What is somatics

What is somatics?

Clinical Somatics is an effective form of neuromuscular
re-education that goes directly to the root cause of most stress related pain: the brain and the way in which it senses and organizes the muscles and movement.

By learning to regain both awareness, sensation, and motor control of muscles – an educational process that can only be achieved through movement – the brain can remember how to relax and move the muscles properly. This process of sensory motor training creates improved muscle function and enhanced sensory awareness.

Why body awareness?

Using the process of biofeedback, the movements result in body-mind awareness through one's central nervous system to
re-pattern and reset the resting levels of muscle.

Benefits include:

  • non-invasive (chronic and acute) pain relief,
  • improved mobility,
  • improved strength and coordination,
  • improved posture,
  • freedom of movement,
  • ease of breath,
  • stress relief,
  • better balance and proprioception.

Our program's medical origins:

Thomas Hanna, PhD inspired the development of Clinical Somatic Education with over two decades of work in the field of Somatic Education.

 He began as a Feldenkrais practitioner, and developed his own method of Somatic Education after studying neurology at the University of Miami Medical School. It was there that he did research into the muscular ways in which all humans respond to stress reflexes and how these full body reflexes can habituate at the level of the central nervous system, causing muscular pain that contributes to many common conditions.

After studying Feldenkrais methods, he took the concepts of micro-movement and combined it with his knowledge of the nervous system to create targeted movement patterns that directly reset muscle tone centrally using the cortical (thinking, conscious) brain.

 

Hanna developed Pandiculation, which is a unique neurologic resetting technique, which is akin to resetting the circuit breaker in the brain controlling muscle tone. As a result of this brain-mediated “resetting,” it can produce durable results with more targeted movement and shorter/fewer sessions.