Why the body, why Soma?

“The body isn’t a thing we have but an experience we are.”
and as such it contains the whispers of every experience we have ever lived, each and every body embedded with unique experience and infinite wisdom and intelligence.

Emotional resilience, stability, adaptability, connection to our world and others are desirable and necessary for a full and enriching life. Cultivating safety and a sense of being at home in the body is our starting point!
When we are suffering, anxious, sad, overwhelmed or in pain, accessing and being with what’s held and expressed in the body helps us to bring about change not just to our physiology but to our neurology or, in other words, to our “whole” “being”.
A journey of intimate appreciation and befriending, one in which little by little we begin to experience the body as a great resource of pleasure and insight, the pathways of exploration are limitless, and yet essentially we are choosing pathways that bring us to experiencing the truth of all that we are.

How?

A practice that invites us into an intimate relationship with life and ourselves, that integrates and heals, that seamlessly weaves into the fabric of family and working life is more than possible. However, it takes time, it requires patience and creativity, some discipline and commitment, and it can be beneficial to carve out some time for dives into deep practice.
When I began yoga 3 decades ago, I would immerse myself with my teacher in India for months at a time, a minimum of 6 hours a day of study, and then I would integrate that practice daily on my own (Sadhana) for the rest of the year. This way for me was the greatest gift in establishing self-practice and is still my preferred method of study.
In today's world, there is an abundance of classes, conferences on a myriad of themes and although a sense of community is invaluable, it is common to attend a class every week for years and still not have a sense of deep embodiment, or a self practice of any kind. Hierarchy and patriarchy run deep within many systems. We become dependent on the assumed authority of our teachers. We are used to been told what to do and what to feel! negating and reducing our direct experience and creating further distance from the very source we wish to connect to.

In Way of Soma we sow seeds of exploration and inquiry, establishing self reliance from which your own unique and forever-evolving somatic practice may blossom.

Shared in carefully constructed deep dive formats, workshops, immersions and long courses.

We explore 5 principal practices: Somatic Yoga, Somatic Movement, Somatic Breathing, Somatic Meditation and Deep Conscious Rest.

All practices are accessible to everyone; they are uncomplicated with inquiry and exploration as a constant. (keep scrolling)

Somatic Yoga - In Somatic Yoga we approach practice in a gentle, slow, intelligent way, with a step-by-step (vinyasa krama) approach to yoga practice. Rather than being instructed to strive or challenge ourselves in making specific shapes we are guided to attune to what we are feeling in simple sequences and shapes. Through easily embodied combinations of postures we begin a process of re-calibration and integration, one in which we arrive at a quality of movement where the mind becomes internalised and sensitised to the body. Through deep listening and sustained attention, we begin to rediscover the language of the body, developing an invaluable sense of trust and a more compassionate, kind and pleasurable relationship with it.
”When you force, the stronger parts become stronger and the weaker parts simply become weaker. We go gently with sensitivity and an evenly distributed awareness bringing a deeper more sustainable strength to all parts”

Somatic Movement - Somatic Movement is a movement that begins with a seed (static shape) and grows from that seed into a bigger-moving fluid expression as the sensations in the body are given the permission to express themselves. The movement is exploratory, often done on the ground or close to the ground, the movements are very accessible, repetitive and uncomplicated and yet they reveal rich often-undiscovered territory as they take us deep inside to explore the organs, cells and fluids. Often playful, light-hearted and felt to be empowering, feminine, regulating and nurturing, somatic movement is a wonderful way to cultivate deep listening and responsiveness and experience autonomy.

”The body was never designed to have a master, you cant dominate it and expect not to experience the consequences”

Somatics, Trauma and Nervous System Regulation - Trauma is a word that can make many people feel uncomfortable and yet its an unavoidable part of the human experience. When the human organism experiences a situation that is overwhelming (not always but often), it downloads and stores that experience unprocessed. Our response to that event can cause fragmentation, contraction and dis-regulation of our nervous system (i.e panic attacks, depressions, auto-immune disease, relationship issues).

Trauma responds to gentleness, a gradual drip by slow drip approach. Somatic Practices are now increasingly recognised as being an effective way to process developmental and experiential trauma, they not only transform our physiology, but they re-calibrate our nervous systems, re-establishing elasticity, appropriate responsiveness, and importantly establishing new neurological pathways.

"Change is quite literally a a somatic experience" Christine Caldwell PhD

Somatic practice consistently reminds us that trauma it is not who or what we are, and that we are intricately and wonderfully wired to integrate the fragmentation that trauma causes back into an experience of whole being.

It is my direct experience that a knowledge of trauma and the nervous system is important when exploring and teaching yoga, meditation, movement and breathwork.
You can explore Somatics, trauma-sensitive practice and nervous system regulation in a Going Deeper training, an immersion or workshop and in private session work.

Somatic Meditation -We approach meditation not as an attempt to control the moment but as a means to becoming more intimate with what is actually happening from moment to moment. Through breath and body sensing we are invited to relax more fully and completely into present-time experience. We explore softening into perceived resistance and holding patterns and cultivate our capacity for experiencing small pleasures through our senses.
We explore how the mind reveals itself in our bodies in a felt sense, and how the emotions experienced in the body as sensation can rise, fall and dissipate into the light of awareness.
Somatic meditation can be deeply settling and nurturing, and a very effective practice for unwrapping the complexities of living with pain.
A little in the morning and a little in the evening, either sitting, walking or lying down, can be enough to gently self regulate our nervous systems so that, over time, we can experience a sustained atunement, coming to inhabit ourselves more fully.

This inhabiting is what differentiates somatic meditation from some methods of meditation, it really is not a method and no mastery is involved.

Somatic Breathing - In somatic practice the breath is a powerful entry point to deeper embodiment. Our breath is the big reveal to our internal landscape and our unique relationship with life itself. Life is choosing to express itself through us from moment to moment through the breathing process and yet within that wonderful exchange we can experience resistance, holding patterns, anxiety, grasping and unease.

In a somatic breath practice, we explore both internal respiration and external respiration. We are guided in pranayama, where we sow and grow the seeds of breath sensing and awareness. We learn breathing physiology and explore experientially the anatomy of the lungs. We learn to recognise common breathing and holding patterns, and how we can strengthen, release and develop our respiratory muscles to enjoy oxygen efficiency and organic breathing. We, through somatisation, explore cellular breathing, where each cell on every breath is involved in an incredible communication ... a mini murmuration animating form.

Deep Conscious Rest - To rest deeply and consciously is perhaps one of the most rewarding and yet challenging things of all. It is an art that takes a considered surrendering of deeply ingrained social, cultural and sometimes trans-generational conditioning. Our senses are subconsciously downloading a stream of things to do, places to go, advice on how to improve and what to do next. Productivity is highly valued and resting can leave us feeling a sense of shame, guilt and failure. It takes great courage and daring to unpack our relationship with resting, and to look at our patterns of over-efforting.

I am absolutely describing my own tendencies for overworking and overdoing above. I am a recovering workaholic. My personal struggles with worthiness, guilt and shame pop up on days of doing nothing and small practices that help bring me to a place of deep rest have been invaluable.

Deep conscious rest is the seal for all the other practices, it is crucial for integration and assimilation. We use Restorative Yoga, making cozy nests of support for the body where all the body systems can be replenished, and we can relax into quiet stillness without guidance or instruction. We draw on effective simple techniques that gradually help us to slip into non-doing. We use written inquiry and shared conversation to explore our relationship with rest .We talk about grind culture and how burnout shows up in our bodies. We rest in outdoor spaces, on the ground, among trees and by the sea attuning and being nourished by the elements. We explore and commit to finding creative ways to rest in our daily lives.

Join the rest rebellion in a workshop, immersion or on retreat.