05/04/2026
The soma is living process - and always, necessarily embodied.
๐ฅBut that doesn't make working with 'the body' the same as working with the soma.
โกAnd working with the soma is what creates truly somatic learning, and more lasting change.
It's not 'wrong' to say the soma is the body 'experienced from the inside'. But the problem remains, that that insight has been warped to mean that the person - the soma - is *reducible* to their body (or, as often assumed in recent years, is somehow reducible to their nervous system state).
That's not the case (as Tom Hanna, Eugene Gendlin and others made clear).
โจ And it's not helpful. Because at its core, this way of thinking - and practising - maintains the very mind/body split that Somatics so effectively challenges.
๐ฎ The talk therapy/somatic therapy dichotomy is reinforcing the mind/body dichotomy. And that's not okay!
Much of the work somatic practitioners are doing is fantastic, no doubt. It helps people.
BUT... when it starts to participate in the mind/body division it claims to overcome, cracks show: somas get settled, get regulated - but then... things shift back, changes don't stay, fluidity and adaptability don't always show up.
THAT is why it matters to work actively with the soma, and not the 'body'; to really think through what this 'person' is, that we work with.
That's a big part of what we do in my EMBODY Somatics programme for practitioners - alongside learning and interweaving somatic approaches (to sensing, moving and learning) to our own somas, and our clients.
โค๏ธ Visit somaticsamantha.com for more info (or DM me).