Story telling -Somatic Case Study

So, piggy backing on the last blog I posted talking about why we use the words Soma and Somatic let's look at a recent client I helped.

This client, let's call him Dan, came to me for a lingering shoulder pain. His range of motion was limited and the Physical Therapist suggested that there was a slight, unhealed tear in his rotator cuff. From a traditional western view, I'm sure that this is correct. He feels the pain in his shoulder and the pain may very well be from a slight tear in his rotator cuff.

But in the Somatic view, my job is to understand the experience and function that could have led to this tear. And, considering that the pain has lingered for about a year at this point, there must be something happening to perpetuate the situation that got him into and maintains this pain.

So, we say forget the shoulder. The shoulder is a dead end. Looking at him as a body with a pained shoulder will do nothing to fix the problem because the problem is a Somatic one. And truly, unless there is something structurally broken, meaning the nerve is cut, or the bone is fractured, the problem is always Somatic and therefore requires a Somatic intervention.

And looking from a Somatic, whole living organism perspective, a story starts to develop. What I saw was a person who was cringing to the left. Meaning, his left shoulder was quite significantly lower than the right and was being drawn into his side in a protective position. This is a very common position that happens after injury or trauma. We all do this, it is an unconscious reflex that is present in all organisms and is a position that displays itself in various lopsided postures. If the trauma/injury is severe then the cringing will be severe and the organism's posture will reflect that. Also, their physiology will reflect that and many of the problems we deal with, scoliosis, sciatica, frozen shoulder, are a natural result of this reflex.

So probing a bit to find out if there had been any incidence that happened before the shoulder problem, I discovered that he'd snapped his achille's tendon running through an airport and had had a long process of rehabilitation. But how could that be related to what's happening way on the other side of his Soma? The answer is in the Somatic center, the waist muscles.

It is the waist muscles, between the ribs and hips that hold our pelvis/legs and allow us to walk in an even graceful manner. And it is the waist muscles that hold our shoulders and neck, allowing us to reach, twist and bend. So if we have an injury, it is the waist muscles that will hold up that hurt leg to keep from reinjuring it. This is why so many people think one of their legs is longer than the other; an imbalance in the muscles of the waist resulting from some injury or trauma.

So if the waist muscles are tight, drawing that leg up into the pelvis, very likely the shoulder will become compromised. Contraction, shortness in the waist area on the injured side will lead to shortness, contraction throughout that entire side and the person will become clearly imbalanced. And, in fact, upon palpating the waist and back muscles on the injured side, I noticed that they were quite hard and contracted. Once the waist area is hard, shoulder mobility will be limited and the rigid muscles are much more prone to tear. They lose their elasticity and will tear under stretch or aggressive movement.

No matter what we tried to do to fix the shoulder, we would not be successful until the Somatic problem of protective cringing, a trauma response, was addressed and released. But, by addressing the issue at its' core and releasing the pattern, very quickly we were successful in ending his pain.

In five sessions, with the help of home exercises, he began to once again move those hard, overcontracted waist muscles with control and awareness. He was able to voluntarily contract them and he was able to voluntarily release them until they became very soft and all of a sudden the shoulder starts to move freely again, his left side opens up and that pattern of cringing goes away. Quite a magical thing to see and if he continues to move and release those muscles in an active way, there is absolutely no reason why the pain would return.

This is the power of Hanna Somatic techniques, but it requires first an understanding that we are in fact Somas, not bodies and shoulders.