How Somatic Movement Allows Self-Discovery
In my early days of learning yoga, I thought I understood the concept of being in the present moment. What I didn’t realise was that there was no way I could really understand, because I’d never truly experienced presence. I’d learned from infancy that to be fully here was just too painful and terrifying to bear.
Though not everyone will have suffered the same trauma as me, the primal defence mechanism to not be fully present is so widespread that it’s considered normal. Notice how striking and out of the ordinary it is when someone feels truly present: eye contact that makes you feel seen; posture that feels open and grounded; a breath pattern that seems calm and safe.
When our nervous system has learned that present-moment awareness can involve intense, painful feelings, we develop a reflex that makes us numb. We literally do not feel our bodies as much, because bodily sensation is what tells us what we’re feeling. To an organism that wants to survive and not feel pain, it makes sense that our primitive brain would simply turn down our sensitivity.
But there are side effects. People come to me with chronic physical pain, digestive issues, sleep issues, relationship issues, work issues, anxiety issues. On the surface, these sound like issues of too much feeling, so people take pain killers, anti-inflammatories, sleep aids, anxiety medication, and even avoid intimacy to save themselves from pain. I’m proposing that these inconvenient experiences are messages from our deeper intelligence.
We humans experience reality through our bodies. It is through our senses that we understand our environment. And it is through subtle awareness of bodily sensations that we know what we want, what we need, and how we feel. When we have an accurate reading of what’s real for us in each moment, we have the information we need to take care of ourselves, stay safe, and enjoy life.
My somatic movement sessions are all about developing this capacity to tune into what’s really here. A lot of people come because they feel stressed and they want to relax, or they feel tight and they want a physical release. Those are the first steps of this process: learning to calm your system, and unwinding physical tension patterns.
For students who come to my self-development groups or work with me privately, the somatic movement sessions can become a space for communion with the Self. In other words, deeply attuning to the felt sense of your body, your breath and your movement as it unfolds from moment to moment can ultimately help you discover who you really are. As lofty as this may sound, consider this: our sense of self can come from what has happened to us, what society has taught us, what we think we should be. Or, we can learn what feels most real for us through the raw data that we pick up in each moment, the feedback we get from our system about what does and does not resonate with us.
The challenge of this work is to feel safe enough to be open to what’s really here. So for many of us the focus will initially be on relieving physical tension, learning how to let go, noticing when you’re not breathing, optimising movement patterns. Along the way, you may notice moments of true presence, emotional release, or novel experiences of rest.
WANT TO EXPLORE YOUR OWN EMBODIED SELF-DISCOVERY?
I offer 1-to-1 Somatic Coaching to help people learn about themselves from the inside-out, releasing patterns that hinder your potential, and fostering patterns that lead you to the day-to-day experience of life you want to have.
