Healthcare Professionals

CLINICAL SOMATIC EDUCATION

Background

Clinical Somatic Education is based on Hanna Somatic Education®, the system developed by Thomas Hanna, PhD. Many of Hanna’s theories are based on the work of Hans Selye, a medical doctor who studied and documented the effects of stress on humans. While Selye was primarily concerned with the glandular responses to stress, Hanna explored the body’s neuromuscular responses to stress in the dimension of biofeedback.

Pandiculating the latissimus -
the Tilting pattern

After years of study with other somatic pioneers including Moshe Feldenkrais, Hanna expounded upon Feldenkrais’ work around the startle reflex by noting that humans also tend to react to stresses and traumas with two other specific, predictable muscular reflexes: the Landau or Green Light Reflex and the Trauma Reflex or pain/tension cycle.

These three reflexes, when over stimulated, can become habitual and unnoticed, creating pain, inefficient movement patterns and distorted postures – a condition known as Sensory Motor Amnesia.

Overcoming Sensory-Motor Amnesia (SMA)

SMA is a term coined by Hanna for the memory loss within the central nervous system of how certain muscle groups feel and how to control them.

Exploring the scapula connection to the Somatic center

The sensory-motor system operates in a feedback loop. To fully sense a muscle you must be able to move it. If sensory input is diminished, motor control will also be diminished. However, because SMA is a learned adaptation to stresses and traumas, it can be unlearned.

The goal of a Clinical Somatic Educator is to help clients learn new, more efficient patterns of movement through sensory-motor learning.

The Human as a Soma

The concept of sensory-motor learning involves viewing the human from a somatic perspective. Human beings can be viewed in two ways: from the outside in (third person perspective-as a body) or from the inside out (first person perspective-as a soma). Modern medicine relies heavily on an objective, observable third person view of the human as a body that can be worked upon through such external methods as surgery and manipulated through methods like massage therapy and chiropractics. While this is true – humans are indeed bodies that can be worked upon from the outside – they are also simultaneously somatic beings that can learn to sense their internal functions and change themselves. They are somas.

A soma is defined as a living body sensed from within. Many people can look at you and see a “body”, but only you can have the privileged experience of yourself as “me” or “I.” As somas, humans possess the unique ability to take human consciousness and direct it inwards to improve physiological processes.

As Hanna said, “Sensory motor reawakening is an educational process done by an active person, from the inside out. Awakening our cerebral cortex, the seat of the brain's voluntary actions, to control movement once again is an internal somatic feat that goes from inside the brain to the muscle system.”
(Somatics, p 36)

Exploring the power at the center

The somatic field offers healthcare professionals a new paradigm for working with people suffering from musculoskeletal and stress disorders. By complementing and completing the objective, third-person scientific, physiological view of humans with the self-sensing, self-moving, self-adjusting somatic view of humans, clinical somatic educators have a framework for successfully reversing musculoskeletal disorders whose causes lie, not with any fault in the structure of the soma, but with its functioning.

Somatic Education – An Active Process

As a Clinical Somatic Educator you work with clients to help them develop their sensory awareness of themselves – areas in their body where their muscles are chronically contracted, how they sit, stand, and so on. Because HSE is a systems approach, practitioners view the entire body looking not only for postural imbalances but also how those imbalances may be causing referred pain and tension. Practitioners will then directly engage their clients’ attention to their muscular holding patterns. This enables clients to learn to restore resting tone and change patterns that contribute to dysfunction. Practitioners of HSE use the two methods of handling used by functional integrators, i.e.: means-whereby (created by F.M. Alexander); and kinetic mirroring (the term Hanna used to describe the work of Feldenkrais) and a third method called pandiculation that Hanna created and which distinguishes his work from that of his teachers.

Pandiculation

Rebalancing the hips and pelvis

Pandiculation literally means, “to stretch while yawning.” Hanna’s method of “assisted pandiculation” is a controlled shortening and lengthening of a muscle or muscle group which reawakens the sensory-motor cortex to more voluntary neuromuscular control of that muscle or muscle group. Muscles that may have been contracted for years will release, and, with reinforcement movements or exercises that the client can perform on their own, will stay relaxed.

Somatics – Teaching The Science of Holism

As a practitioner of somatic education you are there to facilitate the client’s learning process. Besides teaching how to do an exercise, practitioners also teach clients why it should be done and what is involved anatomically and physiologically. This allows the client to fully understand that it is their awareness of their sensory-motor system that determines their behaviours and potential outcomes. It also allows you, as a licensed healthcare practitioner, to fully impart your specialized knowledge of the human body to your clients, empowering them to take more control and responsibility for the functioning of their soma.

Hanna Somatic Education is a registered trademark of the Novato Institue for Somatic Research and Training. Used with permission.

Bird's Story

BEFORE AFTER

These pictures were taken before and after the third session of clinical somatic education that 16-year old Bird received. Although it might appear that protocol dealing with the Stooping posture might have been used, these changes are actually the result of using protocol dealing with the arching posture or Landau reflex. In Bird’s case this helped to lengthen his spinal column and bring more balance to his posture. Some of the changes noticeable in his photo are: reduced shadows of tension in the neck; a lengthening and aligning of his spine; less internal rotation of the shoulders, reduced flexion at the elbows; and a more neutral head position.

Besides positive changes in posture and flexibility Bird experienced reduced pain and increased comfort.

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