at an open-air market or grocery store.

I, as much as everyone else, have an impact on the immediate situation. It's not just what's happening to me internally, but what's happening as I enter into that stream and impacting their internal responses too. And everyone else's ideas and experiences that they may have had that are largely subconscious. And they're just going through their motion, so to speak, often very automatically, because they've done it so often and they're not thinking about everything. And everything seems to be within the realm of normal and irreplicable. And all of this is

armando (18:30.679)
just smooth enough and most people get along just fine. Now problems tend to occur whenever things may change or pop up that are extremely novel, really new or unexpected. It's not always a bad thing, but it can be. If things are too sudden and you're hypersensitive to motion and maybe have had a history of trauma or are afraid of really loud noises, this sort of thing, then that could be uncomfortable. The reality of the situation is that we're always apt to adapt, but the

We're we are and the more that our sense of safety is met our assumption of safety that nothing's gonna happen or or things aren't happening at the moment that I feel comfortable we're probably going to adapt more flexibly and and more normatively versus maladapt and get upset get angry or have to run out because I feel like I'm unsafe or in some state of danger now the important part about this as far as self-regulatory skill is that whenever we enter into a situation where there are other people and we know that it's

to be particularly tense. We don't want to add to the, I guess, the usage of the situational bandwidth by adding more emotional load to the situation or arriving in a way where you're expecting and it shows on your face and your body language being a little tense and expectation of tension, resistance and upset.

Because we tend to be very reflective of our state of mind by the manner in which we arrive in our body. So we are technically the models of either calm or chaos and the chaos isn't all your fault. The calm isn't all your fault, but you bring some of what is added to the whole mix that would become calming or chaotic in a situation. So we have to be not only mindful, but self-regulatory beforehand. We have to be a little preemptive and know that if I know I'm going into a stressful situation,

say just breathe, deep breathe. Well, I always encourage people not to deep breathe, but rather to use the box breath or to use the double sniff technique for immediate methodology that works now with the least amount of time required, especially if you don't have a whole lot of time to be able to regulate how my stress response might be. But also thinking about good things before you go in is helpful. That is also a resourceful tool to be able to use a former fun situation or excitement that may

armando (20:52.913)
been good for you as a resource to bring up good endorphins in your body. So that way you feel better going in. Now there's some other things that you can do whenever you're going into situation is recognize that other people are stressing too. And one of the best things to do is going with intent of going in centered, calm.

and collected and not having judgments of how things are going to be until they actually play out. Then you may have a predictive sense as to what and also an expectation as to how things are going to be. And the idea is to know that things aren't absolute, even though we like to speak them in absolute and try to avoid speaking in absolutes because that means your emotions are driving. If you tend to speak and always everyone, everywhere, everything, all the time, everyone, ever and never forever, that we're speaking from a point of

fear and expectation of doom and then we start

Creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, which we do not want especially we want a positive outcome So what I'd like to point out is that I teach the the full course load at the junior college I work at for the substance abuse counseling program, but teaching right now a course called pharmacology of addiction I'm not going to give the name of the school but often people think by the name of the course that this has to do with the substances that one uses to get high or to change one's feelings and we have to look at it

the pharmacology of addiction did not say substance use addiction only, but rather pharmacology of addiction and substance related disorders as well, meaning that we also have behavioral addiction. do and have things that are technically what we do with our body versus what we ingest that can change how our feelings are. And sometimes gambling can be that, sometimes sex can be that. And often if we look at what it is that we call our most stressful situations in life, the way

armando (22:46.749)
we cope with them have always been hedonic. How do I stop the pain? How do I seek pleasure? And how do I keep from getting hurt? This sort of stuff. And how do I eat and befriend and also procreate? But if we really pare things down to the most simple, they come down to two simple things and that's sex and death.

We seek sex and we try to avoid death. So sometimes not feeding is closer to death. Sometimes not having sex, that's closer to death. But if you have sex and have food, then you're getting closer to...

Being healthy and procreating. So within those two dipoles right there, we're looking at the possibility, the full range of possibilities that humans have and how we were driven from a very deep visceral reality that, is our, technically our inheritance from our forebears that we've had for millions and millions of years that now belongs to us. And we're applying those things and our reactions within the more modern paradigm, but we still have that old wiring.

Now I'm going to point one detail out relative to the addictive process. The pharmacology of addiction falls within the responses that occur within our brain and our body. And those are neurotransmitters and hormones and our endorphins and dodges morphine is what that is that gets triggered by what we take in from the outside of what we do on the outside of our body, our behaviors, gambling, spending that sort of stuff that trigger the release of those feel good chemicals in our body. the pharmacology of addiction.

is within us. It's already there. What's addictive is figuring out that we've got the triggers on the outside and systematizing how we do that so we can release that good feel more often when things are uncomfortable or boring or painful, this sort of thing. Now there are some studies that have been done.

armando (24:40.536)
and I'm not going to cite any particular but there many that have been done with people that use painkillers and that includes even having like ibuprofen. had a famous author friend of mine that I have on Facebook mention ibuprofen as hillbilly heroin. First time I ever heard it and I laughed.

myself silly just I'd never heard the term, but also anything that blocks pain receptors such as opiates or even alcohol, wherever you have a depressant effect and stimulants that actually change how you feel because maybe I'm feeling numb, depressed and I need to feel something excitatory.

We're looking at an alteration of how we feel but what we're also specifically looking at is that people that use these substances chronically, alcohol is more legal, people that smoke, we have these responses from nicotine as well, is that they do not embody empathy as much.

as well as people that aren't using this sort of thing. The same thing happens when we overfeed or we over sex or over Campbell. Just pay attention to this point, is that the people that were studied, especially with the painkillers in particular, we have an epidemic of painkiller use in the United States and the more developed aspects of our world. Wherever the people that usually use these chronically have a hard time feeling empathy, they can have the cognitive

to, I know that I should be feeling bad for this person and I might help them, but they don't embody that empathic.

armando (26:17.416)
Kuvvod pain and often there's an expectation socially that we may seem disingenuous if we don't feel the pain of the person that is suffering and it's something to really think about and many times we realize that people that chronically use have falling away of relationships because they can't empathize with their partner and this is not

something that is tied to sex or gender. This is just a reality that has been studied and has been shown and there are trends that many clinicians notice that even though they may not be alcoholics or drug addicts, but there's a chronicity of use, it's a regular part of their life. They tend to get to a point where they can no longer feel if there's some differences in a relationship where they can empathize with the partner. And this is a very distinctly important thing and is a foundational point to start learning how to self-regulate some things that could be impacting what could be most

Important relationship in our lives and this isn't just spouses this could be with our kids or this can be with our friends and our loved ones that we have gained over time, so That's gonna be it for today's discussion on Somatic empathy and I really liked Much of the information we talked about because it's actually going to lead into some other areas that we'll be covering more in the podcast as the future moves forward and I certainly appreciate your time I want to tell you thank you on this Sunday afternoon and

And we're having labor day tomorrow, so I'm off of work, so I'm going to have an extra day to go do things I like to do. But if you get a chance, send people to YouTube. I've got a couple more listeners, two more subscribers. That's awesome. I can count. But yeah, if you're there, subscribe, like and share.

That helps the algorithm, but also if you know people that may be able to benefit from this podcast, I am also on Spotify and iTunes, Amazon music, and everywhere you can find your podcasts and please share it with people. I'd love to hear from y'all. have any feedback for me? Please send it to the Gmail that is running man. Get

armando (28:20.856)
skills project at gmail love to hear from you and if you have any suggestions that you'd like to hear me talk about please Send them to me once again. I'd love to hear from you and we're moving forward towards interview Format once again. I keep saying this because we're just around the corner from it I just have to keep getting things in order a bit at a time one-man show But it's gonna get better and I certainly guarantee you that I'm gonna give you the best I got and If you never hear from my mug again, if you get anything from this podcast, I want to be information that'll never

stop serving you. That's my goal. Something that you can use in many paradigms, not just in pain or in counseling settings, but rather in your life. And if that's what's happening, then I've done what I set out to do and take care. Walk well.