What is Somatics?
As a first pass, I often say somatics is whole person approaches to movement, and movement practices that affect the whole person. What is important here is that somatics is about practices and approaches centered on the moving body.
Somatic movement practices include physical and anatomical understanding of the body, AND they connect us to the expressive and experienced level of our body. Our moving bodies are wise. When we connect to this moving wisdom we expand what we can know about ourselves and lives. Somatics is not just movement, there is mindfulness and meaning-making. We become aware of ourselves moving and through movement we, change, grow and make meaning.
Some foundational principles include:
- Movement is not only a functional mechanical experience, movement is experienced and expressive.
- Movement is a wise teacher in its own right
- When we learn to deepen our attention to movement, we become sensitive to its messages.
- We learn to attend to the processes of life – especially the interconnectedness between kinetic experiences and processes of psyche.
- Each one of us is unique – part of getting in touch with our uniqueness is connecting to our moving selves.
What does embodiment mean?
Embodiment is a sensation of ourselves as this body. Body is in relationship to our sense of self – it contributes to our wholeness. Another way to say this is embodiment is our awareness of being a physical process whose experiences contribute to our sense of self.
How are somatics and embodiment related?
Somatics is the movement and mindfulness practices that deepen our sense of being embodied. Embodiment is the sense of being alive in this body. Somatic practices teach us to attend to life as living, moving wise body.
Somatics works with our body in ways that supports both physical functioning and our expressive skills – we become more physically able to be in and move through our lives.
Why study it? How to study it?
Somatics and Embodied Knowing introduces us to our bodies, and an embodied way of living and knowing ourselves; and being connected to other people. We sense ourselves alive and in connection. To me, it is a profound way into our humanity.
Many people feel disconnected from themselves and the people around them. They may feel that while they go about the motions of life, they do not get to experience the connection they so deeply yearn for. Somatic practices, including Embodied Knowing, offer us a portal to experience the connection to our bodies and selves we long to know, as well connection to the earth, to the people in our lives, and even the work we do in the world.
All of these connections are enriched by centering in our bodies.
One first way into these practices is to discover the space between sensation – what we feel in our bodies, and the perceptions, analysis, story about something.
Feel your body, you are that body. Feel that body living your life. Move your attention to sense the bottom of your body, its connection into support. Move it to the top of your body. Feel what is way up there. Notice the connection between the top and bottom.
When we stay with sensation in its own right, we have choices and possibilities for what we are feeling. And we have options for what it teaches us and how we work with it. Once give something a name and then an analysis we have limited our knowing around it.
How will it help me to live grow, live a better, healthier more awake life?
In every single way. Somatic practices connect us to feeling our life processes from within. We feel that we are living in our bodies, on this earth, with these other people. We come to sense where we are in the trajectories of our lives and have more integral and embodied ways of working with them.