Somatic Coaching & Bodywork
What is somatic coaching?
The Greek word Soma refers to the unity of the cognitive, physical, emotional, sensational and spiritual aspects of who we are. We live in a world which divides the cognitive mind from the body, and increasingly, we know this does not serve us.
Pause and reflect for a moment. Everything we do happens through the body - whether thinking, speaking, moving. We interpret through the body, not just the mind. Without a body we do not get to show up in the world.
A somatic coach works with the body as a foundational place of learning and skill, building resilience and authenticity. Any skilful action we have (take driving a car for example) is embodied. And so, to learn, grow and develop ‘automatic’ skills we must consciously engage the body.
Meet Julie. She suffers with stress and anxiety and experiences regular headaches. Julie’s headaches appear every month a few days before scheduled board meetings. She begins tensing her body but she hasn’t spotted this pattern. Working on her body may help relieve the tension in her neck but it’s unlikely to identify the ‘cause’.
However instead she engages a Somatic Coach who asks deeper questions about who she is. The coach observes and enquires, encouraging Julie to do the same. The coach tracks her own, and Julie’s emotional and physical responses, Julie tracks too. Sometimes they engage in practices involving movement, breath work, visualisation, sound and touch.
Working with and through her body this way she discovers new insights, hidden beliefs, narratives, missing conversations and actions that seem to relate to the tension headaches. She learns how and where she withdraws, where she engages, and what she misses in her professional life. She learns how to establish a new relationship with herself as a confident, competent, authentic and effective board member and senior leader.
This approach invites our body knowing as well as cognitive knowing restoring us to who we truly should be.
What is somatic bodywork?
Our body takes its form not only through nature and genetics but also our experience. Imagine the tight locked jaw clamping down on words never said, or shoulders up around the ears, unable to drop because of permanently held tension, or the concave chest pulled in as protection from ridicule. The body holds our history of what has been attended to and what hasn’t.
Somatic Bodywork is a powerful methodology that addresses long-held deep muscular contractions and armouring, developed for reasons of safety and connection. Although not all clients opt for bodywork, laying down on a table, fully clothed, produces a deeper state of relaxation. Breath moves, organs relax, tension settles, and with the support of a somatic coach through touch, sound, breath, narrative, and movement, the body brings to the surface what has long been held far from conscious awareness. Sometimes it brings apparently unrelated memories, narrative and experience, but when we look deeper there is a link. Often surprising, the body brings a deeper sense of knowing that pure cognitive excavation cannot.
Somatic stories and incredible bodies.
Digging deep can be an emotional journey that may even make you cry.
Meet Paul whose Mum left when he was 13. Paul enjoys the fruits of his well-paid career yet feels unfulfilled and joyless. He reports feeling as if he has a dark hole like space inside him - other than that, it’s nameless. Somatic work revealed that he held unresolved grief pulling him towards a constant search for confirmation of his value.
Meet Claudia whose family situation changed drastically in her late teens. Instead of choosing the path she’d laid out she became the emotional caregiver in her family. She could never truly be herself, and it showed up as a lack of confidence, a lack of authority and a difficult relationship with conflict. Bodywork helped her reveal the root of her challenges and made room for change and new ways of showing up.
Meet Steve working in finance. His business was undergoing change with impacts on culture and behaviour. Steve, angry and overwhelmed became cantankerous and resentful, a default behaviour pattern encoded into his body for dealing with pressure. Coaching with and through his body revealed this as a pattern that shows up when his world begins to shift. New practices helped him learn how to soften physically and emotionally, how to create new perspective and be a more effective leader.
