SHOULD I TRY ?
SOMATICS
This ultra-gentle practice releases long-held muscle tensions and awk ward patterns of movement, and could help banish pain
Words Cheryl Freedman.
What do you get when you cross meditation with yoga? Something like somatics. With a strong focus on the mind-body connection, this gentle technique is all about making snail’s-pace movements and tiny muscular adjustments.
A dedicated fanbase reports it can banish chronic lower-back pain, improve mobility and unravel decades of tension. Somatics has a mental health dimension, too, as it’s said to raise emotional awareness and decrease stress.
An increasing number of therapies and classes are breezily tagging a ‘somatics’ label to their descriptions. However, Karyn Clark, founder of Evolve Life Somatics (evolvelifesomatics.co.uk), underlines that clinical somatics is a specific practice. The theory was developed by American movement theorist Thomas Hanna, who coined the term in 1976. His philosophy? Many negative health effects are down to ‘sensory motor amnesia’, which means a loss of awareness of how we use our muscles day-to-day. Somatics helps us ‘take back control’, tuning in to our bodies at a deeper level. Hanna described it as ‘the study of the self from the perspective of one’s lived experience’.