Somatic Movement Therapy: Unlocking the Body-Mind Connection
Through the lens of Somatic Movement Therapy, individuals can access tools to release tension patterns, paving the way for enhanced resilience, brain plasticity, and a deeper connection between body and mind. With its efficacy across various conditions, somatic movement emerges as a holistic approach to health and wellness, offering individuals a pathway to manage life’s challenges better and improve their quality of life.
Defining Somatic Movement
A somatic movement is made with a focus on your body’s internal movement dynamics instead of on the external physical movement.
Contrary to conventional physical or exercise training, this approach emphasizes the intricate nuances of internal movement. With practice, Somatic movement promotes a heightened sense of well-being by fostering interoception or self-sensing.
How does somatic movement access the wisdom of body and mind?
Somatic Movement Therapy equips individuals with the necessary tools to access the inherent wisdom stored within the body. By facilitating the release of tension habits that lead to pain and limitations, individuals experience a profound sense of well-being.
Moreover, it is important to recognize that these tension habits may stem from various sources, including physical injuries, trauma, personal habits, or developmental stages that were not adequately addressed. Through gentle movement practices, both the body and mind transform, leading to improved overall health and functioning.
Studies That Have Shown How Somatic Movement Therapy Works
- The Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies has published work showing how internal sensing improves posture, lifts mood, and helps emotional expression.
- Internally-based movement, as practiced by the Alexander Technique, has been found to relieve Parkinson’s symptoms in randomized studies.
Somatic Movement Encourages Brain Plasticity
Brain Plasticity is the ability of your nervous system to change patterns and habits by reorganizing how it does things. A brain capable of change improves how you move your muscles, perceive balance, react to outer stress, or notice tiredness, hunger, or emotion.
A reorganized brain changes and can help you respond to any perceived threats. This is very important for anyone in chronic pain or who has high sensitivity (HSP) because you can change how you see the world around you.
Somatic Movement is the Secret Ingredient to Deepening Our Body–Mind Connection
If you find your mind is cut off from your body. As a result, you can feel ungrounded, anxious, out of control, or even depressed. When humans worry or are overactive mentally, we often get digestive upsets, high blood pressure, tense muscles, headaches, or can just feel spacey.
Life flows more easily when people have the tools to reconnect body and mind. Accepting difficulties and developing clear and effective strategies for working with them becomes more manageable. You can let go of stress and find it easier to manage life. Because you refine your movement as you change your brain, living in your body becomes easier even as your thoughts and emotions become more manageable.
Conditions Somatic Movement Can Help With
As a Yoga teacher since 1981 and Somatic Movement teacher since 1992, I have found these practices helpful for meeting the following challenges:
• Pain and stress management or alleviation
• Sexual health and pelvic floor issues
• Balance
• Difficulties with smooth or fluid movement
• Nervous system calming and meditation
• Trauma and injury recovery
• Fitness training
• Anxiety, worry, despair and mental health concerns
• Alleviating Parkinson’s symptoms.
• Meeting loss and grief.
Listen to Donna Brooks Explain What Somatic Movement Therapy Is
In Conclusion
Somatic Movement offers a unique approach to enhancing well-being by focusing on the body’s internal movement rather than external activity. By honing in on internal sensations and building interoception, individuals can experience physical and emotional health improvements. As mastery of somatic movement grows, individuals can make more informed decisions about their overall well-being.
Moreover, Somatic Movement Therapy equips individuals with tools to tap into the wisdom stored within the body, facilitating the release of tension patterns that lead to pain and limitations. Through gentle movement, individuals can cultivate resilience, enhance brain plasticity, and deepen the body-mind connection, leading to improved quality of life and better management of life’s challenges.
From pain management to mental health concerns, somatic movement has demonstrated efficacy in addressing various conditions, offering a holistic approach to health and wellness.
If you are interested in learning more about how Somatic Movement may help you, contact Donna Brooks at Original Body Wisdom.
This article is based upon this original article What is Somatic Movement?
3 Simple Somatic Movements You Can Do To Calm Your Nervous System
Daily life can be unnerving. And it’s easy to go from calm to anxious or nervous in a flash. What’s harder is to go from anxious or nervous to calm.
My name is Donna Brooks, I am a master Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist (MSMT/E). I teach others how to move and listen to their body as part of a journey towards increased good health and wellness. These simple movements that I am going to share here have been found to successfully move an individual from a state of anxious nervousness to a state of calm.
READ: 3 Simple Somatic Movements You Can Do To Calm Your Nervous System
