Somatics Institute

In Your Body, In the World   These first two practice videos help bridge the practices from Week Eight with the practices you will explore in this week.   Integration Practice: Pulling Integration Practice: Pushing   How does your inner awareness inform you about your interactions with the world? Every interaction you have in life…

What does your body tell you about the space you inhabit?   Integrative Practice: Hips Thomas Hanna’s Cat Stretch series contributes a very effective way of connecting the psoas, lower back and walking movements.  Here are a couple of examples of working with the ‘Superman’, without and with a ball.   Your earliest sense of…

  Where Does Your Breathing Begin? Sensing Practice: Noticing Yourself…with a Beanbag   Exploring the Edges of Breath   The limitations to your breath come in two forms:  Structural limitations such as tension in the muscles of the rib cage and the diaphragm, which was last week’s focus.   Interruptions to the flow of your…

How Do You Know You Are Breathing? From your first breath to your last, breathing expresses your relationship to the unfolding moment.  How much you breathe moderates the charge in your body, feeding the fires of passion or banking your energetic engagement down to the lowest embers. As an expression of our interaction with life,…

  Getting Started “I’m just doing this to save my miserable ass.” – Ram Dass   Since you’re here, let’s get right to it. Start a journal of your journey    Notice Yourself Each moment is an opportunity to take a snapshot of your sensory landscape Taking Stock Noticing your sensory landscape gives you a…

  When You Touch…how much are you touched?    Notice Yourself As you explore your inner landscape, bring your attention to the places where you meet up with the world – the floor beneath your feet, the chair you are sitting on. How do you know they are there? Surfaces as a Mirror to Identity…

How Do I Know That I am Moving?    How Much am I Moved by My Moving?  Introduction to Sensations and Movement   How Sensation Organizes Movement   Movement is the expression of your interaction with your environment.    In 1917, a movement instructor in Berlin was watching her students move through the ‘natural’ movements…

photo by Sylvia Chard How does movement begin? Five Rhythms Movement Warmup     Sensing Inner Landscapes: The Pelvis When you move, sensations we feel come most commonly from two sources – pleasant and unpleasant.  But there is a third category, quietly available to inform your movement, feeding important information to the brain that often…

How do sensations guide our interaction with the world? Practice: Spinal Walk Walk for a few minutes, noticing the quality of movement through your spine.  Put a weight on your head – it could be a book or a beanbag.  Notice how this weight affects your awareness of your spine and the quality of your…