‘Somatic’ vs. ‘Somatics’: The Critical Difference Somatic Psychotherapy Practice Is Too Often Missing
I used to be a counsellor, and now I work with counsellors, psychotherapists and fellow SEPs to integrate Clincial Somatics into their practice, and their lives – to resolve their own embodied pain, and to benefit their clients.
Therapists work with me if they’re ready to unlock the full potential of Clinical Somatics, and how it moves beyond simply recognising the importance of ‘the body’, and of sensing into it.
Many somatic therapists focus primarily on sensing, tracking, and embodied awareness. This is all to the good – and it’s fantastic to see this shift to more embodied approaches to therapy. I mean, I’m an SEP and I believe in the value of this work – don’t get me wrong! It can achieve great things.
At the same time, while sensing, tracking and embodied awareness are valuable foundations, they’re only half the equation.
And while they might mean your practice is ‘somatic’ (another word for ‘embodied’, really), they do not mean you’re engaging in Somatics as originally conceptualised, developed, and intended. They do not reflect the true power and capacity of Somatics for deep, lasting healing and change.
For me, Somatics requires movement. Specific, neuromuscular movements that relate to specific, neuromuscular patterns of stuck stress. Otherwise, changes are way less likely to stick.
Missing Movement
Work grounded firmly in Thomas Hanna’s original ‘Somatics’ (developed in the 1970s-1980s) offers a comprehensive approach to therapy and chronic pain that recognises lasting, truly embodied change requires directly addressing both the sensory and motor cortex.
While sensing is an essential part of Somatics (if you can’t sense it, you can’t change it), movement is equally important to easing chronic pain, to releasing stuck stress, and to addressing stored trauma.
Sensing and movement cannot create true somatic change in isolation. They need to work together.
Without specific, voluntary movement that activates the motor cortex as well as the sensory cortex, change will not be truly somatic, and it will not last.
What Makes This Approach Different
You, and your clients:
Move beyond passive sensing to active neuromuscular release and new learning. (This supports and enables emotional repatterning, by breaking the vicious circle of stuck stress sending you back to negative emotions ‘even when’ you’ve experienced change.)
Learn specific movements that release stored stress and trauma. (First, movements that relate to ‘universal’ patterns of stress response, and, over time, movements that speak directly to your own, unique patterns and start to unwind them.)
Address precise stress response patterns held in your neuromuscular and nervous system – exploring the intertwining and intersections of emotional, mental, and physical patterns, and where and how they’re held.
Complete the ‘somatic circuit’ by engaging both sensory and motor neural pathways, to create deep-seated, genuine, and comprehensive change.
When you integrate deliberate, specific movement with sensory awareness, you create a complete circuit for true somatic healing.
What this does, in turn, is
Reconnect your practice with the fundamental principle that life is movement, and
Complete the ‘somatic circuit’ by honouring both sensing and moving as equal partners in life, and in healing.
This Is Not An ‘Add-On’ that Works with ‘The Body’
This work with clients, both clinical and professional, bridges the too-often unacknowledged gap between modern ‘somatic’ awareness practices and Hanna’s original methodology.
The result is practical tools – and a philosophical perspective – that together create deeper, more lasting change for you, and for your clients.
Tools and a perspective that embody Somatics as it was originally, groundbreakingly, conceived.
If you want to explore more about how I help mental health professionals integrate Clinical Somatics, please do get in touch and ask me for details of my Embody Somatics programme for somatic professionals.