PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) hinges on the interrelation of mind and body.  However, exclusive emphasis on chemistry or psychology misses the point.

The point is the relationship between memory, sensation, and action (or movement).

Every traumatic event triggers some sort of impulse to action (or movement).  If the event is intense enough or repetitive enough, that impulse to action becomes ingrained and habituated (memorized) as a chronic tension pattern, i.e., muscular involvement.

Every muscular tension pattern or action has a corresponding sensation.  The habituated sensations of patterns formed during a traumatic event are the sensations of the event, itself, the sensations of the tension pattern formed in that event.  However, the vary nature of habituation is its unconscious automaticity, so those sensations remain semi-conscious or unconscious impulses that get triggered and activated by similar, even remotely similar, events.

Bodywork, by contacting habituated muscular tension patterns, awakens corresponding habituated (and so, faded or semi-conscious) sensations.  That’s why bodywork triggers memories.  However, it may or may not be sufficient to release the grip of those memories.

Somatic education, by awakening internal awareness of ones habituated states and by awakening from them into new patterns, supports a person’s recovery from and growth past habituated trauma patterns.  This principle and process is the basis of Peter Levine’s work (although his work intervenes at the autonomic level and not the voluntary level).

In my view, both psychological and sensory-motor approaches to memory are needed.

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somatic exercise for Startle Reflex

Hanna Somatic Education^® is a highly accessible doorway to spiritual practice. It provides means for integrating and transcending psycho-physical (somatic) limitations and instant feedback as to the success of the practice.  

It’s primary technique, “Pandiculation“, puts principles into operation that apply equally well to subtler and “inner” aspects of the human being, i.e., the emotions and thinking mind, and the mind of subtle intuition — the emotional and mental psychic fields — as they do to the “outer” physiological body/organism.  So, I refer to the grand process of human evolutionary transformation as, The Big Pandiculation.

This essay explains how this is so, and also identifies the advantage and limitation of Hanna somatic education as an element of spiritual practice.


An entire human life may be summarized as moving from one state and degree of contraction to another — with varying degrees of habituation.

Spiritual practice may be summarized as “increasing involvement with and increasing transcendence of” the conditions of life — increasing involution and increasing evolution — awakening to what we are constantly doing and being. I suggest that one of the most powerful means of spiritual practice is pandiculation — applied not only at the sensory-motor level, as in Hanna somatic education, but also at emotional, mental, and intuitive levels.   I call this, The Big Pandiculation.  Correspondences with Kinetic Mirroring and Means-Whereby (explained here) also apply to those other levels. For non-participants in Hanna somatic education, I explain the term, “Pandiculation”, here.

THE TERM, “SPIRITUAL PRACTICE”, AS I MEAN IT

Spiritual practice has two aspects:

1. awakening to and outgrowing (transcending) archaic, habituated patterns of function and perception
2. awaking into new faculties of function and perception

In the language of somatic education, (1.) addresses “sensory-motor amnesia” or “attentional-intentional amnesia” — indicating that the person is suffering (a) the results of inherited, unevolved habits of thought, feeling and action and (b) impairments of their functioning from injury or emotional trauma.  (2.) addresses “sensory-motor obliviousness” or “attentional-intentional obliviousness” — indicating that the person is suffering from the lack of faculties that have never yet awakened.

The first category is that of loss; the second category is that of limited development.

I know that’s a lot, and I’ll clarify, as needed, below.

For students of Ken Wilber, let me say that these two aspects of spiritual practice correspond to what he characterized as “state pathologies” and “stage pathologies” — where a state is analogous to “weather” and a stage is analogous to “climate”.  All problems from category (1.) stem from functional impairments that occur within a given stage of development (broken personal integrity); all problems from category (2.) stem from functional deficiencies that occur because the person needs to mature to his/her next-higher stage of development.

That said, what is the role of somatic education?  To answer that rhetorical question, I should first define my terms.

SOMATIC EDUCATION
The term, “somatic” (derived from the ancient Greek word, “soma”) refers to the experience of our faculties — awareness and control — from within — autonomy, self-regulation, freedom and responsibility.  The term, “education” (derived from Latin “e ducare”) refers to the drawing out and making functional an individual’s latent faculties so that they come alive.

In this day, both words, “somatic” and “education”, are abused and misused in popular parlance.  “Somatic” is used to refer to the flesh-body or to cells of the body (as opposed to the mind), so that the word, psychosomatic is not recognized as the redundancy that it is.  (Remember, “soma” includes both bodily (or incarnated) existence and awareness, from within, of ourselves and our faculties.)  Likewise, education is used to refer to mental learning of more and more things — facts and rules, without the recognition that such mental learning relies upon a more basic learning — the learning of how to pay attention and to exercise intention in action (to get specifically intended results).  These abuses of words point to the degeneration (category 1.) and unevolved stage (category 2.) of our human culture.

So, we have to rehabilitate these words and their meanings for this essay to be meaningful.  If you accept that rehabilitation, read on.

Somatic education does two major general things:  it awakens perception (sensory awareness) and it awakens self-control (and by extension, control of things and others).

Understanding that point is “huge”, since it is the basis of entire human lives.  Somatic education increases the effects of ones actions upon oneself and others.  It frees (and in effect, causes) one to be more aware of what one tends be, and, as habitual functional patterns are set free, to be more intensely “what’s left” — in effect, a surfacing (like the body of an iceberg as the top melts) of unconscious/subconscious habitual material.

The enterprise of spiritual practice appears in many forms in human culture — everything from nature-spirit worship to organized religion to self-transcending practices.

For the purpose of this writing, I especially mean self-awakening and self-transcending practices.

At this point, we have to rehabilitate another slippery word:  transcendence.

People commonly use the term to mean “being above” and dissociating from some kind of experience — not experiencing it anymore.  That’s a formula for neurosis, pathology and breakdown; it’s not transcendence.

The proper understanding of the term is “being inclusive of and more than” some kind of experience — experiencing it consciously, with understanding, with mastery.  This understanding goes along with Einstein’s declaration that “It is impossible to solve a problem from within the frame of reference within which it was created.”  To solve a problem, we must first have mastered and transcended its original frame of reference.

This kind of mastery involves two stages:  differentiation and integration.

Differentiation means clearly seeing the distinctions that define something as it is.  When cooking, it is “helpful” to distinguish the taste of salt from that of other ingredients so that we can regulate how much salt we put into the cooking.

Integration means putting things together into a satisfactorily functioning whole so that all the parts complement each other.  When cooking, it is “helpful” to balance the taste of salt with other tastes.

We can’t know how much salt to add by tasting the salt we are adding; we must taste both the salt and the rest of the dish-in-progress and balance them with each other.  By so doing, we transcend both the taste of salt and the taste of the rest of the dish — we include them and occupy a frame of reference that is greater than either.

The somatic principle we have identified as applying to this situation is, “Somas perceive by means of contrasts.”  The corollary is, “Whatever doesn’t change fades from perception.”  Try staring at something, sometime, and see what I mean.

How does this pertain to somatic education?

First, we understand that all of our experience gets processed through the body via the senses — brain-based learning of how to interpret experiences.  This interpretation applies to physical sensations, to emotions, to mental processes, and to higher intuitions that don’t have physical objects but which are felt (e.g., music and other forms of coherent art).

Secondly, we understand that that process of interpretation is subject to the distortions of Category (1.) and to the obliviousness of Category (2.)

Let’s clarify how injuries and emotional trauma distort both perception and function.

MEMORY IMPRINTS
Memory consists of two aspects that make up ordinary experiencing:  sensation and response (or movement, or behavior).  All memories exist as states of “readiness to respond”, manifested as patterns of muscular tension that keep us ready for action.  The common term is, “nervous tension”.  A technical term would be, “motor habits”.

All experiences leave imprints on memory; intense or repetitive experiences leave intense imprints on memory — and stronger patterns of muscular tension.

These imprints overlie each other as patterns of tension that show up as posture and “body language”, breathing patterns, body-sense or the sense of “self”, and also thought patterns and emotional responses.  “I” am patterns of memory, in action.

“Don’t ask me to relax; it’s my tension that’s keeping me together.”

Most of these memory imprints are below the surface and only get activated by circumstances, but reside at a low level of “idle”.  When activated by circumstance, we call that “emotional reactivity”.

For a more detailed and elaborate discussion of how these memory imprints show up as neuromuscular tension patterns, I refer you to “An Expanded View of the Three Reflexes of Stress“, “Is the Body ‘Self’ or ‘Other’?” and “Sensory-Motor Amnesia is Not a Disease.”

SOMATIC EDUCATION and MEMORY IMPRINTS
Now, we get into it.

Somatic education provides a means of shifting those memory patterns from “automatic” to voluntary, turning “emotional reactivity” (for instance) into “emotional responsiveness” — not in a wholesale manner, but progressively and specifically, and also activating latent faculties to which we are oblivious.

Just as muscular tensions can be brought under control by the three basic techniques of Hanna somatic education, “Means-Whereby”, “Kinetic Mirroring” and “Pandiculation”, so the logic of those techniques can be applied to emotional, mental, and intuitive levels of the being.

In general, three effects make somatic education useful in spiritual practice.  (1) It shifts unconscious/semi-conscious habits from unconscious to conscious.  (Some would say it integrates the mind-body connection, but it just awakens what is already the case.  Please see, “There is No Mind-Body Connection | There is No Mind-Body Split) (2) It awakens and integrates more of the “neural network” of the brain to make possible more complex and more finely articulated perceptions and behaviors, and (3) It re-activates awareness of personal functions that has been lost in Sensory-Motor Amnesia, so they can be integrated.

These effects correspond to (1) incarnation, (2) maturation, and (3) integration of “shadow (psychological) material”.

Incarnation
Mere conception is not incarnation, nor is mere birth.  Conception and birth begin the process of incarnation, which involves identification as “body/mind” (soma), so that we experience the body “from within”, as our “acting” selves.

The “incarnation” step applies especially to people who tend to live in their dreams, thoughts or emotions, whose fantasy or mental life substitute for engagement in relationships in the world.

Maturation
Development of our capacity to experience and to act is progressive and proceeds by the formation of memory patterns along the developmental lines outlined by Piaget, Rogers, Maslow, and others, which involve progressive development of perception, conception, and action (behavior).  It’s the development of functional sophistication (more or less).

The “maturation” step applies especially to people who have unevenly developed competence in various areas of their lives.

Integration of “Shadow (psychological) Material“
Shadow material consists of behaviors and feelings that have previously developed and then been distorted by reactions to traumatic experiences of various kinds.  They’re ways we “won’t let ourselves be”, but which we still have impulses to be.  They’re actions “stopped mid-step”, both active and opposed by us at the same time.

The “integration” step especially applies to people who have been traumatized.

I’ll tell you a few personal stories to illustrate my points.

Incarnation.  I grew up in an emotionally dissociated (but financially well-off) family, in which my emotions and wishes felt generally invalidated, even as my material needs were satisfied, without much social contact or play time for ten months out of every year (required to practice piano during the time when the boys on my block were out playing, together).  At home, I lived in frequent anxiety, boredom and alienation; in school, I feared for my physical safety and suffered frequent humiliation from more aggressive boys.  I was small for my age, but intellectually well-developed (which earned me the name, Peabody, after the brainy cartoon dog-character on “Bullwinkle” — “Sherman and Peabody” — from one of the boys).  In my free time (after piano practice), I read copiously — astronomy, paleontology, anatomy, physics, chemistry, science fiction, and the entire World Book Encyclopedia, cover to cover.  In physical education classes, I had the least prowess of anybody and was always the last chosen for team sports.  So, I was mentally well-developed, emotionally intimidated and alienated, physically undeveloped, and socially out of synch with my peer group.

In my teens, I developed incapacitating tendonitis in my right hand/wrist that resulted, ultimately, in my getting Rolfed.  The point of this narrative is that my “incarnation history” led to this:  My rolfer described me as being “like concrete” and “the most contracted individual” he had ever worked on.  I was largely oblivious to my condition, and I had so little bodily sensation that my forearms and abdomen felt as insensate as wood.

Rolfing was the beginning of my somatic education, and in the process, what aroused my great interest is that I was starting to perceive myself, my body, and my behavior, in ways that had never before awakened.  The awakening of feeling and the changes of how I was moving were giving me a viewpoint for self-perception other than the one with which I had been identified — the contrast making possible new self-observation.

Maturation
My process of maturation gradually progressed, with Rolfing, and accelerated with movement practices designed to speed the integration of the changes from Rolfing.

The movement practices had the same effect of awakening new self-observation (by means of contrast between the state I generated with movement practice and my habitual state) and it had a further effect, development of a kind of psychic sensitivity.  I recall one afternoon, working the counter at my father’s print shop, when the front door opened and a man came in, and with him, an emotional field that I would characterize as “a downer”.  It came in with him, specifically (and not the same way with other customers), so it wasn’t a matter of “oh, another customer”; it was about, “wow, feel what just walked in the door”.  Practice of the Structural Patterning Movements typically magnified that psychic sensitivity by calming my mind and quieting and sensitizing my nervous system — a lower “signal-to-noise ratio”.

I stayed with Rolfing for about twenty years, and in so doing, built up a mass of contrast between my physical state and my habitual subjective state (memories of “how to be” and “how I am”).  It was to be the basis of a rending, wholesale transformation (that has continued to this day).

Integration
At age 36, after a fairly easy divorce, but also during a wrenching time of change during which I went back to university to train as a physical therapist (living in the dorm with 18-21 year-olds), and during which I lost my entire social network, accustomed diet, work and living situation and had no source of income.  I was fairly maxed-out on stress.

Shortly after the end of my university studies, I returned to my previous town in a completely different situation than the one I had left, without friends or income, still maxed out on stress.

During that time, my Rolfer plopped a copy of Somatics, by Thomas Hanna, onto my lap and said, “You might be interested in this.”  The book contained somatic exercises “for neuromuscular stress”, which I began to practice.  Surprisingly, instead of reducing my stress, they made it worse.  Much worse.  The exercises, by surfacing unconscious processes and developing more responsiveness in my process, intensified both my awareness and my manifestation of my state of stress, physically.  The exercises made me experience more the state I was in.

That may not seem like a good thing, but by intensifying my experience of stress, it also made me available (and irresistably compelled me) to undertake further spiritual training and intensive inner work to “disarm” the stress.

When I entered training in somatic education with Thomas Hanna, I was in so much stress and so intense that I deliberately wore a red tee-shirt with the words applied to it, in white letters, “Too Intense”.  Mutual practice of the somatic education techniques among students alleviated my stress by about 50%.  At the conclusion of training, we had a celebratory barbeque, at which time my peers burned that tee-shirt.  As one of my peers said, as testimony to their acknowledgement of how much I had changed, I wasn’t wearing the tee-shirt when they burned it.

After training with Thomas Hanna, circumstances brought me into contact with a teacher of The Avatar Course, which consists of methods that have the same underlying principles as Hanna somatic education.  Using those methods has been instrumental in disarming so much of the accumulated stresses of my earlier life, intensified and revealed to me through somatic education.

SUMMARY
This is a fairly summary recounting in which I omit a lot of details — but the essentials are present.

Spiritual practice does not occur in a vacuum or in a state of obliviousness.  Bliss is not oblivion.  It’s equipoise — which means active, participatory ease or grace — what Thomas Hanna termed, “the fair state”.  It entails both momentary deep intuitions of the formless self-nature (“original mind”), emotional peace,  and progressive deepening and integration into life.

Somatic education awakens human faculties so that we come more awake as we are, develop our faculties, and see more vividly the ways in which we are “stuck” in unconscious memory-and-action patterns that befoul attentive consciousness and prevent the awakening to increasingly free being and transcendental intuition.

In practice, clearing up each habituated action-pattern frees and integrates creative energy (attention and intention), so that we have more of ourselves available to put into action.  That means we get more effect from the same amount of felt-effort as before.  We also feel that effect more keenly and also feel “what’s left to do” more keenly.  We become more “how we are” and get more sensitive to ourselves and to others, more keenly discerning.  As a result, we experience a progressive revelation of our habituated state, to ourselves, leading to “the next thing to clear up”, and that progression happens faster and more intensely than before.  The term, “the Fire of Practice” attains meaning.

Somatic education activates the great Truth Teller — our actual feelings, apart from idealistic mental notions or deluding spiritual enthusiasm.  “The Body Doesn’t Lie.”  It decreases the likelihood of “spiritual bypassing” — in which we assert idealisms rather than working with our actualities.

By the same token, Hanna somatic education has a limitation — its greatest strength is sensory-motor integration, with the secondary emotional and mental benefits described earlier — however, at some point, the somatic limitations seated at the sensory-motor level have essentially been dealt with, and habituated limitations remain in the subtler “bodies” — emotional, mental and intuitive.  These remaining limitations must be dealt with at those levels on their own terms, even though they may show up as problems in the physical body.

At that point, one must engage processes that apply the principles of somatic education in techniques analogous to those of somatic education, but that apply to those higher bodies.

In summary, the effects of somatic education on spiritual practice are:

1. relieving impediments left behind by trauma
2. organizing attention and intention to a higher level of integration
3. increased effectiveness of intention and action
4. increased sensitivity to the effects of intentions and actions
5. progressive revelation of somatic habituations, leading to
6. progressive integration and transcendence of habituated adaptations

The Big Pandiculation is exactly that process of conscious incarnation and transcendence, awakening experiential awareness and control, and coming out of the habituated state of identity that characterizes the unawakened individual so that (s)he can be her or his free and responsible, unique self.

Here’s a link to an internet interview on clinical somatic education, as found on Happiness After Midlife (http://happiness-after-midlife.com).

MORE:
SOMATIC EDUCATION EXERCISES
ARTICLE ABOUT CLINICAL SOMATIC EDUCATION
ARTICLE ABOUT CLINICAL APPLICATION OF SOMATIC EXERCISES
“The Immortal Harold Somaman — What Keeps Him Going?”

If people consider the matter of the body at all, we regard it in two ways:  an unevolved view and an evolved view.

THE UNEVOLVED VIEW
The unevolved view of the body is as  “vehicle of the self”.  So viewed, we are “within” the body, which exists to carry us around and bring us toward desirable experiences and away from undesirable ones.

This view of the body concerns us with conformity, the “hard body”, political correctness, pain, pleasure, and mortality.  It is the point of view of cosmetics, Western medicine, glamour magazines; hard drugs, tobacco and alcohol; corporate culture, social status, consumerism, dance competitions, “youth culture”, and violent entertainment (including many video games, crime shows, and much “reality TV”).  It is the unevolved view.

What makes the unevolved view, “unevolved”, is that it regards the body as “object” — “my body” — something to be possessed, controlled and lost in death.  This view considers mind and body separate, “I” being “my” mind (which, oddly, linguistically also considers the mind to be a possession, but one which we cannot reliably control, and which we hope continues after death).

The unevolved view of the body is unevolved because, while the faculties of external perception (awareness of the world and social relations) are more-or-less developed, the faculty for internal awareness is more-or-less undeveloped.  The unevolved body-mind (soma) reacts to situations automatically and without all that much self-awareness.

THE EVOLVED VIEW
The evolved view of the body is as the tangible expression or manifestation of self.  So viewed, we recognize the sense of self (physical, emotional, mental, and feeling-intuitive) as a bodily sensation, not “within” the body, but as sensations of the body.  So viewed, we move toward desirable experiences and shy away from undesirable ones, as before, but with our inner life of self as observable as the outer world (psychological “shadow” aspects and unawakened faculties being “compost” for further evolution).

This view of the body concerns us with relationship, with will, integrity, fulfillment of our intentions in actual results, with walking our talk, with how we organize our lives and with knowing our own mind.

What makes the evolved view, “evolved” is that it recognizes that the body is not a “thing” — or “object” that proceeds into the world as a “non-negotiable” self, but a living experience, the very location of self that changes moment-to-moment.  In that view, death is recognized, not merely as a mystery, but as a transformation continuous with life, even as life is a series of transformations into new (mysterious) events of life.

This view of the body allows for something that the unevolved view does not:  deliberate self-development and self-evolution.  The unevolved view of the body wants to meet life merely as it is (“non-negotiable”) — take me or leave me, “That’s just the way I am.”  The evolved view of the body recognizes that we can deliberately change to meet life more artfully, more smoothly, more intelligently — and finds that ability intriguing, finds life’s challenges and opportunities, its teaching moments, illuminating “grist for the mill” of self-transformation (whether through will or through surrender — and with or without angst).

A DEEPER LOOK INTO THE INNER WORKINGS OF THE EVOLVED VIEW
To take a deeper look into the evolved view of the body, we find it helpful to look at the basis of what gives the body its characteristics:  memory.  Once we have done that, we will be in a position to consider how the body contains and distributes memory and the self-sense holographically.

The unevolved view of the body sees memory as a function of the mind and of the brain (regarded as an object-possession, even though no one has a direct experience of their own brain).

The evolved view of the body sees memory as embodied as the whole body — holographically, meaning distributed among the whole, not contained within a part, such as the brain.  Lest you think that I am speaking merely theoretically, I will bring this statement down to Earth.

One quality characterizes all of life:  self-initiated movement.  Plants have it, insects have it, and animals have it.  Movement is life.

Inanimate objects also have consistent behavior patterns, (e.g., the consistent behaviors of atomic elements and compounds seen in chemistry and physics),  but they are not self-moving (in the sense of being able to change behavior in mid-act by self-volition).  The memory of inanimate objects is simply their predictable behavior — though, in this view, the memories of inanimate objects are relatively “uneventful” and contain no mental or emotional content.  (Note that computer memory consists of patterns of electrical charge stored in silicon circuits — inanimate.)

In this way of seeing things, the whole Universe may be regarded as a vast system of memory — interrelated, interacting memories that are changing and evolving — anchored as patterns of physical reality with internal experience.

For life-forms less complex than humans, most movement consists of instinctual behaviors; the more complex the life-form, the more instinctual behavior is complemented by learned behavior.  In humans, learned behavior dominates, by far, instinctual behavior.  In either case — instinctual or learned — behavior is movement.
 
Movement carries with it an inner side — experience.

Experience leaves its imprint on, in, or as memory.  Experience becomes memory — and a memory is nothing more or other than a lasting imprint of sensations and movements.  Remembering how to do something (long-term memory) is remembering how to move in certain ways (patterns) and what experiences attend that movement; short-term memory is a tracing of patterns on the waters of consciousness, patterns that quickly fade — but still have duration, however short.  Memory is nothing more or other than the persistence of patterns of behavior (movement) and experience.

Predictability decreases (and unpredictability increases) with complexity, so that the more complex life forms are, the less they behave by instinct and the more they behave as they have learned.  Higher complexity includes all of the characteristics of lesser complexity, and something more:  room for more memory and something else — the capacity to look at memory, itself, and to operate upon ones own memory, to change it: deliberate learning and also . . . . . emergent behaviors.

Emergent behaviors are upwellings of change unpredictable on the basis of previous behaviors — and the formation of memories unpredictable on the basis of previous memories . . . . . creativity and evolution.  Each new integration of two or more “behaving entities” into a new whole (each formation of a new relationship between two or more participants) brings forth emergent behaviors unpredictable before the integration occurred.  That’s emergence.  (“Emergencies” typically involve the formation of new relationships on short notice!)

Having covered the span of memory from the most primitive to the most emergent life-forms, we’re now prepared to look at how the whole body-mind (soma) contains and distributes memory holographically.

HOLOGRAPHIC MEMORY
I must first dispense with the notion that memory is distributed equally throughout the brain.  This is not so.  In the brain, as in the rest of the body, different locations have different functions.  However, the interrelation of the different locations — their synergistic cooperation and interplay — produces the full range of behavior and memory.

Take an easy-to-understand example:  balance.

Movement at balance requires coordination; lack of coordination is awkwardness.  Coordination involves closely-timed movements among the “parts” of the entire body; the entire body is involved.  Balance is the feeling we get when those closely-timed and coordinated movements result in a minimum of effort to move as we intend; awkwardness always involves a sense of excessive effort because some parts have bad timing.  Coordination is a space-time experience of economical, intended movement.  The brain controls and senses, the rest of the body acts; they are a functional unity.  Seen as the body, we look (viewed from outside) a certain way at any moment; we feel (from the inside) completely different from we look; though different, they are the same event perceived from different viewpoints.

The basic unit of memory in the body is DNA, which makes healing of injuries (restoration of the memory of the whole-body sense) possible, and which is the most highly predictable (chemical and physical) aspect of memory.

However, as a whole we are far more complex than our cells are, our behavior is far more complex, and our individual memories are far more complex than those of cells.  Cellular memory, as it is described, is not the deepest or most profound form of memory; it is the shallowest and most superficial.  The profundity lives in the larger complexities of which cells, tissues, and organs are simpler parts.  Human behaviors are far more complex than the behaviors of individual cells.

The memory of behavior exists as patterns of shape and movement that exist among cells and tissues throughout the whole body.  Patterns of connection exist among neurons of the brain and as patterns of coordination (and feelings) among all of the muscles of the body.

Every thought that passes through us shows up as patterns of tension in the musculature.  Dreams (an internal experience) can be measured (externally) electrically as changes of muscle tone and electrical potential and observed as eye movements.  Voices heard by schizophrenic patients have been observed to coincide with electrically-measured micro-movements of their own vocal apparatus.  People move their lips when they first learn to read.  Thought is the body, thinking; emotion is changing physiology.  The inner experience has an outer expression.

Memory consists of habituation in whole-body patterns of muscular tension and physiology — generally, states of readiness to take action in familiar situations.  Tension (and other physiological states) are the external side of memories, of which sensations are the internal side.

Back to coordination and awkwardness:  there exist better and worse — more and less economical — patterns of organization as a person.  In general, better patterns of thinking go with better patterns of coordination.  (It’s possible to have specialized patterns of coordination that work well for special situations and still to be incompetent in other situations — just as some people may be geniuses in certain way and doofuses, in others — or even “clumsy geniuses” and “absent-minded professors”)  However, in general, the better coordinated we are, the better we think, and the more ways in which we are well-coordinated, the more versatile our thought processes can be.

Likewise, memories depend upon the body.  People commonly accept that sudden shocks to the body cause amnesia, though people don’t commonly understand how that is so; they commonly think it has something to do with a blow to the brain.  While that is sometimes so, the larger answer is, physical shocks that happen faster than the brain can register them create a discontinuity of memory, a gap in “how I got there.”  It’s not just “amnesia”, but “sensory-motor amnesia”.  People in sensory-motor amnesia have forgotten how to get from their altered state back to their familiar sense of self, mentally and bodily.

As more and more coordination develops in different ways, the person becomes both more complex and better integrated.  As (s)he becomes better integrated, (s)he has more command of his or her own faculties — attention, intention, sensation/feeling and movement.  With each new degree of integration, new emergent (unpredictable) faculties appear (creativity and evolution).

This assertion may seem novel and questionable to you, and so must be tested to be verified (or disproven) to your own satisfaction.  I can say that my own experience of Rolfing and of somatic exercises (both of which develop higher integration, higher coordination and higher efficiency of function) is the origin of this assertion.  (Ida Rolf said, “Rolfing is not concerned with the palliation of symptoms, per se, but with the development of more efficiently functioning human beings.”)  The clarity and depth of my own thinking is evident in the writing of this article.

Thus, both the unevolved and the evolved views of the body (and its primitive and more complex functions) have their place in the human — and the evolution of human beings is a tangible process involving both the bodily (external/objective) aspect and our mental (internal/subjective) aspect — in processes of “complexification” and integration.

MORE:
article:  Is the Body ‘Self’ or ‘Other’?
article:  Psychotherapy and Integral Somatic Education
article:  on somatic exercises
video:    about somatics
resources: available somatic exercise programs

Hello, again, Folks,

Today, I speak of a peculiar paradox of somatic education — something expressed in a Tibetan saying I heard, recently:  “When things are urgent, go slower.”

People in pain have a certain urgency.  No surprise.

In their urgency, they go for the “quick fix” — the pain med, the quick adjustment, the quick stretch, the hour of bodywork.  These quick fixes rarely produce either a complete or a lasting result.

The reason:  they don’t address the problem as it is, but only the surface appearance.

Somatic education is peculiar in this regard:  the processes we use during clinical sessions are mostly slow-motion action patterns — we go slower — but the changes that result come very quickly.

The reason:  the changes sought through somatic education (generally, pain relief) come by means of an internalized learning process that involves new physiological adaptation.  Adaptation and learning require, inevitably, at least two things:  attention and intention.

Attention and intention go together.  To exercise an intention, we must direct our attention to what we are doing.

The thing about attention is that it is not instantaneous; it fades in.  Test for yourself.  Look away from the screen toward anything and notice that it takes a good part of a second even to focus on it.  The same is true of music.  Turn on the radio into the middle of a piece of music and notice that it takes some seconds to recognize even one with which you are familiar.

When taking in new information, going slower helps you “catch” it and take it in.

Then, and only then, you can apply your intention to it.

Most forms of therapy require little or no attention on the part of a patient; result:  little or no exercise of intention and little or no lasting change!

So, as a somatic educator, I find that one of the most common bits of coaching I have to give with my clients (/patients, although I don’t use the word) is to slow down.  Doing things too fast, too hard, and with too little attention (“mindfulness”) is a common American fault (and a popular editing technique of advertising and the entertainment media which perpetuates and reinforces this fault– sequences of “split-second video clips”).  Too many people are “A-D-D” ! ! !  That makes them accident-prone (and generally, sloppy and error prone).  They must slow down — not because it’s easier (generally, it’s not), not because they need a rest (which is generally true), but because they need to pay more attention and to exercise intention more carefully.  They need to work smarter, not harder.

If people don’t slow down, they end up doing things the way they habitually do them and, by repetition, reinforcing the very thing they are wanting to get out of — the movement patterns and functional habits that cause their pain.  They have to slow down enough to do the things they do in a new way.

When it comes to somatic exercises (a way people can relieve their own pain without direct coaching by a somatic educator), people must exercise patience.  In this case, the patience they must exercise is two-fold:  (1) they must slow down in what they’re doing (somatic exercises) enough to feel clearly what they are doing and to do it in good form (not merely count repetitions) and (2) they must persist in a somatic exercise program long enough to obtain its designed-in effect (entailing, generally, some days or weeks of practice — and some hours of experience).  The result:  substantial and durable improvement — faster and more durable than by conventional therapeutic, “low-attention” methods.

If patients are impatient for relief, they must be patient so they can get it more quickly than has previously been possible.

Only once they have slowed down and made the necessary changes can they return to “the speed of life” and keep their new-found freedom and well-being — or even go faster than before and still keep it together.

“A man of true means,
whatever the day’s pace
keeps his wits about him
and however a fine offer be presented to him
keeps a level head.

What ruler of countless chariots
would make himself laughing stock,
fool of the realm,
with pace beyond rein,
speed beyond helm?”
— Lao Tzu

SEE MORE ABOUT SOMATIC EXERCISES
An Entirely New Class of Therapeutic Exercises (article)
Software for Your Body (instructional programs)

Thomas Hanna said that palpation — gathering information by touch — is a lost art among medical professionals, and that we, his students, would become masters of it.

In the process of Hanna somatic education, palpation isn’t just done at the initial functional assessment of a client’s condition, nor is it only an information-gathering action.  It’s properly done at every stage of a clinical session of Hanna somatic education to evaluate the results of each pandiculation, and it provides information not only to the practitioner, but also to the client about his or her current condition.  How else are we to know whether we are finished with a region and its movements?

In a previous writing, “Precision Positioning for Miraculous Results“, I speak of this last point in some detail.

For now, I want to communicate some things about the art of palpation, itself.

PALPATION IS A FOUR-DIMENSIONAL ACT
Now, before you go bounding off screaming, “another New Age twinko!!!”, I want to clarify.  The fourth dimension, time, is not a Twilight Zone alternate reality or a mysterious abstraction (as implied by the term, “time-travel”).  It’s motion, itself, in the most ordinary sense.

We measure time by means of devices that move or display regular changes (watches and clocks) and we experience time the same way.  The term, “second”, refers to the period of time between two heartbeats, the second heartbeat defining the end of a second.  It’s an approximate term, the way the length of a foot is about one foot and the length of the first segment of the thumb is about one inch and one swallow is about once ounce.  Time is motion.

In palpation, many people touch surfaces with their fingertips and think they are palpating.  When such a technique provides little useful information, they abandon palpation as an investigatory act.  It’s not a shortcoming of palpation; it’s a shortcoming of their technique and their understanding.

To do a decent palpation that actually provides useful information, you’ve got to feel, not for a surface, but for a volume — three (3) dimensions.  And you don’t go rushing in, do a couple of quick presses, and move out.  What you do is soften your hands, reach in, and feel for the first resistance for reaching more deeply; you feel for where soft space becomes firm contact.  You go in slowly — both out of respect for your client and for rich information.  Then, you wrap your hands around what you feel to discern its shape.  If you’re squeamish, palpate in yourself until you learn the lay of the land and what it might feel like to your clients.

If you want to get more out of palpation, trace muscles from origin to insertion; that gives you something on which to anchor your attention and gives your client new sensory information that tells them in which direction, along what lines, to contract in pandiculation.

Once your client has done the pandiculation, or after you have done Kinetic Mirroring, you use palpation and movement to evaluate the completeness of the result.  If some sensory-motor amnesia — and muscular contraction — remains, you either repeat the process or have your client adjust positions to reach what’s left.  Palpate — Pandiculate — Palpate.  Continue until the involuntary tendency to contract is gone or it ceases to decrease, then move on.

There is a special meaning for that term — The Somatic Codes.

It’s more akin to Morse Code than it is to the Codes of Hammurabi.  However there is virtue to it that would potentize the Codes of Hammurabi, if they were integrated together.

The Somatic Codes are rhythmic numerical sequences that beat a resonance through oneself — using specific movement elements to create specific rhythmic and timed sensations.

This resonance of deliberately created self-sensations links or integrates memory, imagination, and sensation into an integrated, resonant, mobile faculty of intelligence.

(And what would that do for your golf game — or your video games.)

I have detailed a portion of The Somatic Codes in my piece:  The Diamond Penetration Pandiculation Technique.

These codes accelerate and deepen the effects of somatic exercises when incorporated with somatic exercises.  There will be video in the near future on YouTube showing how this is done.

See many videos of pandicular maneuvers.  Here’s the general channel of (some) of my videos.

Sensory-Motor Amnesia (SMA), as Thomas Hanna defined it, is a state of habituation in which patterns of muscular tension and movement formed during trauma or under stress displace (make amnesic) the memory (and availability) of free and balanced (healthy) functioning.  One memory of a functional pattern displaces another, resulting in chronic pain and changes of movement (“chronic injuries”),  and a life is altered.

In my work, I have discerned more than one expression or form of SMA.

This article details those findings, which apply when we assess the condition of a client and when we work with him or her.

I identify three variations:

1. Chronic Contraction (chronic desire – “rajasic” SMA, for those who know yogic terminology)
2. Restricted Free Range of Movement (chronic limitation – “sattvic” SMA)
3. No Control/Substitution (chronic differentiation – “tamasic” SMA)

I explain each variation.

CHRONIC CONTRACTION
In assessment, palpation reveals hard, contracted, ticklish or sore muscle.  Kinetic Mirroring (passively moving a body segment along the involved muscle’s line of pull (doing the work of the muscle for it), followed by a lengthening movement) reveals an indisposition to lengthen (muscle stays contracted or involuntarily, sporadically contracts in fits and starts, or “rachets” on the way to length).  This is the most obvious form of SMA.  (If they’re not floppy, they’re contracting.)

I describe this form of SMA as “rajasic” because it involves chronic activity.

RESTRICTED FREE RANGE OF MOVEMENT
A lengthening movement, either active (by the client) or passive (by the practitioner) reveals free movement up to a point, beyond which no movement is possible without forcing – hence, “restricted free range of movement”.  This form of SMA may be (and probably often is) confused with restriction by adhesions.

I describe this form of SMA as “sattvic” because the person has no pain in the involved muscles when at rest and believes (s)he has free control.  (S)he’s “fine” when (s)he stays within the “healthy”/”normal”/”anatomically correct” range of motion, but exists in a state of chronic (unconscious) limitation that shows up only in movement (as pain or restriction).

This is the same mentality, by the way, that blames pain on “having slept wrong” or “moved wrong”.

NO CONTROL / SUBSTITUTION
This form of SMA, I feel, is more correctly described as “Sensory-Motor Obliviousness” (SMO).  (Please see related article.)  Muscles are relaxed and lengthen freely, but the person has little control or coordination involving them; (s)he is oblivious to them.  There’s a “hole” in his/her control.  This form of SMA/SMO is easily missed if the practitioner identifies SMA as a state of contraction, rather than of habituated dysfunction.

I describe this form of SMA as “tamasic” because it involves chronic non-responsiveness of certain muscles in movement or the inability to move in a certain way, altogether.  The person substitutes other muscles to accomplish movements more properly and better done by the muscles to which (s)he is oblivious and/or involuntarily distorts the movement. 

The first two forms of SMA respond well to the three basic techniques of Hanna somatic education:  Means-Whereby, Kinetic Mirroring, and Assisted Pandiculation.

The third form, SMO, requires a completely different approach, which I will outline.

Addressing “No-Control/Substitution” (SMO)
Isn’t it aggravating when you ask for one thing and receive another?  This is how people in SMO live.  Everything seems fine until they do something; then, unexpected, mysterious pains appear.  They may not know why things go wrong. But we do.

In SMO, because the person isn’t in a painful or restricted state (at least when at rest and when moved passively), we may not know how to interpret their pain when they move.

The pain comes from the substitution of muscular actions that are ordinarily synergistic (helpers) to the “prime mover(s)” — but without the prime movers.  It’s “going through the motions” — but badly.  It’s “taking action without a leader or clear sense of purpose.”  It’s awkward.  If awkward enough, it’s painful, particularly if they are as incompetent in controlling the substituting synergists (helper muscles) as they are oblivious to the synergists’ prime movers.  (The terms, “prime mover” and “synergist”, are terms from kinesiology.  If necessary, “Google” them for understanding.)

The answer for SMO people is somatic exercises.  They need to awaken control of certain muscles and develop well-coordinated movements.   Then, the synergists relax and their painful excesses diminish into a healthy, well-coordinated grace; joints are no longer put into awkward positions.  When such people take action, things no longer “go painfully wrong”; instead, they get a healthy experience and a sound result.

Avoiding Pitfalls
The pitfall of practitioners during assessment is failure to check for full, free range of motion and so to miss the SMA.

During working sessions, the pitfall is failure to achieve full, free range of motion.  In Assisted Pandiculation, this failure to achieve full, free range of motion shows up as carrying a pandiculation only through the range of free motion evident upon initial functional assessment — the restricted range of motion — stopping before achieving full lengthening, as if going past the restricting limit would hurt the client.  (We assume that the practitioner knows the full range of motion available to a healthy individual and does not fall prey to the “everybody is different” cop-out, but rather understands the kinesiology of the human design and the limitations imposed by pathological joint changes.)

The virtue of Assisted Pandiculation is that it frees movement beyond any previous limitation (within the range of movement determined by joint structure) with no pain or sense of stretching, and this is the “miraculous” appearance of the work to which Thomas Hanna referred in his Wave 1 training.  The only dangers of hurting the client are by (1) forcing, by imposing stretch upon the client, rather than relying strictly upon the pandicular response, or by (2) poor (poorly controlled/poorly regulated/awkward) pandicular technique.

When working with a client, never accept a response or action other than the one you asked for.  Coach persistently until you get it.  That’s how we teach.

Another “never”:  Never accept a movement out of contraction that goes along a line different from the movement into contraction.  That’s like changing the subject in the middle of a line of inquiry.  (“Thank you for the answer, but that answers a question other than the one I asked.”) 

The only exception is pain, and for that you do “prep work” to clear up the interfering pain until they can comfortably do what you ask.

Related Articles

• “Decompensating Compensations Safely”
• “Sensory-Motor Amnesia is Not a Disease” (deeper, wider understanding of SMA)

click for:

• other articles for practitioners 
• The Guidebook of Somatic Transformational Exercises, 70 Somatic Exercises for Practitioners and Movement Teachers

Somatic education exercises

are synergistic action patterns . . . . .
movement patterns
composed of numerous simpler movement elements
that combine together
into larger, more complex, integrated movement patterns
that make sense . . . . .

movement patterns . . . . . as integrations of smaller movement elements
. . . . . elements that naturally coordinate together

that wake up and organize your brain in a certain way
. . . . . that allows stretching
to move beyond stretching
with no experience of stretching
as you come out of the grip of musclebound back muscles
and elongate into a more relaxed state.

You learn to control the tight places first
by tightening into tension
that is already tense,
then by slowly relaxing into relaxation
that is release . . . . .

Tension and release,
control in both directions,
getting tighter and letting looser,
deeper into relaxation than before, deeper.

You get a grip and then let go.
You assert control and then rest
and that is control.
By repeatedly practicing each movement pattern
you awaken it,
put it together,
develop it,
and end with deeper,
more balanced equilibrium.

You get a feeling for what
“well-organized” and “well put-together”
feel like.
You gain freedom of movement so natural
that you will soon start
to take it for granted.

Naturally well-coordinated, well-balanced and easy-moving,
such are the lasting improvements of this approach
. . . which begin immediately
… and become more and more …
the more you do it.

You develop good unity of movement and balance
without danger of cramp or spasm
. . . you get free of the grip
more reliably, more durably, more completely
than by being manipulated
or “worked-on” by somebody else.

Because you are controlling it from within
rather than being done to
you can own it,
keep it and refresh it.

The ‘proof’ of the ‘pudding’ is in the ‘eating’.

more on somatic exercises
see somatic exercises (Get Started for Free)
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back pain somatic exercises (free)