I hope this finds you healthy, happy and safe today.
I’m thrilled to share that I’ve graduated from the Essential Somatics® 3-Year 600 hour Clinical Somatic Education Certification Training (an extra fourth year due to covid restrictions – completely worth it!!). Thank you for your encouragement and support throughout this training.
Why do I love this slow, gentle and safe practice? As Thomas Hanna, the founder of Hanna Somatics, so beautifully shared:
“Because you are dealing with something that is so precious; it’s one of the dearest and most satisfying things you could possibly do with your life. To relate to other people in a way that you give and create experiences that are self-transformitory. That’s more than healing. It is in a sense, like giving people back their lives.”
Don’s Kind Words:
“Over the past few years I have had a couple of equine assisted ground impacts. These have resulted in a number of fractures that with time and caution healed but my body also took some precautions which left me with a number of issues. I had worked with Alana on previous occasions and decided I needed her help again. In the past 3 months she has helped fix my posture which relieved some of my ongoing pains. We have also worked on a number of other issues that had shown up because of the fractures and I can now ride my horse pretty much pain free. The material she has provided for my home work has been very informative and easy to follow which has helped us getting such good results.” Don M.
The photos above show Don’s progress over an 8 week time frame from the start of his very first Clinical Somatic Education session on the left to 8 weeks later on the right of each photo.
Bravo Don!!!
His amazing progress was due to his commitment to attending private sessions where he became aware of where he was holding muscle tension and learned specific somatic movements to do at home to release it himself.
When you are unaware that you have muscles that are stuck in deeply ingrained dysfunctional movement patterns you may be experiencing discomfort or pain.
Even ten minutes of a daily gentle, slow somatic movement practiced mindfully and with curiosity will allow your brain to begin regaining voluntary control of your muscle function:
- releasing muscle tension to create ease
- improving movement patterns
- improving coordination, mobility, balance, posture
- increasing your energy
- settling your nervous system
- reducing or completely resolving discomfort and/or pain
The purpose of Somatic Movement Education is to enhance your function and body-mind integration through movement awareness.
It includes:
- postural and movement evaluation
- movement patterning and re-patterning
- communication and guidance through touch and verbal cues
What is Clinical Somatic Education?
Hanna Somatic Education or Clinical Somatic Education was developed by the late neuromuscular pioneer, Thomas Hanna. It is a practice in neuromuscular re-education to safely increase strength, flexibility and balance. It improves communication between one’s nervous system and muscles to increase mobility and provide newfound freedom where before there was restricted movement and possibly pain.
Somatic Characteristics
- Soma is a Greek word meaning “the living body”. Humans are somas and have the unique ability of turning awareness inward.
- Somas can self-sense
- Somas can self-guide
- Somas can self-regulate based on what they sense
- Somas can self-balance
- Somas can self-actualize: they can experience freedom that comes from self-sensing, self-guiding and self-regulating
- Somas stand upright in gravity
- Somas learn skills and habits including sensory motor competence (ease/moving well) and sensory motor amnesia (non-ease/areas forget to move and get stuck)
As a human soma we can make the choices from what we learn to move towards what we want and dream of.
Sensory Motor Amnesia
When the part of the brain called the cortex no longer has the ability to sense or control muscles and their synergists as a result of repetitive stressors (accidents, injuries, surgeries, repetitive emotional or physical stress or trauma) upon the nervous system, the ability to fully relax the muscles is lost. Habitual muscular contraction from the stressors will be present and is not sensed by the cortex. There may have been an injury, surgery or repetitive activity whereby a maladaptive movement pattern has been learned. When we are not aware of the habituated contraction and assume that the muscles are relaxed, we do not have full control and free movement.
Pandiculation
The fantastic news is that because SMA has been adaptively learned by the brain we can retrain the sensory motor cortex of the brain to sense and move the muscles more effectively and efficiently, reversing the effects of SMA. This technique is called a pandiculation.
When we pandiculate we are consciously increasing the contracted state of the muscle(s) from their current “resting” state followed by a conscious slow and deliberate lengthening of the muscle(s) to where they are relaxed.
Key to pandiculation is that the cortex senses and feels the interoceptive sensations that are present throughout. What does the contraction of the muscle(s) feel like? What does the slow deliberate lengthening of the muscle(s) feel like? What does complete relaxation of the muscle(s) feel like? The uniqueness of this practice is that it is not the quantity of repetitions of specific movements done but the quality or how much one allows the cortex to truly focus awareness on all three parts of the pandiculation.
We have our own individual sense of proprioception and interoception to help us grow our awareness of our movement patterns:
- Proprioception: where is my body in space? This is awareness of my body’s position.
- Interoception: what are the sensations I’m currently experiencing inside my body?
In attending a Clinical Somatic Education (CSE) session you can be both a passive or an active participant mindfully sensing and feeling how you move. This awareness provides your nervous system with feedback to improve muscle function and movement patterns. You are using your first person perspective of what you sense and feel to improve your function which also improves your structure and posture.
As a Clinical Somatic Educator working with you I will guide you through a hands on education process of learning how to gently and slowly pandiculate (contract, slowly and deliberately lengthen to a relaxed state) your muscles in smaller and simpler movement patterns where you may not be aware your muscles are stuck in habituated tension and your brain has forgotten how to move them well (Sensory Motor Amnesia). Through this practice your brain learns how to regain control of those stuck muscles and improve your mobility. More complex movements are introduced as your brain regains control of simple ones. In so doing, I am offering my third person perspective to you as your sense of proprioception (where their body is in space) may be distorted due to Sensory Motor Amnesia. This enables you to deepen your internal awareness and re-establish a more accurate sense of proprioception.
As a human soma we can make the choices from what we learn to move towards what we want and dream of.
I am constantly amazed at the potency of this gentle practice in both private sessions and group classes.
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
