Training your mind or your body?

I felt this was an excellent article citing some case studies as well as the surgence somatic therapies are gaining with more weight to this alternative way of processing life’s many traumas and difficulties which none of us are immune from. If you get to the end of this long article there are equally riveting comments about who has ‘got it right’.

Somatic therapy is not new. Pioneers such as Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and my excellent teachers Donna Farhi and so many others have laid solid platforms in templates for ‘feeling’ the physical, emotional and mental trajectories of energy that make our way through the body. Some of us have the ability to feel and sense deeply and accurately. Others have learned to ‘numb’ our senses as a way to protect ourselves from the pain or fear of difficult memories resurfacing. Whichever methods work best for you will take time to learn and practice. Only then can we draw from the toolkit of ‘What’s needed now’ and how we then navigate our way to dissipating the energetic charge that lies in our bodies.

We witness it all the time in our everyday lives. From puppies that do zoomies to shake off stress, from cats that massage themselves over hot stone pavements, from babies and toddlers that cry or have tantrums and then fall asleep, from ALL the methods that elevate oxytocin production. None of us have meters that attach to our body’s to provide proof that these actions soothe or help you feel better. We just know! In yoga our trust in knowing what we feel has often been circumvented by ‘rules’ that other disciplines have made up. All rules are made up after all. And if Mark Twain didn’t say that ‘All Rules Are Meant to be Broken’, then some other clever clogs did.

I’ve written 4 courses totalling 220 hours over the length of my teaching career that presents the rich topics of agency, interoception, the science of movement and stillness through the lens of somatic experiencing hoping that teachers and practitioners leave with a toolkit of choice and applications they can work with indefinitely.

https://www.sarahlo.co.uk/
Read on and let me know what you think……..

Want to fix your mind? Let your body talk! New York Times