07/10/2025
What is somatics and somatic movement?
Somatics is a term that was coined by Thomas Hanna in the 1970s. He founded Somatic Movement, which is movement education that uses pandiculation for neuromuscular re-education. This movement practice helps to reset your muscle tonus, reducing tension, pain + held stress throughout the body, as well as helps to create smoother, effortless movement as we undo our habituated patterns and create new, more efficient ones.
Phew! That’s a lot to unpack.
Let’s start with ourselves.
We all have a body. We are all somas. Somas, as I am using it here, refers to your body. We can think of our body as parts of a whole but everything is connected. I like to think of our body working as a team, constantly reorganizing itself around our daily movements and activities.
Somatics is a practice where we bring a sense of curiosity as we explore our internal sensations: how we move and how we sense, bridging and melding the mind and the body. And as the term “somatics” gets used more frequently, this is often how it is described: exploring our internal sensations.
This practice is more than just sensing, or paying attention, to how your body feels as we move.
While Hanna identified three main habituated holding patterns, it’s important to remember that every body is unique and every body tells its own story. Every body has lived a life and every body has a story to tell.
While some of these habituated patterns can be reflexive, some develop as a result of how we live our life. Think of how you move your body through the day: what ‘patterns’ do you notice? Think of how you feel: what ‘patterns’ do you notice?
Our habituated holding + moving patterns can be so deeply ingrained that we might not even be aware of them.
Our patterns are unconscious.
Through our somatic practice, we can begin to bring our awareness to these areas and effect changes. There is a neuroscience component to this that I won’t get into in this post because, while I am many things, I am NOT a neuroscientist, but most importantly, you DON’T NEED TO UNDERSTAND IT TO GET THE BENEFITS.
What IS important is to develop a curiosity about YOU and YOUR body. What feels familiar as you move through your practice?
We can’t make changes to our patterns until we become aware of them.
As we go through our movement practice, and build our own unique somatic literacy through our felt-sense (or self awareness), we can start to understand the whole-ness and connectivity of our body. By moving slowly + intentionally, not only do we draw our conscious awareness to our felt-sense experience, we can also begin to effect changes in our habituated patterns.
We go into our patterns to come out of our patterns.
Oh the juiciness of that statement. One of my teachers said that a few months ago and it was such an ‘aha’ moment for me, both for my practice but mostly beyond my mat, as well.
In our movement practice, we use a pandicular response to bring awareness to particular areas and then move slowly + intentionally to understand how our whole body organizes around these.
Through our somatic practice, we can start to effect change: in our tissues, in our bodies, in our lives.
Our bodies are fascinating and it’s a never-ending journey of exploration and insight.
Our movement practice helps to release held tension + stress and helps to smooth out movement patterns.
A somatic practice can help to reduce pain, can help to increase energy levels, and can help to reduce feelings of stress + anxiety.
We coordinate breath + movement, exploring what feels natural in our body.
We explore our emotions as we go through our practice, understanding that our bodies hold our stories and, as the authors, we have the power to rewrite these stories.
And then: what has shifted or changed?
Because movement IS life.
Beyond the mat, somatics has helped me identify patterns in my own life: bringing habituated patterns into my awareness, breaking these patterns into smaller chunks to explore, and ultimately, reprogram how I move through life.
The qualities I bring to my mat are the same qualities I bring to my life.
And that’s where the absolute richness is in this practice.
Ready to feel good in your body?
