Below is a link to a sample class on Youtube
What to expect in my Somatic Classes
These classes are suitable for beginners and for veteran yogi’s who prefer a gentler practice. The movements will be soft, slow and easy. Mindfulness of our body’s moving and ease of breath will be the cornerstone of this gentle practice.
All classes begin with noticing the different layers of our being, our physical body, our breath, our mental body, what would support us in finding ease and finally we will simply notice our presence, our awareness. All of this happens while we are lying on the ground, comfortable, warm and supported.
We move slowly and with awareness. We pay deep attention to the subtle sensations of these slow movements. We will pandiculate muscles, overly contracting them beyond their habitual tension and consciously releasing them, sliding gliding and lengthening the same muscles. In between the movements I will invite you to return to a moment of melt. This is where we drop all effort and focus, we simply let go and rest. Your nervous system assimilates and integrates this experience, reinforcing safety and support for your system, allowing a pathway back to a more restful state of being.
We will work to gently awaken those parts of ourselves that have been unconsciously held through stress and trauma. We will experience the felt sense of a regulated Nervous System and how this cultivates ease in our way of being.
At the end we will settle in to sweet comfort as I guide you into relaxation and restful awareness.
You can expect to feel deeply settled, peaceful and relaxed with an open sense of awareness while centred in your own being.
These classes are based on the teachings Thomas Hanna. The classes are 75 minutes.
How a Somatic Movement Practice can Help Us
Somatic Movement can help with
chronic pain,
fibromyalgia,
anxiety
loss of easeful movement
It is a very gentle and nurturing practice that can help restore easeful functional movement and inner peace and wellbeing. It facilitates our journey to restful awareness, essentially listening to the signals of our body and resting into a more natural rhythm by living more in the present and less in our mind.
Our bodies regularly respond to stress with reflex patterns. More commonly our body responds to emotional stressors in life.
. Our body is the manifestation of our unconscious feelings. Chronic tension in our muscles is a form of armouring. Essentially we all carry holding and defending patterns in our body.
Somatic movements allows us to become a super sensitive detective, investigating the subtleties of sensation, movement and breath, finding where we are unconsciously holding, and with consciousness & awareness slowly releasing, dissolving the armour, letting go of what no longer serves.
In the practice we become conscious of the felt sense of our muscles, we overly contract them, and then consciously we slide, glide & lengthen them to release them, using our brain to “reprogram” our muscles so they can relax to their natural resting length.
In a Somatic Practice we continually return to Moments of Melt in between movements. In these quiet restful places we are invited to soften, to melt, to let go. As we become familiar with the practice and the environment, we will begin to trust these spaces and allow our body to let go. This facilitates our body and our Nervous System to find its way into the Para- Sympathetic System of Rest, Digest and Restore. We discover a real time felt sense of safety in the present moment.
Practice by Practice we can rewire our Nervous System for Safety and Connection.
Through the repetition of slow conscious movement, we awaken neural pathways between our brain and muscles. Through balancing our Nervous System, we are rewiring our internal system for safety in the present moment. With these two facets working in tandem, we can restore functional and easeful movement, and essentially restore a functional and easeful Self.
‘You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.’
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver