Somatics & yoga
If you have been to my classes or trainings over the last 2 years or so, you may have heard me use the term somatics or somatic movement. Somatics is the study and practice of exploring and understanding the fabric of your soma through your internal awareness (Shapiro 2020). The root word soma in Greek means “of the body.” In essence, somatic movement is experiencing the body and noticing the sensations that arise when you rest, move, breathe intentionally, and shift from one pose to the next. Through this lens, our yoga practice becomes an opportunity to explore the ways in which we inhabit our bodies by developing proprioceptive and interoceptive awareness to facilitate a pathway towards an experience of embodiment.
As you all know, the practice of yoga includes meditation, breathing exercises and, of course, movement. My work as a yoga teacher has been to infuse the yoga practice with somatic awareness techniques, some of which are inherent to the practice and others are not. For example, creating a specific breathing pattern: noticing the length, pace and depth of the breath is referenced in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.
Another somatic movement technique you may have explored with me that is not inherent to yoga is moving organically while in a tabletop position. Oftentimes, our movement patterns can become routinized and rigid. Being able to move in a non-linear way can free up any places that have become stuck or stagnant. Moving spontaneously and with pleasure invites an opportunity to build different pathways to what it feels like to be in your body.
Our bodies send us signals, impulses, sensations and feelings all day every day. We develop a capacity to understand what these sensations mean in terms of our nervous system and then move with the appropriate response. When we feel a particular nervous system response we can find a resource that will help create a sense of self regulation if that’s what’s required in the moment. (The nervous system is an incredibly nuanced part of the body and beyond the scope of this blog to dive further into the details.)