Principles and Philosophies of Somatic Education

Recently, our Founder and Director, Martha Carter, completed the Essential Somatics Movement Teacher Training (ESMTT) program, a 200-hour certification program in Somatic Movement based on the principles, movements, and concepts developed by Thomas Hanna and other somatic pioneers. The paper below is her (successful) submission for the final exam; we hope you find it interesting!

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INTRODUCTION

As I become more experienced practicing and teaching Somatics, I am excited to understand that this profound system of neuromuscular reprogramming can enrich a lifetime of movement. Regardless of age, ability or experience, this technique can be accessible and helpful for living with optimal ease and mobility.

Based on the teachings of philosopher and movement theorist, Thomas Hanna (November 21, 1928 – July 29, 1990), Somatic Education effectively re-programs the body-mind connection. Hanna developed his great discoveries while studying neurology, advancing the understanding that all ‘somas’ or ‘living beings’ respond to stress in very specific primal patterns which he referred to as Postural Stress Reflexes. These reflexes cause involuntary contractions that get stuck in the body, buried deeply in the subconscious part of the brain where they are hard to access and change. Leading to chronic imbalances, dysfunction and disease, these unhelpful ‘habituated’ patterns are often considered to be a normal part of aging.

Hanna did not agree with this common perspective, calling it the “myth of aging”.

Going beyond western medicine’s tendency to separate mind and body, Hanna understood that because all living somas are self-moving and self-experiencing sensory-motor systems, there is no reason for us to ever lose control of our physicality. Barring a disabling illness or accident, somas should only improve with age, rather than degenerate. In fact, his technique is revolutionary as it can teach each person how to achieve and maintain control of their physical and cognitive abilities throughout their life.

“Let me say this emphatically: To despise aging is not only to despise life, but to betray a pitiful ignorance of the nature of life…Unless we understand that life and aging are a process of growth and progress, we will never know the first principles of living.”

ABOUT POSTURAL REFLEXES

One of the first lessons in Somatics is to understand that all living beings tend to develop habituated stress reflexes; that is, repeated activation of our primal survival reactions - commonly referred to as fight, flight or freeze - can become habitual to the point that they become problematic. To understand our individual postural tendencies is the first step towards changing them.

There are three distinct reflexes. Do your shoulders tend to slump forward? If so, that is called Red Light. Or do you have a sway back? That is Green Light. Or perhaps you feel crooked or have a curve in your spine? That is called a Trauma Reflex. And finally, sometimes it happens that there is an overall stiffness, or some kind of combination of all three patterns, which is called Braced or the Dark Vice. 

Red Light
In simple terms, slumped or ‘Red Light’ posture means that the front of the body is chronically tight, pulling the head and shoulders forward. This pattern is very common in our culture where people drop their head to look down at their computer keyboard or cell phone, or if they carry shyness, fear or shame. It can lead to shoulder and neck pain, headaches, digestive system issues, restricted lung capacity, lower back pain, anxiety and depression.

Green Light
A sway back, or ‘Green Light’, is also very common in contemporary society as people focus on the modern obsession of accomplishment and success. This posture can be very tense and is likened to a military stance. The strong back muscles become chronically tight with stress, pulling the spine tall and backwards and arching at the waist while the ribs reach forward. This pattern can lead to chronic lower back pain, neck and shoulder tension, tight legs and hips and shallow breathing — and even high blood pressure and heart attacks.

Trauma Reflex
For people who are asymmetrical from side to side, the spine appears and feels crooked. This is called the ‘Trauma Reflex’. This pattern is the predominant result of scoliosis, but can also happen due to a traumatic event such as a fall or car accident, or simply from the necessity of carrying one or more heavy babies on the hip for several years. With trauma, one side of the body is shorter than the other, and it sometimes seems like one arm or one leg is longer than the other, or the head may be tilted to one side.

Braced
A ‘braced’ posture is when the torso is held still and stiff often lacking supple movement and articulation of the joints. Rather than moving freely, the shoulders, ribs, and possibly the neck and hips, are locked into a tension pattern that restricts overall well being.  Hanna figured out that the more we understand our own postural stress reflexes, the easier it is to learn to observe our own 'Sensory Motor Amnesia’. Somatic exercises allow us to do this by re-educating the body to reverse the accumulation of the ‘amnesia” To paraphrase Hanna, ‘whatever was learned can be unlearned, and whatever was forgotten can be remembered’. 

SENSORY MOTOR AMNESIA

So what exactly is Sensory Motor Amnesia (SMA)? SMA shows up as pain, dysfunction or the inability to sense or mobilize specific parts of the body. It is a state where the body has lost sensation and/or voluntary control of a movement or posture because it has become so deeply learned.

For example, if we sit slouched forward at our computer day after day, our nervous system learns to keep us in that slouched posture by keeping certain muscles contracted, and over time, slouching forward begins to feel normal and even good, while sitting up straight takes effort and feels uncomfortable. We typically remain blissfully unaware of this subconscious adaptation until, one day, it finally causes us pain. Then, when we do become aware and want to change our posture, no amount of conscious exercise or body work or stretching will change the muscle memory. The muscles are engaged on autopilot as the sensory motor cortex has gone ‘off line.’

Over the years, this habituated pattern will not only cause physical discomfort, but will likely lead to shallow breathing which is often associated with negative thinking and a host of emotional issues including anxiety and depression.

In other words, Sensory Motor Amnesia not only affects the physical body, but the emotional and intellectual soma as well. Working on one will shift the other and vice versa. This is the true brilliance of Hanna’s work: He recognized that SMA affects everything in life, and reversing it means allowing for a better quality of living.

“If life means movement and death means non-movement, then it may be permissible to think that more movement means more life and that less movement means less life… Conversely…to enhance efficiency of bodily movement is to enhance the viability of human beings in all of their factions, whether physical, mental, or emotional.”

So how to enhance the efficiency of bodily movement and the rest of our human factions? How to bring the lost connections back online and gain control? Hanna discovered that the most effective way of doing this was through a neuromuscular sequence of movements called ‘pandiculation’.

PANDICULATION

Similar to a cat stretch, pandiculation is a three-part movement involving a contraction, a slow, conscious release of that contraction, and finally, complete rest. This is not to be confused with stretching. In fact, it is exactly the opposite. Where stretching pulls the muscles away from the centre of the body, pandiculation actually contracts muscles towards the centre of the body. Like pulling on a knot, stretching a knotted muscle will only make it tighter and harder to unwind. By pandiculating, or contracting towards the centre of the knot, the brain can learn to sense and let go of the chronic tension through a slow, mindful release of that contraction. This action awakens and reconnects the sensory motor cortex, reprogramming the brain-to-muscle connection and ideally achieving optimal muscle length in a resting state. And the key to this re-education is that each person learns to do this for themselves. Actively doing something rather than having something done to you is an essential part of the technique. Like Hanna says, ‘you are the only one who can do it for yourself’.

FREEDOM - WHAT IS YOUR RANGE?

Ultimately, all of Hanna’s work supports his primary focus as a philosopher: FREEDOM. His truly profound realization was that a body that is stuck in a reflex is a body that has a very limited range. So by extension, the more range of motion one has in the soma, the more range of freedom one has in life. Fortunately for all of us, he proceeded to dedicate his life to sharing this idea through the development of Somatics.

“How much of you is there that potentially can be used? What's the range of your talents? What's the range of your knowledge? What's the range of your compassion? What's the range of your love? What's the range of your energy? What's the range of your interest? What's the range of your curiosity? We're speaking of functional range, functional magnitude, and what you see (when doing somatics) is a change in the magnitude of functions.“

Note: All quotes in italics are by Thomas Hanna from his writings and CD recordings.