Somatic Movement Education

Somatic Education lessons

Force does not teachIn a Somatic Education Class, you will learn a series of self-care movements to release tight muscles on the front, back and sides of your body. The overall goal is to become more aware of habitual muscle tensions in order to release them (and get rid of them). On a deeper level, we also become more aware of general patterns of stress responses – what is our emotional response, what is our habitual thought pattern when something stressful happens? So it’s not only about movement – but movement is the starting point of a meaningful journey of knowing ourselves.
The movements are practiced in a slow manner to allow the brain to ‘catch up’ again (ie. experience movement as non-threatening, in a novel way and as a doable and repeatable, nourishing activity), always within your individual comfortable range of motion and never pushing into pain. You are refreshing your body’s representation / map in your central nervous system (fun fact: there are multiple sites of neural representations of your body, both in the brain / sensory-motor cortex, as well as in the spinal cord) and sensing can become more accurate again.

While Somatic Movement classes are relaxing, the focus is on learning about how we move, which parts of our body we can’t feel in specific movements and exploring how we can integrate them again. Our premise is that we can rediscover that we are ‘whole and in control’. This process takes time – Somatic Education is not a quick fix, but a practice of developing our faculties of sensing and self-organisation in movement.


In a group class or course, I teach with a more general approach while adjusting to each person’s profile if possible. Ideally, you start with some Clinical sessions and continue to refine your movement with ongoing classes and self-exploration.

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I have trained as a Hanna Somatic Exercise Coach under Martha Peterson Essential Somatics beginning of 2014 to teach Somatic Movement classes, building on a decade of teaching movement professionally. The classes are pelvic floor health friendly and follow evidence based best practice for clients with pain.

I also teach and mentor new Essential Somatics Movement Teachers throughout their training.
This is me teaching my colleagues and teachers at one intensive module of my Clinical Somatic Educator training in York (March 2016)

 

Online classes

Somatic Education works well when taught online – you don’t need to look at the screen during a lesson, as you don’t have to copy movements. A class or private lesson is guided verbally, and my instructions are adjusted to your movements, like in a live class. All you need is a laptop or smartphone with a camera and some space on the floor. Set up your camera so you can see the space on the floor and have some light and you’re good to go!