What is somatics, you ask?
“Somatics” is a broad term that means different things to different practitioners. There are many “somatics” modalities. In general, somatics asks us to remember that we are a body, that our body is intricately linked to who we are and what we’re capable of, and that we can work through the body to make desired changes to the Self.
Somatics is a pathway and a methodology for transformation. When we embody the changes we make, these changes can show up in all our ways of being and relating and perceiving.
Somatics asks us to increase our ability to feel ourselves, to feel into other humans, and to feel the world outside ourselves more deeply.
Somatics makes us more aware of what we’ve embodied over time and maybe why—it gives us a deeper understanding of how we live in and through
Continue reading What’s somatics, anyway?
Lots of us tend to rush headlong into what’s next. But what would it be like to create a kind of intentional spaciousness? This is not a squishy place, but rather a place filled with air and light and breath. What might happen if you intentionally slow everything down and ask yourself, “What do I want to do or be next?” A different quality comes alive with this question—one that contains desire, yes, but also trust and a belief that something will arise if I just quiet myself and let it.
If you say to yourself, “What do I want to do or be next?” invariably there will be other voices vying for attention. Some of these are likely to be critical in nature, “shoulds” or judgmental in some way, or diversions. Some of these objections or diversions might be necessary or true to some degree. You might hear: “I need the money, so
Continue reading Ways to Create Spaciousness
In the Strozzi Somatics™ centering practice, we experience the dimensions of length, width and depth. Each dimension has a physical component, but also a psychological one. For instance, when we center in our length, we are working with how to feel more of the vertical space we occupy. We can also sense how to allow ourselves to be held by the earth beneath us while also feeling literally uplifted. We notice what we feel in this new “shape”. The quality that goes along with feeling our length is dignity. When we can more fully occupy the physical dimension of length within and without ourselves, our perception of both begins to shift.
Centering can shift our state of consciousness before we sit down to write. This reminds me of a writing workshop I led in Telluride. We had completed the centering practice then moved into a writing practice. The room was alive with the sound
Continue reading Postures of Authenticity
I wrote two essays that were published in my book, Water Shed: Aikido Tanka back in 2004. In re-reading both today, I see how much is still true within that writing. Often what we’re working on just keeps showing up, doesn’t it? Maybe in differing guises and in varying strengths, but nevertheless, present.
What brought me to this path of learning through the body, affecting change through the body, and writing with and through the body is meeting a teacher who has an unusual way of seeing and reading the body. It was through his observations and assessments on the aikido mats that I came to experience aikido as an art of body-centered learning, knowing, and transformation. I’d always felt it was that way, but none of my teachers had spoken of it in this manner until I met Robert Nadeau Sensei. A long time ago.
He was teaching an aikido class and I was
Continue reading How the Body Reveals Habit Nature
Through practice, we build our capacity to move toward what we deeply care about. Richard Strozzi-Heckler says: “We are what we practice, and we’re always practicing something.” So, why not have conscious practices that create change in us? Building awareness about what we are practicing and how this affects how we live our lives helps us to make choices that are more generative. We practice to become more alive to what pulses in us as the heart of what matters.
When we practice with others, in community, the learning takes place in what I have often called a cauldron. There’s a bubbling to the surface that can occur when practicing in the presence of others — a way into seeing ourselves that is otherwise invisible. By learning in community and taking the time to tease apart the practices, participants can deepen in their understanding of the practices themselves and, more importantly, the relevance of practice
Continue reading Somatic Learning in Action: Centering, Declaring, Entering
In the last post I talked about a practice that I am engaged in at present for my own development. It is a very particular practice that arises out of my two decades’ worth of training in the martial art aikido as well as my work as a somatic coach. I am hoping that seeing the practice in the video inspired you, but another thought I had about this is that it might have made you feel a bit intimidated. Or maybe that the practice isn’t something you would choose to do yourself. Or maybe it seemed to be too hard to learn. Or perhaps you didn’t see the relevance. (Or maybe you’ve all purchased wooden swords and are voraciously making up your own forms!)
All these pieces are crucial in designing a practice that works. The practice needs to be right for you. It needs to engage you for your own reasons. And of
Continue reading Creating a Practice that Works
As a poet I have always been interested in language’s energetic components, how we can get in the way of the energy of a poem and how when we step aside the poem can sometimes write itself. OK, so that’s rare. But it happens. So what is present in us and in language when grace happens?
In 2006 I began a course of study in somatics at Strozzi Institute that was a natural outgrowth of my many years of training in the martial art aikido and my many years of expressing myself through the language-medium of poetry. I’m fascinated with the relationship between how we live in our bodies and what we bring forward in our voices and our expression in the world. I wanted to understand in a more conscious way that remarkable relationship between body-knowing and intellectual knowing.
I will never forget the day I felt in my own body that my writing
Continue reading The Embodied Creative: Voice & Body
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