Ayurveda • Somatic Yoga • Contact
“Movement is life. Life is a process. Improve the quality of the process and you improve the quality of life itself.” — Moshe Feldenkrais
Relating with the body in a somatic yoga practice is also deepening our understanding of change within and outside the body. Hanna asserts that we are working with a ‘somatic realm’ that is never fixed in place: “A soma isn’t a body and it isn’t a mind; it’s the living process.” If this were to be applied to languaging around the body, common assertions like “I have a bad knee” or “I have terrible posture” are too rigid for the realm Hanna describes. Labeling or defining ourselves is often disconnected from the reality that we are moving in a process that is ever shifting and evolving.
Feldenkrais assures that “Nothing is permanent about our behavior patterns except our belief that they are so." Yes, there can be stubborn patterns, but it is never a fixed state. Even when we are still, movement and change never stops. As Hanna states: “We are never permanently structured in any sense, somatically. Therefore, function is always creating structure, and function can always recreate it.”
When practicing somatics, it is encouraged to work with the body within this moving, changing process and explore how sensations are in the moment and compare them to before or after each movement.
Noticing changes, even very subtle sensation connects us with the reality that we are not fixed in place and invites curiosity as an integral quality to each practice. Perhaps most importantly, we can begin to understand how we can direct change within the body. We start to notice our own unique tension pattens, through which we can guide our awareness and release.
See video on how in a somatic yoga practice, one can re-create and exaggerate involuntary reflex patterns to bring awareness into these muscles and ease stored tension.
There is an incredible sense of freedom that comes with the reminder that we are not fixed or locked into any given state. This doesn’t deny the reality of persistent or chronic conditions. However, each practice invites a sense of newness and is an opportunity to reawaken dormant areas and perhaps release what is no longer needed.
Bainbridge Cohen, B.. (2018). Basic neurocellular patterns : exploring developmental movement. Burchfield Rose Publishers.
Bainbridge Cohen, B. (2019, May 24). Perception and Change. Body-Mind Centering®. https://www.bodymindcentering.com/perception-and-change/
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.