What is Somatic Movement Coaching?
“Somatics” or “Somatic Coaching” are terms buzzing around the movement world. But what do these words really mean and why are so many coaches starting to pay more attention to them?
Somatics is most simply defined as the felt sense. This term is used broadly within the medical system to refer to anything concerning the body. In turn, Somatics Coaching would be simply training the felt sense. Seems like a simple concept right?
Unfortunately it’s not always so easy to listen to our body’s wisdom, or even understand where to start. Somatic Movement Coach, Renna Fir, explains the nuances of Somatics, and why it’s so beneficial to us.
what is somatic coaching?
When I am teaching people to relate to themselves somatically, I am helping people bridge a deeper conscious awareness to their felt sense or their gut feelings, or their overall sense of self-awareness. From my experience and the thousands of hours I have spent in Somatic coaching with my clients, I have learned to trust the body as the ultimate guide.
From an evolutionary perspective, the body has our best interest as it's a top priority because it knows very well how to survive by staying in balance. The body is constantly cuing us through our nervous systems in which direction to go.
Somatic coaching is a way of directing the Buddhist concept of mindfulness to bodily cues. As a result, we learn to listen carefully to the important messages from our bodies.
Bodily cues are very subtle, which is why mindfulness is a very helpful tool to start being able to listen to it. Somatic Coaching is a way of using movement and mindfulness to build greater sensitivity to bodily cues and gain a greater understanding of how to interpret them.
Why is somatic Coaching positive for our society?
Most people walking around in modern society are unaware of their bodily cues. I understand this to result from living in a fast-paced and overstimulating society.
Western culture does not typically encourage bodily awareness, and slowing down enough to listen to subtleties is contrary to capitalist societies that thrive on people rushing as fast as possible and staying just healthy enough to keep growing the market.
There are many reasons we can find benefits in this type of society, but in the wake of expansion, there has been a great loss, including our attention to subtlety. When we lose connection to the subtle cues in our bodies, we are likely in chronic pain from not being aware of our posture or enduring injuries from not knowing quite where we are in space.
We cannot listen to when certain foods, environments, or relationships are toxic to our bodies, and we stay in them until they result in sickness and disease.
This unawareness results in what we understand as anxiety, depression, trauma-related disorders, chronic inflammation, chronic pain, and other ways our bodies have learned to start communicating with us very loudly after being ignored for too long.
By training our awareness to the subtle cues of the body, we learn to repair, heal and reintegrate with a healthy balanced lifestyle.
What are the benefits of somatic coaching?
Some benefits of somatic movement coaching are, “redefining and strengthening body image; clarifying ego boundaries; providing an outlet for relief of physical tension, anxiety, and aggression; reducing cognitive and kinesthetic disorientation; increasing the capacity for communication, pleasure, fun, and spontaneity; and support for therapeutic medical goals (Seide, 1986).”
So is somatics coaching simply mindfulness?
Somatic movement coaching is an experiential process of uniting mind to body or in other words, directing more of our attention to the nuanced sensations of the body’s cues and signals concerning the outside world. Increased mind body connection brings an individual to embrace a stronger intuitive sense, increase self-regulation and in turn, have balanced mental and physical health. Mind-body connection has been a focal point for many healing modalities worldwide for thousands of years.
In this form of somatic movement coaching, In this modality of somatic movement coaching, we work from a framework of human development theory and the expressive therapies continuum.
In this framework, we work the developmental stages of both the right and left stages of the brain to access the complete mind/body capacities for Kinesthetic/Sensory, Perceptual/Affective, and Cognitive/Symbolic processing.
When all of these mind-body abilities are accessed in unison, we can access creative processing, which is the ultimate tool for problem-solving and joyful living.
How do you achieve mind-body connection?
Somatic movement coaching works in session series from 6-12 at a time. The first session is an intake where we gain a clear picture of the client’s posture and mental patterns and any other relevant health history. Most importantly, the client and coach collaborate to form realistic goals that can include but are not limited to…
Pain reduction through posture correction and tension release techniques
Connection to intuitive sense, or gut feelings with built sensitivity to the felt sense
Overcome decision fatigue with creative processing skills
Stress regulation with increased sensation and nervous system tone
Each session will start with a brief check-in and presence practice to drop us into the body. We will then go through planned movement practices that apply to the client’s goals. The session ends with harvests and time for self-reflection.
Most of the session is spent moving, and the intensity of the movement can vary greatly from lying down on the floor and breathing to pouring sweat all over the ground. There is no right way for your body to move. Only you get to decide that.
Somatic Movement is so much more than our felt sense… It’s about what connects us to our deeper intuition, to having a healthier mind and body and to bringing awareness to our deeper feelings, ones that live inside the body.
A restless mind often buries it’s feeling inside the body, and uncovering and moving past anger, anxiety, pain, depression, takes time and awareness. Awareness of the skin we are in. Awareness of how we move. How we breathe.
Getting connected with your body may be a goal of yours in the new year, and if so, check out flow shala events and classes. We focus on taking a deep dive into body awareness, linking breath and movement and correct alignment in all of our offerings.
If you have the desire to be in your body more, to feel your intuition, create more mindfulness in daily life… It all starts with taking action, what will your next move be?