Thomas Hanna’s Clinical Somatic Education: Background & Basics

What IS ‘Clinical Somatic Education’?

Clinical Somatic Education was first developed by philosopher Thomas Hanna in the 1970s. While it has roots in the work of M.F. Alexander and Feldenkrais, as well as the work of dance/developmental movement pioneers Elsa Gindler and Gerda Alexander (and several significant philosophers and psychologists), Hanna Somatics is genuinely unique in its approach to using movement and activating neurological awareness to combat pain and increase ease and efficiency of movement.

Many people refer to ‘Somatics’ nowadays, but not that many are using Hanna’s approach, which is quite specific in its focus on 3 stress reflex patterns, the concept of sensory motor amnesia, and using pandiculation - the technique Hanna developed from observation of our fellow mammals and how they address stress and trauma.

NOTE: Clinical Somatic Education is also known as Hanna Somatic Education, Hanna Somatics, and Clinical Somatics. This was initially because Thomas Hanna was not permitted to trademark the new term he coined, which was simply ‘Somatics;’ to trademark his work he was required to add his name. Latterly, a frustrating variety of names for what’s effectively the same practice has arisen from ‘trademark’ issues in the USA following Hanna’s untimely death in 1990… it can be confusing at times! Essential Somatics® and ‘Certified Clinical Somatic Educators’ teach in the direct tradition of Hanna’s work – as do ‘Certified Hanna Somatic Educators’. Thomas Hanna originally called his work Clinical Somatic Education. Got all that? Me neither!]

What’s key, though, is that Hanna’s Clinical Somatics is neuromuscular work, and that while Certified Clinical Somatic Educators like me give very careful, tailored guidance and feedback about movements - and do sometimes incorporate ‘bodywork’ techniques such as Means Whereby (to help clients figure out a movement, and what exactly we’re asking them to move) - the change it creates comes from within the client or student.

This is because the work is done not to the ‘mind’ or ‘body’, but by the whole soma - a soma being an individual as living process (the person at the level of their lived existence, not as seen from the ‘outside’, and certainly not as viewed from the third-person/objective perspective of medicine and other mainstream healthcare).

Hanna’s Somatics focuses on enabling somatic change - change from the soma, i.e. ‘from the inside’ of the person who is doing the movements. It is not bodywork done ‘to’ you. Nor is it simply exploratory sensing and moving work - the movements used are quite specific, and always relate back to to Hanna’s fundamental principles about the importance of full-body patterns, the relationship of the centre to the periphery, and more.

 You can’t be independent unless you can stand on your own two feet, and it’s not a matter of just rebelliously standing on your own two feet, but of knowing who you are, knowing your powers, and being able to be creative and productive on your own.—Thomas Hanna in conversation with Helmut Milz, M.D.

Full-Body Patterns, Pandiculation, and SMA

Hanna Somatics has a unique central focus on full-body patterns, and working with ‘pandiculation’ to get us out of unhelpful habits caused by ‘stuck’ patterns of natural stress reflexes in the soma. Hanna Somatics aims, centrally, at enabling us to move away from what it terms ‘Sensory Motor Amnesia’, via the centrally important process of Pandiculation, to bring about what might be terms ‘Sensory Motor Awareness’.

I’m aware there’s a lot of information – and several terms unique to Hanna Somatics – in that sentence!

Taking Essential Somatics® classes or workshops, and my courses (such as the free 3 Keys to Freedom From Stuck Stress or my 28-Day Embodied Stress Release course) you’ll learn much more about all of this, although the focus is more on your experience of reduced stress and pain, not on the jargon ;)

There’s also plenty more information in my other free resources, including right here in this blog.

Hanna’s Clinical Somatics is very much an education process, not a therapy or ‘treatment’. Its aim is to empower YOU to better understand how and why stress and tension get ‘stuck’ in your body, and how to ease that tension with very specific techniques, to get rid of pain, stiffness, soreness and stress.

My next few blogs look at the specifics of Hanna’s work - those aspects of it that were and remain pretty unique, and certainly distinct from a lot of what is also called ‘somatics’ and ‘somatic’ work.