Your Body Remembers What You Forget
In our sixth podcast episode we discussed the practice of Somatics and Somatics Education - this information should be out there for all to experience and practice. A truly incredible and inspiring session with our fabulous guest speaker Liz Underwood - who has trained in Somatics and now teaches it in courses, classes and through her membership. Here are some of the key elements we discussed:
YOUR BODY REMEMBERS WHAT YOU FORGeT
In this episode we are highlighting the incredible and beneficial practice of somatics, what it is, how it works and how you can start your own ‘self enquiry’ - sensing yourself from within.
Liz explains Somatics is a movement method - the creator is Thomas Hanna, he was a philosopher and really interested in people being free - having the choice to help themselves out of pain and move with freedom.
Liz talks about Somatics being a neuromuscular movement practice and how over time we can habituate muscular tension, the sub-cortex of the brain holds onto the muscle tension, therefore it is banked and can be doing it without your conscious knowledge i.e. while you sleep, in your posture, how you walk etc.
How can we re-educate ourselves, our brain-body connection to create a new possibility, a new neural pathway for pain free movement? Our nervous system responds to stress in certain ways and patterns - Liz talks about the 3 main reflex patterns that we might have or experience.
The aftereffects of surgery and how this trauma response can be detrimental to having a pain free body.
Do you have any pain or tension within your body? Somatics includes the practice of inner soma scans - sensing your body from within. How are you standing, how are you sitting? Is there more weight through your right or left foot? Are your shoulders raised? This is the starting point to releasing the holding patterns.
Most pain is muscular - if it is - 95% of the time, you can deal with it - correct it. We discuss if this also applies with arthritis or is it really about bone deficiency.
Liz tells her story about how she got into somatics after spending some time beforehand as a yoga teacher. You can find out more about Liz by visiting her website: www.intelligent-movement.co.uk.