go man go, but not like a yo yo fooool boy

I'd like to describe today one of the major advancements Hanna Somatic Education offers the field of medicine and offers to all who suffer from back pain. It is called the greenlight reflex and through mastery of it, back pain can be understood for what it truly is; a completely avoidable learned response to stress. In some parts here I am paraphrasing Thomas Hanna and for a clearer sense of what this is, I suggest you check out the book Somatics.

The green light reflex, often called Landau’s reflex begins occurring at three months of age and is typically fully developed at 6 months. The green light reflex is what initiates forward movement. It starts slowly, a minor movement of lifting the chin to begin looking up. From a psychological viewpoint this can be seen as a joy response; a desire to seek out. For this reason, we call it the green light reflex. It compels the young child to “go” “explore”. Although we may be trained later to run away from pain, in these early years, within the safety of our parents love, we run curiously towards pleasure. And so we see that as the child develops, the response to go and seek out quickly gets them into a crawl and then clumsy standing and walking. The green light reflex allows us to balance on two legs and from there to explore the world with the benefit of free arms and hands. Other organisms come out of the womb already programmed for forward mobility and therefor spend less time learning and exploring. Humans, on the other hand are born knowing only how to do one thing which is flex and grasp, clinging to their mother and suckling. For humans standing and walking require years of exploration and learning to master. Interestingly, it seems that the ability to stand on two legs is one of the few, clear, defining features of human beings.

I will argue that two legged movement is actually a more complex posture than staying on four legs and is what initially demanded the large development of our cortex. To be able to balance your weight over two legs in varied terrain; jumping, running, dancing. Skiing while playing football(not recommended)! The enlarged cortex is what then allowed us to use our arms and hands for the purpose of building, creating, and exploring in ways that other species have not done. Ever seen a turtle use a Keyboard? It’s quite embarrassing.

But, as they say, curiosity killed the cat. As the human soma develops in industrialized nations, the greenlight reflex shifts from a joy response to a more general call to action. As a child, it responds to the recess bell ringing, the sound of a friend’s voice calling you to come play, a curious noise in the backyard. Soon though the less joyful calls begin to happen more and more. The telephone begins to ring now with other demands, demands for project completion and calls from business associates and creditors. The alarm clock rings each morning impelling us into action. Keep going it says!!! Get up and Go Go Go!!!! And each time we are called into action that little reflex that started way back at three months of age gets triggered.

By now we are in are twenties and have had many years of practicing this slight arching of the back. We have gotten so good at it that we don’t need to even think about it, it is in fact unconscious and involuntary. And for those of us who are real go-getters and have accomplished a great deal in those decades, we start to feel the effects. We go to bed with an aching back and sleep restlessly because, although mentally, we know that the day is over and tomorrow will have to wait, the green light reflex is still going. Nothing has been done to turn off the response and so while all day we ride our back like the trusty horse we know it to be, at night that horse is still running and running and running right into the ground. We may even feel mentally fatigued, unable to put aside the worries of yesterday; the as-yet-uncompleted task lingers on the mind. The now constantly engaged back muscles telling us that we should not be resting.

It is no surprise that well over 50% of people in industrialized nations suffer from back pain every year. In fact, it is inevitable. These back muscles are so strong by now that the intervertebral discs even start to be crushed by their grip and as the back becomes more arched, the disks slip out, buldging through the front of the spine. Also, the muscles in the lower back have now become quite overtired from continual contraction and ache constantly. Think about the last time you went to the gym and lifted weights. Remember that burning sensation you felt as you pushed through the last few reps reaching muscle fatigue. That was just after a few minutes. For many of us who have spent years tirelessly efforting, our backs have been continually tightening for hours, days, months, and even years.

But as I said, this contraction has been involuntary. And that which is involuntary is unconscious and is not felt. So our ability to even sense what is happening in these muscle becomes diminished until one day we bend over to pick something up or we reach to grab something off the top shelf and our back just ‘goes out’. We say, “how could this happen? I’ve never had any back problems before.”

The truth is the back problem has been developing for years. Back pain is as American as apple pie, as French as a croissant and as Chinese as a dumpling. The same drive that allows us to build skyscrapers and commands us into battle to dominate and exploit leads to our eventual structural collapse.

Okay, so excuse the theatrics, but it’s necessary that people get a clear idea of what is actually happening in their bodies because currently the medical profession is clueless. When you look at an xray all that is visible is the curved spine, leaving most doctors to assume that the spine has simply collapsed. Sometimes they will even prescribe physical therapy to strengthen the back muscles, leading only to increased tension on the disks. A huge percentage of emergency room visits every day are the natural result of just what I’m talking about and what the medical world fails to acknowledge is that it is all the result of a natural, unconscious action of the motor system.

And for that reason, there is cause to celebrate. We should celebrate because muscular problems are all learned problems and therefore can be unlearned. Every single person who suffers in this way can get better and they can get better through a very simple retraining and releasing of the greenlight reflex. This is done through activating of the cortex and the sensory motor system. And this is the major addition that Hanna Somatics offers the medical field.

To feel the action of this reflex try this simple exercise.

Lie on your back with your knees bent and feet about hips distance apart. I want you to do is something very simple, namely, press your pelvis down into the ground. Not your back, but your pelvis. If you put your hands on your hips they are resting on the top of your pelvis. So just press your pelvis down into the ground. And release. The releasing is critical. Do this a few times, pressing your pelvis down and then release. See if now you can press a bit lower down your pelvis until your tailbone starts to roll down into the floor. The further down your spine you press the more your back will start to contract and arch. Relax and notice what you feel. Is your back lieing a bit flatter on the floor?

Now, do the opposite. What I mean is, as you exhale press your back down into the floor so that your tailbone and pelvis start to tip up towards the ceiling. And relax. Do this again, feeling that if you keep your legs and feet relaxed, your stomach has to initiate this movement. The more you press your back down, the higher your tailbone will tilt and as your stomach muscles tighten your back further releases.

What you can then do is alternate. As you inhale, press your pelvis down, rolling your tailbone into the ground to lengthen the front of your body and gently arch your back. As you exhale press your back down to flatten and further turn off this greenlight reflex, lengthening and then rounding your back as your stomach contracts.

Done daily this way you will discover something which until recently has been thought of as impossible without painful surgery or other types of 'corrective' treatments(treatments that are proving to be ineffective). That is you will be fixing the problem of an over arched, hyper contracted back. This is effective not only in stopping the advancement of back pain but will actually reverse it. At any age.

Please, if you have any difficulties doing this or find that it is causing you pain give me a call or come in for a session. 415 385 0798. And if you find this interesting and useful, please share this link with others.

Much love, Gabriel

the clear path, futuresight, scattered focus

I'm taking it personal today. Sitting in a cafe, watching the pages of my book flip around in the wind. Losing my place in the book as my mind drifts away. So this posting may show some of my scattered state, flipping back and forth with the whim of the wind or the next song on the 'jukebox'.

I've been trying to do the impossible lately. Or maybe just the not yet possible. That is, time travel. i want to see the future, to know that the decisions I'm making today will have the outcome that I want. But sadly, as Milan Kundera points out in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, there are no dress rehearsals in life. It's always Showtime!

Then again, maybe it's not all that sad and maybe even things are much more predictable than we think they are. Anyone who follows the new age scene is familiar with The Secret and the idea that you can manifest your own destiny. Or really, that we are manifesting our destinies whether we want to or not. It's not a question of is it happening but are we an active participant in the process.

The opposite of action is not inaction but involuntary action. You just breathed... did you notice? Now do it yourself, make it a voluntary action. take in oxygen as the fuel for your dreams so that they do not stagnate and drift into the unconscious. Either way, the breathing will continue and either way your life will continue until...

Back to me and seeing the future. I'm in the process of creating something that will potentially reach many people and help them get access to Hanna Somatics. I've always been drawn to this work because ultimately, it takes me out of the equation. What's real is the ideas and movements. Those ideas and movements can be conveyed through hands-on session where I'm physically engaged with someone guiding them to their areas of unconscious contraction. It can also be done in a group setting, using auditory feedback to create an internal experience. Can it be done through technology? More importantly, am I doing it as effectively as possible because in the end I will have invested time and energy and it will either succeed or not.

So, I'm trying to clear my head to discover the true path. This is one of the big underlying themes in Somatic Philosophy that there is an Authentic, in Feldenkrais' words, Potent Self. This Potent self acts with spontaneity and clarity because they are unblocked from external or imposed motivations. To act otherwise would be compulsive meaning not inline with your true desires but rather forced for various reasons. In this way the tensions that we feel are caused by the battle between spontaneity(the authentic) and compulsivity(the inauthentic). Maybe you understand what I mean when I say this, I'll elaborate at another time.

flip flip flip, scattering off... gabriel

regarding somatic weight

Here's an interesting thought experiment that might be a more interesting real experiment that might actually blow open the doors to weight loss. Does muscle tension effect your weight?

This thought stemmed from my noticing that one of the common responses people have after a session of hanna somatics is that the released body part or their whole soma feels "lighter". At first, I just cataloged this as an interesting sensation to have but slowly, it started to occur to me that actually, the perception of body weight has a great deal to do with muscle tension.

Think about it...

For example, if you were to pick up a twenty pound weight, your muscles have to contract a certain extant. and not just the muscles of the lifting hand, but the muscles throughout your soma as you refind balance with this added weight. How do we know that we've picked up twenty pounds? The sensors in our fingers and hand send information to the brain that we are holding something and the muscles that tense to compensate for its weight send the message that the something is heavy. Let's quantify this a bit and say that maybe your muscles on that side increase their contraction to 20% of their maximum contractile ability.

What happens though if we tense our muscles without having that weight? When your posture starts to firm up over the course of development, something once thought of as the inevitable outcome of aging, that rigidity is linked to an increase in the resting level of your muscles. In an earlier posting, I discussed the stretch reflex and resting levels of a muscle. So, as we habituate certain postures and contractions, the resting level of certain muscles raise to 10, 15, 20, 50% of their maximum capacity.

With Hanna Somatic techniques, we use the engagement of the sensory motor cortex to inhibit muscle contraction, effectively lowering a particular muscle's resting level. The fact that people feel lighter as this resting level decreases seems to imply that whether we are lifting a barbel or simply tightening our muscles continually over time, the sensing of weight is the same. So when the muscles around our arm are looser, we sense that arm as lighter than before.

Part 2

So, I was chewing on that thought for awhile and I mentioned it to a colleague. She told to me that an interesting thing has been happening... Her weight has been slowly and steadily dropping over the past few months. As she continues to do Hanna Somatic exercises, shedding deep layers of tension, she has also been shedding pounds. This could also be explained by changes in diet and aerobic activity, but as a personal trainer, her intake/output is pretty well regulated.

So anyway, what if this were true and actually had an effect on how we store calories? Think about it. If your muscles are relatively tense, your internal sense is that you're actually heavier than what the scale shows. Your metabalism which regulates the storing and burning of calories is set not to what that scale says but to what your soma perceives unconsciously. So someone could diet all they want to but if their body is regulating itself for more weight than they actually have, it'll be an uphill battle.

If on the other hand, they focus on releasing and lowering tension, their muscles will become more relaxed, and their soma will sense that they are now "lighter". Once they are sensed as being lighter, there will be no need to hang on to those excess calories and I imagine that, still exercising of course, the weight will easily start to fall off...

I would sat that I've felt this myself but its harder for me to pinpoint. I have lost about 20-30 pounds in the past few years but have also greatly improved my diet and exercise routines. Anybody else have personal or secondary experience with this?

point of view

Hi everybody, if you like what you read feel free to comment, if you're confused or disagree with anything you read here, please feel free to comment as well. Through contructive dialogue we can flush out some of these ideas further...

Anyway, today i wanted to fill everybody in on an experiment that I'm starting. This is a non scientific experiment, there will be no null hypothesis, no control group, no sugar pills. It's just going to be me and there may be a whole lot of experimentor error. What I'm trying to do is explore the boundary between what is fixed, structural and what is mutable, function. So often when dealing with western science, we come across things that seem permanent unchangeable, broken.

for example, the way we look at posture and aging. Contemporary thoughts on aging suggest that as we age, our bodies go through a predictable rate of decline and start falling apart. We cannot stop this, all we can do is slow it down. In that way, aging becomes a structural element, fixed.
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On the other hand, through Hanna Somatic Education, I've learned that in fact, we have the ability to control the way that our body ages and at any point can be learning better and more efficient ways or moving through the world.

I've seen 70 year olds successfully reverse decades of constant back pain, I've seen scoliotic curves change and the discomfort disappear, and I've seen arms that hadn't straightened in years, "magically" straighten. All this suggests that problems once seen as structural are not, rather they are a symptom of function.

So we get to me and my experiment. If you've known me after the age of five, you've probably seen me either with glasses or contact lenses. I've had awefull vision my whole life and I'm tired of it. Don't get me wrong, I'm quite thankful that I've been able to "correct" my vision through the use of lenses, but I also sense that these lenses serve as a crutch and that as my eyes adjust to the lenses, they shift and become weaker. And so, my prescription has become worse and worse and worse. For what it's worth, currently my left eye is a +5.75 and my right eye is a +6.00. I also have astygmatisms, meaning my eyes are lumpy. Whatever.

I've decided to put Hanna Somatic theories to work and try to "fix" my vision.

Here's what I intend to do.

For the next 4 weeks, I will, once a day without glasses do the following exercises to help my eyes learn to focus without the aid of lenses.

-tracing: picking a line on the wall, horizontal and then vertical, I will follow the line visually without moving any part of my body other than the eyes. I will then follow the line keeping my eyes still and just tipping my head. Lastly, I will fix my eyes on one point and move my neck back and forth.

-focusing: To get my eyes used to focusing more quickly, I will pick a point that is relatively far away, a point that is close up, and a point in between. I will then alternate, focusing on one point until it becomes clear, holding my focus there for a few seconds, and then moving to the next point.

Feel free to follow along at home without me and then when I go back to the optometrist, I will let you know if there has been any shift in my vision.

neurophysiology and somatics

So, here is a paper I've been working on for awhile now and was one of the graduation requirements for the Hanna Somatic certification I just completed. Thought I'd share.

With Hanna Somatic Education, we have wonderful techniques for focusing on the first person experience and our relations with the surrounding world. In many ways, Somatics is a framework for study, a way of processing and searching for information, not just a thing to be studied by its self. Yet within the framework of Somatics, many things are worthy of being studied and aide in the understanding of human somas. Of particular interest is the field of neurophysiology. Neurophysiology is the functional study of the nervous system, how our brain and spinal cord receives and responds to stimulus and how the varied parts work cohesively to create a human soma. Studying neurophysiology allows us to engage our clients and the larger healthcare field with confidence. Most importantly, a thorough knowledge of neurophysiology from a scientific perspective bridges the gap between the objective and subjective, ensuring that the work we do is valid and reproducible.


If the sole purpose of Hanna Somatics were to reduce tension and help clients change their posture, then a simple understanding of the sensory-motor system would be adequate. It is through our sensory motor system that we interact and connect with the world around us. Stimulus comes in through the peripheral nerves that send messages to the central nervous system. In response, commands are sent back to the peripheral nerves and movements are initiated.


Much of this is done automatically. Although the lifting of an arm requires complex coordination of the body, it appears to us as a simple task. The simultaneous contracting and releasing of various muscle groups is programmed by the cerebellum, so that all we have to do is think ‘lift the arm’ and it is done. But really, it’s quite complex.

To start, a neuron in the brain fires sending a wave of energy down the spinal cord. This action innervates nerve groups that branch off from the spinal cord heading out to the limbs and skeletal muscles. This is referred to as a motor unit, the neuron and the muscle fibers it innervates. But that is not enough. Stimulating one set of muscles and causing them to shorten would do nothing if the other muscles were still engaged. So, as one set of muscles is being shortened, a signal is sent out to opposing, antagonist muscles to release. More particularly, the antagonist muscles release only to the extent that the agonist muscles shorten. Done this way, the movement is controlled and smooth. The balance of muscle contraction and release allows us to know exactly where our body parts are at any moment and to change direction mid movement if necessary.


All the movements of our body happen like this. The decision is made to move a certain body part and instantly the whole soma is organized towards that action. Essential to this unconscious process is the functioning of our spinal reflexes.


Two primary neuro-physiological reflexes that are useful to Hanna Somatics are the stretch reflex and reciprocal inhibition. The stretch reflex is involved in the maintenance of balance and prevention of muscle injury. With our world in constant motion, maintaining a muscle or limb’s position is blessedly an unconscious, reflexive event. Stretch reflex is triggered when a muscle is pulled or involuntarily moved beyond its resting position. Sensory, intrafusal muscle fibers are stretched stimulating 1A afferent motor neurons. 1A afferent neurons send sensory input to the central nervous system. There, in the spinal cord, they create a loop with efferent, Alpha Motor neurons that carry energy back to extrafusal muscle fibers causing the muscle to shorten and contract.


Simultaneously, as they innervate the alpha motor neurons of the stretched muscle, alpha motor neurons connected to antagonist muscle are inhibited. The effect of this is reciprocal inhibition. Reciprocal inhibition is necessary for any movement to happen because attached to every joint are muscles that bend the joint in not just one, but two or more directions. If multiple muscles are contracting simultaneously, bending a joint in opposite directions, the joint will not move, the muscles simply tighten and constrict around the joint. Range of motion becomes extremely limited and painful.


You often find this decreased mobility, as people get older. In fact, traditional views on aging see this as inevitable. Physiologically, what might be happening is that these two primary reflexes of stretch and reciprocal inhibition are acting at the same time. For instance, if you try to flex your elbow the agonist muscle for that action is the biceps. Contracting the bicep will reciprocally inhibit the antagonist, triceps muscle. To the extent that it can, the triceps will lengthen. At some point, the triceps muscle will reach its max passive length and further lengthening will trigger stretch reflex causing the triceps to contract. In this way, both muscles that bend the elbow are contracting and movement stops. For people who have strongly habituated alternating stress responses, their whole soma can become tight and pained. Signals are being sent to pull the body in two or more directions at once, and movement becomes quite stiff and painful.


This happens due to the setting of our resting levels. The resting level of the muscle is a subconscious program that our body uses to maintain a consistent length when a muscle is not being actively used. It is a part of our proprioception and is constantly being regulated to maintain our position in the world. If we had to think about the length of all our individual muscles at every moment, it would be almost impossible to get anything done.


Neurophysiologically, the resting level has to do with the sensitivity of the gamma motor neuron and the Intrafusal muscle spindle. The gamma motor neurons set the tension level of the muscle spindle making it more or less sensitive to stretch. By increasing activity in gamma motor neurons, the spindle cell is more likely to be stretched stimulating afferent neurons and the activation of the stretch reflex. Alternately, by lowering the activity of gamma motor neurons we can make the muscle less sensitive to stretch and therefore less likely to contract and tighten.


One of the main benefits of Hanna Somatic techniques is that they change the activity level of gamma motor neurons. Gamma motor activity increases proportionately with static load. Stretching a muscle excites the gamma motor neurons and increases alpha motor contraction. On the other hand, consciously contracting a muscle blocks the gamma motor neuron, easing the tension on Intrafusal muscle fibers. When we help our clients do a pandiculation, they are contracting the muscle to inhibit gamma motor activity and then maintaining the muscles contraction while slowly lengthening and decreasing alpha and gamma motor activity. This leads to a longer, more relaxed muscle that is not as sensitive to stretch reflex.


We are also working with the gamma motor neuron when we use kinetic mirroring techniques. By bringing the ends of a muscle together, the spindle cell is shortened, and Gamma motor activity decreases which then allows for a reduction in Alpha motor activity. The risk of stretch is decreased and the muscle becomes slack and rests.


The resting level is also affected by reflexive muscle contraction and stress response. Types of external stimuli have been shown to illicit predictable responses over and over again. We flex from negative stress, protecting our organs and vulnerable areas of the neck and abdomen. In response to opportunity and joy we contract our extensor muscles, lifting up from gravity and opening to receive the world. When injured, we contract the muscles around the point of impact to stabilize and prevent further injury. The postures we take on during development and the forms our bodies go through show us the stressors and injuries that we have had through our life. If we are repeatedly exposed to a similar stressor, the resting level of our muscles increases to hold our soma in the position of that response. Either the stimulus lingers and reoccurs often or the stimulus was so strong, the lesson learned from the stimulus so important, that our soma holds the position as a memory. In this way, posture develops. Over time, contradictory contractions of flexion, extension, and protection can lock our body in a rigid, painful pose. The resting levels of opposing muscles are so elevated that we get stuck in a physiological tug-of-war.


It is the lower, unconscious functions of the nervous system that are responsible for carrying out these reflexes and maintaining our somatic position. To change these we must use the higher brain functions, including the frontal lobe and the sensory motor cortex. When we ask a client to consciously contract a muscle, what we are really asking them to do is engage and stimulate these higher functions. We are teaching them to focus on a particular muscle. This has two effects. The first effect is that it focuses attention, drawing neural resources that are often scattered towards a singular goal. Secondly, this serves the purpose of strengthening our ability to feel and move the targeted muscle, reaffirming the connection between muscle and brain. As with anything, this is a skill that can be cultivated and improved upon. Awareness and internal sensitivity will increase and deepen the more that we do it and with that awareness comes improved control and understanding of ourselves.


This is what we are doing with means whereby. Simply asking a client to notice how they are functioning will improve that functioning. By making movement and posture more active and conscious, the subconscious, reflexive actions will be subverted. The movement does not need to be anything specific, awareness is the goal and benefit of awareness.


With the Hanna Somatic techniques of pandiculation, we are essentially combining the active movements of a means whereby and the physiologically altering work of kinetic mirroring. Kinetic mirroring loses lasting effectiveness because it does not happen in the higher processes of the brain. When you add the consciousness of means whereby and focus on the active lengthening of a muscle, you bring the effects up to the motor cortex and frontal lobe. This ensures that the effect lasts. It also ensures that the more you do it, the easier and more effective the movement will become.


The reason for that is due to the motor cortex’s allocation of neurons. As mentioned earlier, every muscle in the body is represented in the sensory motor cortex. Muscles that have more motor neurons have more representation in the motor cortex. Muscles that have more sensory neurons have more representation in the sensory cortex. As we grow and develop, these representations change to conform to learned skills. When fine motor skills are learned with particular muscles, they get more representation in the brain and our ability to sense and move them increases. If certain muscles however are not focused on, they start to lose their representation in the brain. Decreased representation leads to decreased sensitivity and control, a term we call sensory motor amnesia. When a muscle is neglected for a long period of time we in effect forget how to use that muscle because we can no longer feel it. By bringing a client’s attention to these dulled, forgotten muscles, the brain wiring changes. The more they move a muscle actively, the better sensation they will have in the muscle making it that much more controlled and movable. This is then termed sensory motor awareness.


So with Hanna Somatics we are applying this elaborate knowledge of neurophysiology to the benefit of our clients. As a practitioner, I can help a client understand why they are feeling pain, affirming the experience that they are having in their soma. Although I cannot actually feel what is going on inside of them, because their somatic structure is similar to mine and I have experienced pain, I can imagine what they might be experiences. By feeling muscles and visually assessing areas of hypertension, I can make assumptions about their internal state.

Using this knowledge of neurophysiology, I can then explain to them, scientifically, what is probably happening. Through this thorough study, pain is no longer a mystical problem of a broken body, but rather a natural reaction of their soma to stress and tension. The fact that a client feels pain and has muscle tension is an indicator that they have a healthy and active nervous system. Furthermore, if they have a healthy and active nervous system, then there is no reason that their tension cannot be reversed and pain lessened. The rigors of scientific method allow us to make those presumptions and move forward confidently with treatment.

As educators, we are able to then bridge the divide between what we view, feel and know objectively and what the client is experiencing subjectively. As the field of Somatics grows, we will most likely see a continued softening of the border between subjective and objective. The subjective is thought of as our own personal experience of the world and as such is thought to have little relevance when it comes to scientific theory. But as somas we are constantly engaged with and responding to other somas and the world around us. Our internal states shift continuously as we grow and as our environment changes. The objective, on the other hand, is what we would think of as truth, undeniable facts that everyone agrees on. The objective is rigid while the subjective is fluid.


With Somatics, it becomes clear that maybe the subjective is not always so fluid and the objective is not quite so rigid. As somas that respond to their environments, we tend to have very similar responses to stimuli. This is what the somatic postures are based on. We have these similar reflexes because structurally and genetically we are quite similar. If we are quite similar and are sharing these physical attributes and reactions, then it is very likely that we have also similar subjective experiences. Of course no two people are exactly the same and you never can truly walk in someone else’s shoes but to a certain extent there is an objective experience within a shared environment and shared structure


Looked at from another angle, if we are subjective somas living varied and mutable existences, then our lives are growing and changing while we move and adapt. As creators of physical and societal structures in the form of buildings, governments and art, we are actively changing the world around us. What is real and tangibly truthful at one time will eventually be rebuilt, destroyed or become passé. In this way objective reality is not actually as formal and rigid as we would like to think.


By combining somatic principles with scientific study we start to get a better sense of how these two ideas converge and influence each other. We subjectively experience an objective reality and then respond to change that reality. We do this without even trying to and we do this so reliably that the mutability of fact becomes fact itself.


Without neurophysiology, all of these ideas would be just ideas. With science behind us, we can confidently talk to our clients and the medical world. Without Hanna Somatics, all of these scientific theories would be just theories. We need the application of these theories to help grow as a people and expand what we can be as somas. Each can exist separately, but together, there is a greater power. Together, as Reebok says, “impossible is nothing.”

resisting resistance...releasing release

I'm trying to improve my vocabulary, understanding that words have power and are a structure of society. I'm sure you're all familiar that eskimos have a hundred words for "snow" and americans have two zillion words for "money". We work with what we know and we focus on what is important to us. In this way, we strengthen the structural supports that create our reality and direct our lives. Language is no different. And so here I am, trying to write a message about change and am having a difficult time finding vocabulary that is not routed in the structures of struggle, aggression, and conformity that support our world.

How do you talk about change without implying that the current situation is harmful. Subtle differences may seem inconsequential, but realistically, struggle reinforces struggle and ease reinforces ease. Are the words, no, don't, stop, resist, tied to pain, tension, stress?

I'll attempt to evoke without inciting. What I want for you is to let go. Embrace loss of control. Lose control, because control is one way that we struggle against the ways of the universe and against ourselves. As Humans, we are a part of a giant mass of energy that flows and ebbs continually like waves in the ocean. We cannot control that, all we can do is try to enjoy it and allow ourselves to be not like pillars supporting a pier, firmly rooted deep into the ocean floor struggling to hold their ground. And not like a buoy floating lazily from side to side with a chain maintaining its range of motion, inhibiting it from straying too far. I want you to be like the surfer who realizes that the best option really is grab the best wave you can and ride it.

In a similar fashion, I want to say that living can be a more and more effortless process. Not that it will always be easy, but even in times of strain, there is a path of least resistance. This path is our authentic self. It is through increased effort that we resist that self. The weariness we feel after a long day in the world is that resistance. We effort to sit at our desks for long periods of time when our true self wants to walk and dance. We effort to hold in our emotions and maintain composure when inside we feel and want to express. We effort to 'fit in' 'be' a certain way, "find" ourselves when in reality we are already perfect.

But the truth, as I see it, is that the answers are not found through effort, they are found through release. We do not have to compel ourselves to grow, develop, achieve. This is what we do naturally and have been doing for thousands of years. It is our biological imperative. Just as a flower even in the harshest of conditions will find the easiest way to sunlight and water. Flourishing in human terms is often about getting out of our own way and allowing our natural, authentic selves to develop and thrive. The simple fact that we have evolved and continue to evolve allows me to say that.

Try something: pick an activity, any activity. Maybe something you do regularly. I want you to start cultivating ease and gentleness. In this way, you will slowly be training yourself away from resistance. So pick any activity. Can you do it without struggle? Can you find a way to do it effortlessly, gently, with pleasure. Can living itself be effortless, gentle, pleasurable? yes, yes, yes, yes, yes...

The future is now, plan well

Hi, happy holidays. I'm taking a break from clients to recharge on the east coast. Get back to my roots in the snow covered suburbs of central mass and let me tell you, environment effects you!

But anyway, with the new year coming up, people are often into making resolutions so I wanted to talk a little about visualization and future planning from a somatic standpoint. I lately have been using a lot of visualizations in my own life and while working with clients. It's a powerful thing indeed. And I think that something needs to be acknowledged and that is, thought is action. On a scientific physiological level, thought has an effect.

Movement is a great example. In the conscious motor area of your brain there is the motor cortex which initiates voluntary contraction. But right in front of that is the premotor cortex. This part of your brain is active way before your motor cortex starts actually moving your arm or leg. So in effect it is the premotor cortex that is initiating the movement. The premotor cortex also helps by selecting appropriate movements and discarding innaproriate movements and since it connects into spinal tracts, motor planning is stimulating the motor nerves even before you start moving.

So if you were trying out for a tennis team, it may benefit you to consciously visualize the various strokes you will use, visualize the side to side maneuvering your legs and body will go through, visualize that smooth kick serve. By doing so beforehand, you are priming the muscles for the action. In effect you are already playing tennis even before you step onto the court.

I see this with my clients, just the focused thought of muscles releasing and blood flowing freely through tissues starts the release and healing process. The thought of the release essentially becomes the release.

Think about that in the new year. If there are particular changes that you want to make in your life or things that you want to tweak or improve, start by visualizing them first. Don't just think about them, but really go through them in detail what you plan to do and the desired outcome of that action. If you have a specific outcome in mind, you'll be priming the steps needed to achieve that goal and will be much more likely to follow through to completion.

Here's to having the year you want to have!