Ayurveda • Somatic Yoga • Contact
“Descartes was not sufficiently thorough. To think is not merely "to be" passively; it is to move.
"I am self-aware, therefore I act,"”
—Thomas Hanna
The word soma in Greek means whole living body. Making whole is a theme repeated across traditions, religions and other disciplines like psychology. Movement therapist Thomas Hanna, who coined the term Somatic in the 1970’s expanded its definition to “the body perceived from within” and explains the practice as the “study of the soma, which is not only first-person perception of the living body but is its first-person regulation.”
This study of the whole living body, as Hanna explains, is not a passive process. The sensing of the soma through movement expands awareness and somatic movements are designed to gently guide this awareness inward to notice and release tension.
Somatics as a healing modality is relatively new. Hanna and his collaborator Moshe Feldenkrais are credited as methodically mapping this new way of understanding and introspectively working with our bodies through movement. Both were in sync in their belief that building sensitivity and awareness of patterns in the body led to a freer ease in movement and a more integrated self.
The combination of Somatics and Yoga brings together a modern understanding of the nervous system and internal healing mechanisms with the profound ancient wisdom established in Vedic systems of knowledge. Somatic yoga practices, which aim to increase awareness of internal processes, is a means to integrate mind, body, emotions and spirit through playful, intentional and subtle movement.
While external influences routinely take us out of our bodies, somatic yoga gently guides us back inward and reminds us that the body is not simply a mechanical tool for the mind, but stores unique intelligences, instincts, memory, and mystery.
As Feldenkrais states: “I believe that the unity of mind and body is an objective reality. They are not just parts somehow related to each other, but an inseparable whole while functioning. A brain without a body could not think.”
This echoes the yogic philosophy. Yoga meaning yoke (yug) in Sanskrit invokes this unification process. Movement and breath is a bridge that helps join seemingly dualistic or separated forces. Through gentle receptivity and attention encouraged in the somatic yoga practice, this body-mind wholeness can be accessed, healed and restored.
Sources
Feldenkrais, M. (2011). Embodied Wisdom. North Atlantic Books.
Hanna, T. (2016). What is Somatics? Somatic Systems Institute. https://somatics.org/library/htl-wis1
Hanna, T. (1979) The Body of Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Publishing.