What does Somatic mean?
Human beings can be viewed in two ways: from the outside
in, or from the inside out.
Looked at from the outside, by a physician or a physiologist,
human beings are very different from the beings they appear
to be when they view themselves from the inside out.
|
|
Read
an article written by Janet Thomas on Somatics -
click the image above
|
Viewed from the outside, a human being appears as a body
with a certain shape and size. It’s the same as an
observed wax dummy or statue that also has a bodily shape
and size.
However when a human being looks at him/herself from
the inside, he/she is aware of feelings, movements and
intentions – a
very different, fuller being.
To view a body from the outside is a third-person view:
seeing a he, she or it. But when a human sees him or herself
from the inside, it’s a first-person view – a
privileged view of “me”, which means being aware
of “I, myself”.
“Soma” is from a Greek word meaning “living
body”. What an individual sees from his/her first-person
living, sensing, internalised view is always a soma. To yourself
you are a soma; to another, you are a body.
What’s important about Somatics?
Any viewpoint, including that of any physician, physiologist
or any health practitioner, that fails to include both the
somatic, first-person view as well as the third-person view,
is deceptive. Only viewing a body from the outside is to
see only a physical puppet or dummy that can be changed by
chemical and surgical means. It is a one-sided view, false
and incomplete.
What is different about a Somatic approach?
Science is built on a foundation of an objective, third-person
view of the human as a body. It is therefore limited in its
ability to help human beings, who are simultaneously objects
and subjects. i.e. Humans are self-sensing and self-moving
subjects whilst being observable and manipulable objects.
The somatic viewpoint is that human beings are self-aware,
self-sensing and self-moving and therefore self-responsible
somas who can change themselves, as well as bodily beings
who are subjected to physical and organic forces. It is a
fuller, more rounded viewpoint which presents wider choices
and possibilities with regard to health and healing.
What are Somatic exercises? Somatic exercises are designed to improve flexibility and
movement by reprogramming the sensory-motor system, also
helping the nervous system to remember what it has forgotten.
Many aches and pains are falsely attributed to “growing
older” but those who work with Somatics find that training
in personal sensory awareness and motor control can create
a reversal of some of the major current health problems,
such as cardio vascular disease, muscular conditions, stress
and a variety of psychological disorders including panic
attacks, anxiety and depression.
Somatic exercises can change how we live our lives, how
we believe that our minds and bodies interrelate, how powerful
we are in controlling our lives and how responsible we should
be in taking care of our total being.
The new field of Somatics holds that first-person human
experience must be considered of equal scientific and medical
importance as outside, third-person observation. The exercises
educate the individual and inform their nervous system, providing
a way to live under the stressful demands of the world we
live in whilst still retaining our mental and physical health
|