Somatics - Exploring the Mind-Body Connection

Somatics explores the mind body connection by making you aware of unconscious patterns. Often these movement or postural patterns are dysfunctional and cause chronic tension or pain. Once you are aware of the patterns, you can choose to change them.

This article briefly outlines some of the many approaches to somatics.

Alexander Technique

Alexander Technique teaches you how to use your body with more freedom and ease.

Frederick Matthias Alexander was an Australian actor in the 1890s who often lost his voice on stage. When doctors could not solve Alexander’s problem, he began to study how he used his body. Practicing in front of mirrors, he found that he pulled his head back and down, which caused him to breath forcefully through his mouth and compress his larynx.

He experimented and found that moving his head forward and up alleviated this problem. However, on stage he habitually reverted to the old pattern because it felt right. He then realized that he must first inhibit the old pattern by eliminating the decision to "do." He substituted an "allowing" of the activity while thinking "head forward and up."

Alexander believed that poor habits or poor posture always involved rigidity in the head-neck area and unlocking this tension was the key to full freedom and use of the body. To eliminate the problem at its source, you need to prevent the neck from contracting unnecessarily using your conscious mind to change your subconscious muscle patterns.

Seven basic ideas form the core of Alexander Technique teaching:

1. Use and functioning. Using the power of choice to determine the quality of actions. Bad body use results in unbalanced coordination; some parts of the body do too much, some too little.
2. The whole person. The Alexander teacher gets a sense of your potential for coordinating the whole self. The teacher does not attempt to fix something but to teach how to integrate the parts into a functional unity.
3. Primary control refers to the relationship of the head, neck, and torso. The main concern is to teach better use that results in better positions. Primary control serves as a key to coordinating your body as a whole.
4. Unreliable sensory feedback. Your kinesthetic sense can be defective ("debauched kinesthesia"). Habitual misuse of your body adversely affects the reliability of your ability to sense what is really happening.
5. Inhibition is the ability to stop or delay response until you are adequately prepared to make it.
6. Direction. Trusting reason rather than habit.
7. Ends and means. Keep your options open through the critical moment, then choose either not to respond to the stimulus, to do something else, or to fulfill the original aim. The emphasis is on the process, not the goal.

Body-Mind Centering®

Body-Mind Centering (BMC) is a somatics practice based in experiential anatomy, using movement, voice, breath, perceptions, and touch.

BMC was developed by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, an occupational therapist and trained dancer who set out to explore the possibilities of the human body in the 1960s. Cohen studied many forms of therapy and movement, including yoga, Laban Movement Analysis, dance therapy, neuromuscular reeducation, katsugen undo (a Japanese method of training the involuntary nervous system), and neurodevelopmental therapy (a method of restoring developmental movement patterns in children with brain injuries).

A first step in Body-Mind Centering is developing cellular awareness. The cell is the basic unit of life and contains the potential for developing more complex and differentiated forms and encouraging the emergence of higher levels of consciousness.

You can make contact with your cells by focusing your attention on them. You can breathe into your cells, use imagery, or experience the touch of another person who is focused on your cells. Once you focus attention, energy follows and brings about awareness.

Body-Mind Centering also works with the automatic patterns of movement responses known as Developmental Movement. These patterns are the sequence of movements that an infant goes through as it grows.

Each movement is a brick in the foundation on which other movements are built. Any missing bricks weaken that foundation, cause excess tension in the body, and create less effective or efficient movement. A child’s Developmental Movement sequence can be interrupted by injury or illness or by being pushed into activities before the child is developmentally ready. As an adult, you cannot use skipped developmental patterns for everyday movement unless you go back and develop those patterns.

BMC also focuses on the in-depth and experiential study of all the body’s anatomical systems and teaches you to make direct contact with the different systems. Usually we think of movement in terms of bones and muscles. But Body-Mind Centering looks at how all your anatomical systems (skin, organs, nervous, endocrine, fluids, fat, muscles, ligaments, fascia, and skeleton) can support movement.

Continuum

Continuum uses sensation, breath, sound, and movement for both subtle and dynamic explorations.

This form of somatic education, developed by Emilie Conrad-Da'oud, starts with the premise that movement is not something we do, it's something we are. Awareness of ourselves as movement begins with becoming more sensitive to our inner world, by exploring breath, sound, and fluidity.

The key elements of Continuum are

Breath: All movement begins with breath. The movement or inhibition of breath maintains fixations, compensatory patterns, family history, trauma, and emotional stress. Variations in breathing stimulate a wide range of internal sensations, responses, and movements to enhance healing, growth, and mobility.

Sound: Sound is audible breath. Specific sound frequencies engage various systems of the body, releasing areas of stagnation and stress. Using sound with movement increases the agility of both.

Movement: Continuum’s movements are designed specifically to enhance the undulating spirals and circularity of the fluid system, using a full range of non-patterned movement. Movement may be dynamic and full-bodied or subtle micro-movements. Undulating wave motion permeates tissue and opens up sensitivity.

Sensation and Pleasure: Continuum uses sensation as a guide to awaken the body’s mysteries and the life force that feeds and nurtures us. We let go of "doing" and listen carefully to our internal environment.

For more informaiton, see Life on Land: The Story of Continuum, The World-Renowned Self-Discovery and Movement Method.

Eutony

Gerda Alexander, developer of Eutony, said that it is a Western way of experiencing unity of the whole person and that this unity liberates creative forces and develops the ability to make contact with others while maintaining one’s individuality.

The goal of Eutony is to widen and deepen the whole range of expression and open up creativity. The work is gentle and never forces. Presence is of the upmost importance. Presence means awareness of mind, sensation of the outer form of the body, being in contact with one’s surroundings, and awareness of breathing, circulation, tissues, organs, and bones.

Sensory Awareness

Sensory Awareness is interested in the total functioning person and the development of a person’s responsiveness toward life.

Charlotte Selver developed Sensory Awareness based on the work of Elsa Gindler. In the early 1900s, Gindler was a pioneer of teaching people to explore independently and develop individually. Some people consider Gindler the grandmother of somatic psychotherapy.

Sensory Awareness is about sensing what is happening in whatever you happen to be doing. You recover your capacity to sense for yourself through the discipline of controlling your rampant mind. There are no structured movements, guided images, or breathing exercises. The teacher outlines experiments in which you can become aware of sensations.

Feldenkrais Method®

Feldenkrais is an educational system that helps you develop a functional awareness of yourself in the environment.

Moshe Feldenkrais was a scientist, physicist, engineer, and Judo instructor. Feldenkrais developed the Method to heal his own knee problems, and then taught hundreds of students around the world. His insights contributed to the development of the new field of somatic education.

The Feldenkrais Method has two parts: Awareness Through Movement® and Functional Integration®.

In Awareness Through Movement (ATM) lessons, the Feldenkrais practitioner verbally guides you through a sequence of movements. ATM is taught in a group setting, and you may be sitting or lying on the floor, standing, or sitting in a chair.

ATM accesses the sensory motor processes of your brain. You discover how you do the movements and notice the quality of changes in your body. You learn to relax and to abandon habitual patterns. ATM reeducates your body and makes you aware of new movement potential. There are hundreds of lessons, addressing every joint and muscle group in the body and every human function.

Functional Integration is a one-to-one learning process, where the Feldenkrais practitioner communicates movements through slow, gentle touch. Comfortably clothed, you lie or sit on a low padded table, or you may be standing, walking, or sitting in a chair. The practitioner guides you through a series of precise movements that alter habitual patterns and provide new learning directly to your neuromuscular system.

Hanna Somatic Education®

Developed by Thomas Hanna, Hanna Somatic Education releases chronic pain patterns.

Just as the brain can forget information we do not use, it can also forget bodily movements we do not use. This bodily memory loss is what Thomas Hanna called sensory-motor amnesia, and he considered it a malfunction of the nervous system.

Sensory-motor amnesia affects the entire body because the entire body compensates for a problem in any specific location. Sensory-motor amnesia is an adaptive response of the central nervous system, and this response can be unlearned using neurologically based exercises.

How do you get the benefits of Hanna Somatic Education? You can see a Hanna Somatic Educator who will work hands-on with you one-on-one. You also can do somatic exercises designed to change your muscular system by changing your central nervous system. See Somatics: Reawakening The Mind's Control Of Movement, Flexibility, And Health.

Kinetic Awareness

Kinetic Awareness is a somatic therapy that calls attention to the simplest components of movement and explores emotional attitudes toward the body.

Elaine Summers developed Kinetic Awareness based on the work of Elsa Grindler and Carola Speads. Anyone who chooses can become totally aware of and articulate with every part of the body.

Kinetic Awareness recognizes the value of turning inside, finding resources deeper than our normal daily consciousness. Its goal is the enjoyment and use of the bodymind’s full capacity for awareness and movement. By reawakening and sharpening our natural inner kinesthetic sense, we can use and enjoy the body for what it is.

"Kinetic Awareness is based on the premise that refinement of the kinesthetic sense, especially with regard to movement, can bring about the gradual reintegration of bodymind functioning.” - Kinetic Awareness: Discovering Your Bodymind by Ellen Saltonstall, founder of the Kinetic Awareness Center.