Somatic Practices + the Nervous System

There are many ways to get to know all the different responses of a nervous system. Being able to understand why your system does what it does, and how to self-direct it, can be the difference between feeling powerless or powerful. It’s about bodily autonomy. 

Oftentimes, people who are dealing with trauma symptoms or disautonomia feel like they have no agency over their bodies. They’ve become afraid of themselves. This is where somatic practices comes on board. 

I have found movement and breath-work practices to be hands down the best template for nervous system understanding + ultimately, the re-education of a body. 

In our practices, whether it’s breath-work, posture work, cardio, plyometrics, visualization or just sitting still and breathing, we feel the spectrum of all our different states. We become more familiar with bodily sensations and what they point to when they arise. Each sensation is a line on our own somatic maps directing us to clues that inform us about what’s going on. Our sensory world forces us to feel what needs to be healed.

These sensations are literally the most OG language, our animality, and our body language. But for many, it’s the most foreign language. We live in bodies of misinformation. We fear what we do not understand— our own bodies.

Through Somatic practices, we’re taught tools to not only manage our systems, but to use these techniques to pattern disrupt so we don’t consistently end up in default responses that don’t serve us, overwhelm us, or send us spiraling. 

Movement and breath practices also encourage us to develop a heightened awareness of our own systems, which allows us to become attuned to what’s going on beneath the surface.

This is where these practices become neural exercises that can help expand the capacity for what our systems can handle. It’s where we can reconstruct our nervous system to metabolize all that life throws our way. We can carry a lot, we just need to help our bodies remember what they were designed to do- keep us living and thriving.

My work is all about the re-education of our bodily systems. For me, this is the future of movement practices and somatic education, the future of my personal practice + teachings. It feels like the de novo identity contemporary movement needs to be able to address global nervous system dysfunction. This is a non hierarchal paradigm— no gurus, no gods, no dogma. Just a practice truly in service of helping people reclaim their bodies. To me, nothing could be a more spiritual endeavor.

Stay tuned for more information, courses and workshops coming this Fall!