Something we notice often as Clinical Somatic Educators is the profound affect Somatics has not only on somebody’s physical wellbeing but also on somebody’s life as whole. I know that may sound like a massive statement but it is so often true and makes a lot of sense as to why that is.
Somatic movements are mindful movements; movements that we take time to do with awareness. You need to take the time to stop, notice and sense what’s going on with your physical body, what moves, what doesn’t move, what might be uncomfortable and what feels good. Sure you can go through the movements and pay no attention to what you are doing but you really don’t get as much out of it as you could, if you paid attention to them.
So what happens during that time, the stopping, the noticing, the break from a busy day of rushing, being in demand at home or at work? When we stop paying lip service to our movements and truly embrace ourselves as a soma, the connection of our body from within, it reflects into our lives and we stop playing lip service to our life; we learn to live somatically. We learn to live with awareness.
When we slow down and create space in our lives it allows us to see more, to live with awareness. To notice the world around us, people, places, opportunities. Things that previously were there but we were rushing past, unconsciously going about our day with the same patterns and the same habits we had created. Our body is an amazing, living, breathing, growing, adapting organism capable of so much, as are we.
This new awareness of our life is like a breath of fresh air, like the feeling of being stood by the ocean or on a mountain and taking a deep inhale and exhale of air, feeling a sense of freedom.
It can also highlight patterns in our lives that have been creating tension in our body, holding on to negative pattens of behaviour, maybe for protection, maybe out of habit. Sometimes being aware of this can be challenging and uncomfortable like with learning a new movement pattern, but that’s ok, just take it slowly and notice what’s there.
Tension in our bodies creates tension in our lives, movement in our bodies creates movement in our lives.
