The concept of somatic or somatic healing is pervasive in the bodywork, healing and movement world. Somatics are absolutely at an inflection point.
But what are somatics and somatic healing?
The term ‘somatic’ was coined by Thomas Hanna (Hanna Somatics) over 50 years ago. He used the term to describe the inner felt sense or perception experience that we can only experience from inside our body. Somatic means of the body, however, originally somatic awareness was a specific inner experience inside our own body. It’s also called interoception. This is our own unique sensory experience.
Essentially, a somatic experience is a subjective experience that only you can have. No one can tell you about your inner felt experience from the outside. It’s an inside out healing process when used in this way.
Initially somatic education worked with subconscious muscular contraction and sensory movement habits in relation to physical functioning. Somatic practices were designed for improved motor or physical function. It was often employed to help chronic pain and injuries. However, practitioners quickly found that this improved sensory-motor functioning also improved many pathologies.
Hanna, inspired by Moshé Feldenkrais, developed body-mind (more accurately body-psyche) therapies to improve health, physical functioning and chronic pain. These therapies include movement education to help bodies mature out of unhealthy patterns of function. Both Hanna Somatics and Feldenkrais therapies are still flourishing today.
These therapies, along with Ida Rolf’s Structural Integration (which works with fascia release combined with somatic movement) inspired Peter Levine’s seminal work – Somatic Experiencing.
Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a neurobiological approach to trauma and nervous system healing. Translation: SE works with the nervous system and entire body to heal and integrate bound energy patterns of wounding, pain and trauma. This somatic healing work takes body-psyche therapies even deeper.
In SE, we’re working with the inner experience of thoughts, emotions, primal movements, sensations and imagery. We’re working with trauma, memory. attachment patterns, as well as states where our fight, flight, freeze and fold (collapse) got tangled and are no longer functioning as designed. In some cases we’re developing security in nervous systems that have never had a somatic experience of safety. This work reconnects different parts of the nervous system — from the thinking brain (neocortex) to the emotional brain (limbic) and down into the sensory motor (autonomic) systems of the body.
The nervous system is intertwined with our emotions, endocrine system, and immune system. Our nervous system governs movement. It is the key to deep and abiding healing.
- Tracking emotions is a thread of somatic work, but not all of it.
- Moving with interoceptive awareness is somatic healing, but not all of it.
- Working with imagery and active imagination is part of somatic healing, but not all of it.
- Working with cranial and motor nerve function is part of somatic healing, but not all of it.
- Somatic healing integrates all of these aspects through inner felt sense, awareness and well regulated activation and settling in our nervous system
Although somatic approaches have been around for more than 50 years, they are finally becoming more mainstream. As with anything that comes into the mainstream, it will expand from its original framework. Good therapies continue to grow and improve, as they should.
Somatic healing is fundamentally a body-psyche therapeutic approach that now has many applications.
Doing separate pieces of somatic work through movement and emotion tracking is good, but the nervous system governs it all. In order for deep healing to occur and stabilize, we need the creation of new nervous system set points.
Body and psyche are inseparable. Yet, we’re still in the approach of fix the symptoms — even in alternative therapies. As a general rule, this approach tends to work with one system to suppress dysfunctional symptoms.
True healing, however, gets to the roots of the problem. True healing works with the cause.
Finding the cause, especially of challenging illnesses and dysfunction is hard. The allopathic system is full of healers that simply do not have time to work with true healing. This is an unfortunate reality of our times.
Somatics are the doorway to true and lasting healing.
But in order to have true nervous system healing, we need more than movement and awareness of said movement—whether it’s internal (somatic/interoceptive) movement or our own whole body movement in the world.
For deep change, we need to shift our autonomic nervous system (ANS) set point.
The ANS, however, runs unconsciously. Once it gets stuck and tangled in a threat responses or accommodations—whether from developmental wounds we encountered growing up, shock trauma we experienced along the way, or chronic traumatic stress that finally overwhelmed our system—we need help from someone who understands nervous system states, capacity and how to unwind bound energy in an order that doesn’t add to the already overwhelmed system.
Somatics, and embodiment are pathways to healing and becoming more whole. This is a process of becoming more ourselves through healing and self development. This is a body-psyche healing and growth into wholeness. All healing creates an awakening to a way of being that was previously unavailable.
Our nervous system states determine how we see the world. These states govern our internal and external stories. Somatic healing is a pathway into deep harmony of body, psyche and the true energy of who we are. Somatic healing includes our physiology and emotions. Nervous system healing takes somatic experiences deeper; down to the roots. This is where abiding healing occurs. This is where we actualize our most balanced, integrated and attuned expression of our core Self. This, my friend, is wholeness.
Healing is regeneration and repair. Somatics are the doorway into integrated and lasting nervous system healing, and into a deeper experience of our own unique wholeness.