WHAT IS SOMATICS?

Somatics is a way for change transformation through the understanding of the lived experience in the body. It comes for the Greek root Soma that means ‘The living organism in its wholeness’. In the 1970, Thomas Hanna coined the term somatics as a way to describe the experience of one’s inner landscape in an ever changing living organism. The practice of somatics recognises that our body and psyche is shaped by our lived experience and adapts to a wide array of demands that is present in our lives. This is a holistic view of the body.

Somatics practice involves, sensing oneself, physical movements and hands on sessions as a way to develop somatic awareness to bring about change. Reconnect Studio’s somatics classes, private sessions and workshops are based on the life work of Thomas Hanna. He began as a Feldenkrais practitioner, and developed his own method of Somatic Education after studying neurology at the University of Miami Medical School. It was there that he did research into the muscular ways in which all humans respond to stress reflexes and how these full body reflexes can habituate at the level of the central nervous system, causing muscular pain that contributes to many common conditions.

Hanna Somatic Education (also known as Clinical Somatics) is a safe, gentle and common sense approach to eliminating chronic muscle tension and holding for the long term. It is a neuromuscular re-training method that teaches you to reverse the root cause of most chronic muscular holding patterns and gives you strategies to reduce muscle tension and pain in the future.

In Reconnect Studio’s Somatics classes and private sessions, we teach you, through simple movements, how to relax the muscles that contribute to your pain. More importantly, how you can use somatics to move in the direction of a life that you love.

Hanna somatic movements is EDUCATION - clients are taught specific skills that improve one's ability to be self-sense, self-adjust and self-correct so they move with more ease, increased mobility, balance and coordination. It is a generative practice.