What is Somatics?

By Erin Gingrich

In today's fast-paced, technologically-driven world, it's easy to become disconnected from our physical bodies, and if we’re honest, it can also be easier. Being with and in our bodies can be hard, so many of us live with trauma, violence, chronic pain, addiction, aging challenges, and being in our bodies may not feel safe, comfortable or trustworthy. Being safe and resourced in our bodies is also hard to come by living in a society with white supremacy and oppression deeply embedded in our culture and history.

And yet, we only get this one life to enjoy. If we are cut off from the sensations of our body, we are cut off from the basic experience of our own aliveness. We all deserve to feel magical, alive and at home in our bodies. Whatever keeps us from experiencing our wholeness and the gift of our life, is a cry for healing and social change.

Somatic practice is one way to address and repair this disconnection, intentionally fostering awareness of sensations in the body and how we inhabit ourselves. This integration helps us know who we are--what enlivens us, what deadens us, and what automatic, embodied reactions organize our experience--even as it offers a process for developing new embodied habits.

Somatics is a field of study and embodied practices for growth and healing that understands and includes the body in ways that other fields often do not. Its engagement with the body is about more than just the physical body, it’s about the entire experience of being in one's body. How we carry ourselves, how we understand ourselves as bodies, how we relate to or disconnect from our physicality and sensations, and how we self-regulate. These are all crucial aspects of our existence.



Somatics further recognizes that our body is not just a vessel for our brain; it's an active participant in our experiences. Our bodies store memories and emotions, and it's through the body that we interact with the world around us.

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