What Is Somatic Yoga Therapy?
Soma is the greek word meaning “living body”. Others see you as a body with a face, a certain shape and size. What they cannot see is your soma. When you look at yourself from the inside, you are aware of feelings, movements, thoughts, sensations and intentions – a very different fuller being.
The somatic viewpoint is that you are self-aware, self-sensing and self-moving and therefore, have the ability to change yourself. You are not to blame for any symptoms you develop, and you are not completely powerless in healing them either.
Transition is always happening within your soma; just by being curious and kind, that transition becomes an opportunity for positive transformation.
No, it depends who is teaching it. The past few years, yoga teachers are seizing the star studded “Somatic Yoga” badge with varied interpretations. Though knowledgeable teachers may include invitational language, encourage an inward focus and offer modifications more suited for your body, they are telling you what to do with a goal in mind. This does not build personal agency; the sense that actions are self-generated.
Megan has been teaching her Somatic Yoga Therapy – or what she affectionately called “Sloppy Yoga” for over 15 years. This approach combines the healing facets of somatic movement and yoga therapy. It initially blossomed as an accessible form of yoga for cardiac and cancer rehabilitation.
Weekly Somatic Yoga Therapy classes and teacher trainings were offered at Megan’s studio in Wisconsin for a decade. At Embody With MM, this style of yoga continues to be a highly adaptable and comforting practice that is co-created by the teacher and student. It nourishes the nervous system. It also creates spaciousness and ease in your energetic and spiritual being-ness.
My answer is no, but it could be.
Imagine that half way through your yoga class, you come out of a standing posture, lie down, and curl up into a relaxed fetal position…because that is what you need in that moment. The teacher would most likely worry or perhaps see your choice as disrespectful. And you might feel the discomfort of other students watching you.
In classic yoga, there is a goal of an end posture. A skilled teacher will give you specific alignment cues to safely bring you toward that goal. Most yoga classes supersize the physical facet of yoga called Asana. This approach limits the focus on the bio-mechanical structure of your being. As a Yoga Therapist, Megan understands that working in isolation, or treating physical symptoms, is an outdated model of wellness.
Somatic Yoga Therapy takes an interactive whole body perspective. Megan’s Somatic Yoga uses the Yoga Therapy Panchamaya Kosha Model to work beyond diagnose and symptoms and into the root cause. In this therapeutic model, you are more than just a physical body; you have five “doors” to enter yourself. You can enter any doorway of your being – physical, mental, emotional, spirit – in movement or stillness, and your whole being benefits.
Additionally, the intention in yoga Asana is different than in Somatic Yoga Therapy. An Asana focused class (hopefully) creates a safe container to purposely stress the body in “fight or flight”. The benefits come in pushing yourself to “find your edge”. By managing physical and psychological stress, you learn to regulate the nervous system. Somatic Yoga is designed to keep you in the rest and digest mode of the parasympathetic nervous system. Somatic Yoga Therapy constantly takes mini savasanas (the restful position saved for the end of an Asana class that calms the nervous system). The Space Of Grace is a restorative time where the body is in a state of “undoing”. You stop the mindful movement where the body naturally rests and remain present in sensation.
The majority of Megan’s Somatic Yoga Therapy is done on the ground with your eyes closed. The only potential comparison is what you feel inside yourself from moment to moment – day to day. There is no mirror to outwardly distract you toward perfecting the posture. What reflects back is what is hidden from others (and perhaps yourself) within.
Somatic Yoga Therapy is the process of learning how to bring yourself into balance. There is open-ended potential to interpret the movements based on your unique perception. That perception of self from the skin and in is called interoception, (your ability to feel yourself on the inside). In its most familiar form, interoception is the constant messages of change inside you saying you are cold or hot, hungry or full, or need to find a bathroom.
One of the ways Somatic Yoga works is by relaxing muscles. You don’t just listen to an audio about relaxing, you feel yourself relaxing! First person experience of the relaxation process is your greatest mediator for inner peace. To be able to stay awake and present in the body while familiarizing yourself with the tension is the beginning of letting it go. That’s why it is called the “relaxation process”. No one else can do it for you, and you have to take steps to process mental anxiety to relax muscular tension.
It is common to hold your stress as muscular tension in familiar areas: hips, neck, shoulders, spine, etc. In fact, 90% of all lower back pain is “non-specific”, meaning there is no identifiable structural issue. Somatic Yoga focuses on eliminating Sensory Motor Amnesia (inhibited muscles). The muscle(s) is not firing properly because the neural signal from the brain is not reaching the muscle. This is different than a weak muscle, which is a muscle that is firing normally (no inhibition) but it is lacking strength. Typically, muscles that cause pain are inhibited, or in a pattern of Sensory Motor Amnesia.
When you feel anxious or emotionally imbalanced, releasing muscular tension is so important. Thoughts and emotions can fester anxiety; the result is muscular tension. Stress cannot be present in your body when your body is relaxed.
Somatic Yoga is an active (in the moment) and voluntary (in control) movement based component of Yoga Therapy. It is a bio-psycho-social-spiritual model of care for chronic pain and trauma. It works into all of the layers of our Being in the Panchamaya Kosha Model.
All chronic pain is trauma, and some trauma involves chronic pain. Both trauma and chronic pain can be an active response of immobility. With pain, it may be located in a particular joint or place in the body where the initial injury occurred. With trauma, it may manifest in the whole body and any systems or layers of the body.
Somatic Yoga is a multiple movement strategy that can rewire your internal tendencies. Like pain, trauma stores itself in the body. It can be perceived as pain and deregulate the nervous system.
Approaching movement the same way without thought is habit. To move consciously with multiple strategies generates new habits in the nervous system and freedom from pain and suffering. Even though the movement may look the same from outside the body, the brain senses the movements differently when you voluntarily start the action from distinct places in the body.
In an embodied practice like Somatic Yoga, action is initiated in different patterns, and from different perceived points, joints, bones, organs or tissues in the body. The movements can be bigger, smaller, or not at all. You might experience the changes externally as an increase or decrease in motion. You may also feel the changes internally as a leg feeling longer or lighter.
Somatic Yoga develops a sense of personal agency in the body. In other words, you have the ability to feel in control and to be able to voluntarily take action. Instead of things “happening to you”, you are in charge. You always have the option to stop anywhere within the movement. If the movement doesn’t work the way it is presented, it can be changed to meet your needs. You can also decide that it is enough for today entirely.
No! You are not doing exercises. You are creating a kind relationship with yourself by doing therapeutic movements in a space of relaxed awareness within your body. I prefer to think of it as a play date with yourself.
Myth #1: It’s normal to exercise. Whenever you move to do anything, you’re engaging in physical activity. In contrast, exercise is voluntary physical activity undertaken for the sake of fitness. You may think exercise is normal, but it’s a modern behavior. Somatic Yoga is necessary playtime!
Myth #2 People think that what is sore is weak and should be strengthened with exercise. Muscles that are sore are often chronically contracted and have a high degree of muscle tone. Rather than being weak, the muscles may in fact be quite strong, but they are fatigued and overworked from the constant contraction. Repetitive exercise to strengthen the muscle may not help. In fact, exercise can create more pain and further entrench painful muscle compensation patterns.
Think of Somatic Yoga as a moving meditation. This approach will be more enjoyable. It also lessens the likelihood of unknowingly causing more restriction.
The purpose of pandiculation is to alleviate muscle and joint pain, retrain posture and movement patterns, and prevent recurring injuries. It is a neuromuscular re-education technique developed by Thomas Hanna (the founder of Somatics) . You create a voluntary conscious contraction of muscle/s beyond their normal range followed by a slow lengthening, then a complete relaxation.
Contracting and releasing muscles this way activates innate accurate feedback about the level of tension in the muscles. This information is sent to the nervous system.
In Somatic Yoga, breathing is appreciated as your most innate pandiculation; an active contraction of the diaphragm on inhale followed by a passive release on exhale. To get a clearer understanding of pandiculation, watch your dogs and cats every time they get up!
This is another Somatics term coined by Thomas Hanna to describe how stress and/or injury replaces normally functional movement patterns at a neurological level. Sensory Motor Amnesia (SMA), or debauched kinesthesia, is thought to be the root cause of chronic muscular tension and pain. SMA is a nervous system to muscle communication issue; you are unable to tell if a muscle is relaxed or engaged.
The brain is hardwired for protection. Under stress or with injury, the brain unwittingly tells the nervous system to keep muscles tight for safety sake and forgets how to relax them. As you learn a movement or posture, not only does the control of that movement or posture become automatic and involuntary, you also lose the sensation of the movement or posture.
The natural resting space of the body should be free of pain and contraction. With SMA, the muscles stay contracted. You feel muscular pain even when you think you are relaxed.
With the majority of Somatic Yoga, you are supported by the ground. The brain doesn’t have to work so hard to keep you safe in gravity and turns it’s attention to other things…like functional muscle movement and encouraging the nervous system to self-regulate.
As a bonus, Somatic Yoga incorporates myofascial play to release fascial restrictions in tandem with retraining muscles.
You can read a few of my blogs for motivation, listen to a podcast, join our Embody Membership for community and inspiration, or pick a free YouTube video and get to it!
Yoga Therapy The Alchemy Of Healing Podcast
Healing Is Something We Are Interview
How do you guide individuals in incorporating somatic yoga practices into their daily routines, especially for those new to this approach? Most of the individuals I work with in somatic yoga have little to no prior experience with traditional yoga. Interestingly, I find that working with beginners is often easier. Without preconceived notions of what yoga “should” look like, they are free from rigid expectations—there’s no final pose to perfect, no strict alignment to adhere to, and no right or wrong way to move.
How To Start A Somatic Journey Inward
In Somatic Yoga, we work with the nervous system. The nervous system is more responsive and self-regulating when it recognises that the body is secure in gravity. The sympathetic and parasympathetic systems operate in harmony.
How To Start A Yoga Practice At Home
Asana is the physical limb of yoga, so pay attention to what your physical body is saying. Sensation is communication. Pain is not the only way our bodies talk to us. There is pleasure. And there is absence of sensation.
Change Pain With Somatics & Distraction
The most powerful thing to change pain is your own mind. A practice used in Yoga Therapy for healing pain is the method of distraction. Distraction is about re-investing some of your focus. It does not mean the pain is gone. For instance, we often use the breath as an awareness point to distract ourselves from negative thoughts or feelings. This is one coping tool. In Somatic Yoga, distraction is achieved through movement; you are asked to pay attention to and initiate movement from a part of the body that feels comfortable, or is not in pain. I
Release Stored Emotions In The Hips With Somatic Yoga
The hips are lamentably but accurately considered the junk drawer of stored emotions. If you follow the belief that the issues are in the tissues, mental health conditions and trauma create physical symptoms in our body. Even when mental stress dulls or ceases, tension lingers in the tissues of the body in the form of neuropeptides.
Helping Students Overcome Practice Challenges Though Interoception in Somatics
When muscles fail to perform, it is not necessarily because they are strong or weak. Muscle inhibition occurs in athletes and armchair quarterbacks alike. The ability to control muscles comes partly from nervous system communication. Somatic Yoga was developed to increase communication among the nervous system, brain, and pranic body. My eyes opened to the benefits of a regular Somatic Yoga practice as a result of experiencing chronic pain in the sacroiliac joint (nervous system), post-concussion syndrome (brain), and energy-body consciousness (pranic body).
The Value Of A Sweet & Spicy Core
I started to think about my offhanded video title “Sweet and Spicy Core” and what a confusing, nonsensical image that might be. Speaking linguistically, we throw the word “core” around to take on a broad range of meanings. The definition of “core” includes absolute, deep rooted, or in a complete or extreme way. Most often, the word core is added to make a statement stronger. In my definition, I believe having a sweet and spicy core can make you stronger physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.