4 Benefits of Somatic Yoga
Do you feel stiff or creaky in your joints?
Do you feel frazzled by stress, or find it hard to recover from exercise?
Do you notice that your mind is constantly lost in thought and you wish you could be more present?
Somatic Yoga is a gentle form of movement that addresses the above issues. ‘Somatics’ is an area of study that explores our subjective experience of our body, and seeks to deepen self-awareness by improving our ability to feel subtle sensations. Somatic Yoga combines this approach with principles from the yoga system.
What can you expect to see in a Somatic Yoga class?
You may or may not see traditional yoga ‘shapes’ in a Somatic Yoga class. Because the main intention is to explore your own body, less emphasis is given to making specific shapes and more to mindfulness of your body in motion. If a yoga posture is visited, you may be invited to explore micro-adjustments that encourage ease and curious exploration, rather than pushing yourself to freeze in a pose.
Classic somatic movement includes very flow, gentle, repetitive movements that help lull you into a relaxed state, reducing any intense sensation in order to bring more subtle sensation of your body to the foreground of your awareness.
You can expect verbal cues that take your attention to the specific movements of your bones, muscles, connective tissue, skin and even organs — levels of self that are all possible to feel, but so many of us have desensitised unless there is intense sensation. Developing this level of sensitivity improves your mind-body connection and allows your system to move and hold yourself more efficiently.
How could you benefit from this kind of practice?
Somatic Yoga has 4 key benefits:
Reduced tension
Easeful movement
Reduced physiological stress
More presence
1. Reduced tension
Most people think they need to stretch more. When they feel tight, they ask me for advice on stretches to do. While certain stretches may be helpful in certain situations, I’ve observed that much of the chronic tension we experience is not caused by a lack of stretching; it’s caused by unnecessary holding and unconsciously restrictive movement.
I teach Somatic Yoga as a way to facilitate letting go. When we become quiet and slow, reducing the ‘noise’ in the system, we can start to notice where we may be contracting our muscles unnecessarily. One of the primary cues I offer in my classes is to feel and allow gravity, and to let the ground hold you. When your attention is brought to letting go in this way, you start to discover areas of habitual contraction — commonly in the face, hands, feet, belly and thighs. With practice and attention, your system learns that these holding patterns are unnecessary when there is little demand on your body. In this way, you start to reprogramme these patterns, which reduces the overall tension you hold in your muscles on a moment to moment basis.
2. Easeful movement
If I ask you to lift your arm, chances are you’ll lift it in the way you normally do. You may lift your arm in the most mechanically efficient way, but most of us have some degree of imbalance and inefficiency in our movement. We tend to not notice these imbalances because the firing patterns that produce our every-day movement are habitual and automatic.
Somatic Yoga teaches you to find the most easeful, energy efficient ways to move. By moving slowly and gently, bringing attuned mindfulness to all the sensations you feel, you start to pick up more sensory data that tells your brain more about where you are in space. With more information, plus the awareness of the force of gravity, your body naturally starts to find more efficient positions and firing patterns to achieve the movement.
My Somatic Yoga classes are unique in the sense that I also bring in principles of functional and remedial movement. I teach both joint isolation work, as well as coordinating movement into integrated chains. Through isolating and then integrating movement, we ensure that each joint isn’t working too much or too little, ultimately sharing the load throughout the movement chain.
In most of my classes I then introduce improvised movement. Improvisation helps us repattern the way that we move much in the same way we learned to move as infants: exploration and play. For example, we may look at mobilising the ribcage through specific planes of motion, and then you’ll get the chance to move from your ribcage in a way that feels interesting or satisfying. Teamed with intention to move with fluidity and grace, this explorative work encodes easeful movement into your system as you learn to embody these parts of your body.
3. Reduced physiological stress
One of the most profound benefits of Somatic Yoga is nervous system regulation, in particular teaching your nervous system to shift from ‘fight or flight’ (sympathetic arousal) into ‘rest and digest’ (parasympathetic dominance). We do need a stress response in order to get anything done in our lives, but it’s when we stay stuck in that gear that we get chronically depleted. Eliciting the relaxation response is essential for healing and rejuvenation, and developing a regular practice of this self-regulation will reduce our overall system stress levels — opening up energy you can channel into what you most care about.
I write more about the physiological principles and basic somatic practices for self-regulation and recovery in my blog ‘2 Somatic Techniques to Maximise Your Recovery’.
4. More presence
You may have heard that meditation helps make us more present, but how many people can actually stay present when meditating? An untrained mind will so easily wonder off into thought — projections and ruminations that are not occurring here and now.
Somatic Yoga is mindfulness in motion. It differs from still, seated mindfulness meditation in that you’re directing your consciousness from your busy mind into the presence of your body. Through movement, we offer more stimulation to keep focused on this embodied presence, which can be so hard to do when we just sit and try to be present.
Being present is one of the most crucial skills for healthy relationships, effective leadership, and a sense of peace in one’s life. With a Somatic Yoga practice, you’re entraining your mind to check in with your body throughout the day, which ultimately leads to a development in emotional intelligence, empathy and access to your intuition.
Want to try this practice out for yourself?
Come and join my Somatic Yoga classes, Thursday at 12:45-1:45pm in Surbiton, starting on 28th March 2024. For more information and to book, visit this page.
