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…this reminds us that we are part of worlds of complex relationships, that we aren’t central to the story of “life”.
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I often hesitate to use the word ‘somatic’ these days, for all of the things it is coming to be used to describe which seem to have nothing to do with how I experience somatics. Words often slip and slide and leak and morph and that is their way which is a game i needn’t resist. In one way, when we see a word become trendy, it asks us to get clear about what we actually mean.
somatics today is an umbrella term that broadly refers to various body-based movement and therapy practices. there are many sub-traditions and modalities within somatics, each laying across a broad spectrum of application- from somatic arts to more clinical trauma therapies, with many overlaps. Across all of these traditions, modalities, and applications, we see that many of them are working in some way towards transformation- across physical-emotional-mental-social-spiritual layers.
How does transformation happen? a core thread of any good somatic work is the attuning to a deeper larger intelligence inside/through/outside of us that we all have access to, guiding us towards what is nourishing, healing, bringing more aliveness, presence, and connection with ourselves and the world around us. This attuning is a way of creaturing ourselves into our own skin and all that osmoses through us, from here and there, from then and now.
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This is what somatic capacity is*-* an embodied capacity, a flexible enough container that can hold joy just as creatively as it holds pain.
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At its core good somatics works with this organicity, this emergent way, and isn’t prescriptive. Not “nervous system hacks”, not “30-day somatic challenges”, not “somatic exercises that release sexual trauma from your hips in 3 weeks”. Neither does merely having to do with “the body” make something somatic. something is somatic when we are able to drop into the felt sense of it across different layers of experience: physical-mental-emotional-social-spiritual, with a commitment to transformation, not ‘fixing’ or ‘getting rid of’ something. it is embodied work, and not simply going through the motions. And this asks time, it asks practice, it asks for capacity to be slowly lovingly firmly sinuously woven, so that when we slow down we don’t collapse under the weight of how much we become alive to. This is what somatic capacity is*-* an embodied capacity, a flexible enough container that can hold joy just as creatively as it holds pain.
any tools techniques methods and modalities within the different traditions of somatics are valuable when we see them in the context of a long term process of transformation while being in simultaneous embodied relationship with self and other, often cultivated through consistent practice (and we’re always consciously/unconsciously practising something). it is never an isolated individual-self-serving process. i don’t believe any form of therapy or art can be valuable unless it sees itself in the context of developing/ discovering/ recovering relationship simultaneously with self and the world around us in some way.
as opposed to many forms of western therapy where the ‘self’ is understood to be an isolated individuated entity, good somatic therapy- like the many indigenous healing traditions that they draw from (many times without acknowledging but that’s for another time), sees the ‘self’ as an interwoven being, connected and interdependent with their environment, the beings around them, and spirit flows. this reminds us that we are part of worlds of complex relationships, that we aren’t central to the story of “life”. somatics may not be invested in helping us understand this in a cognitive manner but rather through helping us develop a deeply felt sense of these interconnected ways of being in and moving through the world.
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…somatics brought me to seeing how agency isn’t something human beings solely “have” but rather is something that flows through all beings, including us.
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this way of being in the world radically shifts our experiences of ‘agency’ and ‘power’. modern capitalist society promotes a sticky attachment to seeing human beings as the only agential actors and seeing power as something human beings hold over each other and the world. for me, somatics brought me to seeing how agency isn’t something human beings solely “have” but rather is something that flows through all beings, including us. power then, can become something that is held with and for each other, rather than over each other. this is essential for meaningful transformation.
-Bindu D