Spiritual Somatics Coaching Techniques
Guiding Clients Into Their Bodies
From the Spiritual Somatics perspective, the physical body is a technology that allows us to function in this 3D realm. Through patterning and conditioning, we forget that we are a soul having a human experience and come to over-identify with the physical plane of existence. Simultaneously, it is a paradox that people come to believe we are our physical bodies, and also forget that we have them!
A major entry way into self-healing is by bringing people into more conscious relationship with their physical body. There are many reasons that people are not cultivating a conscious relationship with their physical bodies:
• Imbalanced Vata leads to disassociation
• Imbalanced Kapha leads to energetic density and blockages that congest the physical body, making it hard to feel into the body
• Internalized beauty standards leading to body shame and disordered eating
• Internalized Cartesian Dualisms that the body is to be “overcome”
• Overwork from capitalism, lack of attention to present state
• Histories of sexual and physical abuse
• Trauma and pain bodies (lower belly to solar plexus) feel bad, and people’s bodies tell them it’s not safe to sense into those areas
• Institutionalized and structural “isms”: Racism, Sexism, Transphobia, Ageism, Ableism, Sizeism
• Self-hate and lack of self-esteem
There are several ways to bring people into more conscious relationship with their bodies:
• Doshas: Beginning with the Doshas, or a comparable system (such as Chinese medicine) is powerful a way to remind people that we are made up of Earth we are a collection of elements! And through those unique ratios, we each have an individual energetic constitution.
• Breathwork: Breath is medicine. Pranayama (conscious, yogic breath) is working intentionally with the breath to shift the energetics of someone’s energy field.
• Yoga: Asana poses intentionally bring the physical body into Sacred Geometrical forms in order to consciously shift prana in the body, creating more coherence and charging up the central channel (spine). Tai Chi and Qi Gong are other systems for moving the physical body to stimulate prana movement.
• Body Scanning: Most people’s minds are so loud that they are not able to notice physical sensations in their bodies. General body scanning does not come from any particular lineage, which can feel more accessible to people who are concerned about cultural appropriation or are skeptical of spiritual lineages.
In Ayurveda, physical disease is thought to be a physical symptom of a severe energetic imbalance that a client has ignored for too long. These physical symptoms are like a check engine light, they communicate with us what needs to happen. The more we can get clients to notice the warning signals, the more they are able to rewire so they don’t need to wait until their body is screaming at them to pay attention.
With enough practice, eventually we are able to interact with the body like a barometer: “Oh, my right hip is achey, time to slow it down,” or “I feel a pressure in my heart, time to sit with my grief,” or “My shoulders are so tight, I didn’t realize I was so stressed.”
BodyScanning
Body scanning is a basic building block that encourages clients to begin sensing in to how their body is talking to them all the time. This simple practice can be life changing! Most people have never been given permission to slow down long enough to sense into and isolate different parts of their body.
When we guide clients through a body scanning, we want to first bring them into present moment by connecting with their breath, and feeling the rise and fall of the chest. You may want to encourage them to send roots down into the earth so that they are nice and grounded.
We want to start by separating out different sections of the body, encouraging clients to just scan and notice what they feel in:
• Upper arms, elbows, forearms, hands, fingers, and fingertips (Left and Right)
• Thighs, knees, shins/calves, ankles, feet, toes (Left and Right)
• Hips, tailbone, pelvis
• Lower belly, lower back
• Mid-belly, mid-back
• Ribcage and lungs
• Heart and Chest
• Upper back, shoulders, and shoulder blades
• Neck and throat
• Facial muscles
• Third Eye and Crown
This provides them an opportunity to slow down and realize they have all of these body parts! The initial scan is to just get general information that can then be returned to for deeper inventory and to have clients practice simply noticing sensations in their body.
“IAM”ChakraAffirmations(DiagnosticTest)
In a first session with a client, once you’ve had them do an initial scan, you can guide them through the major chakra points along the spine, reciting affirmations at each chakra point, letting them know the associated color and themes that are found there:
Root Chakra (Red): “I am safe and the Universe provides me with all of my needs”
Sacral Chakra (Orange): “I am a creative, balanced being”
Solar Plexus (Yellow): “I am peaceful action”
Heart (Green): “I am (Divine) Love”
Throat (Blue): “I am Truth”
Third Eye (Indigo): “I am Wisdom”
Crown (Purple/White): “I am Source/Divine”
The purpose here is to model for the client how to work more in-depth with body scanning, and to be with and name sensations without creating a mind story about what they mean.
Instruct them to “try on” the affirmation in the body for the corresponding chakra, and to notice what comes up for them there. There might be:
• Sensations (color, shape, texture, pressure, weight, temperature)
• A visceral mind reaction to the affirmation (“Yeah, right,” “There’s no way the Universe provides me with all of my needs, etc.)
• Something they might label an emotion (From here, see if they can get “under” the emotion. You can ask them questions such as, “How do you know that what you are feeling is anger? Where do you feel it in your body? What does anger feel like?”)
• A memory
If a client is having a hard time articulating what they are feeling, assure them there are no right or wrong answers, and that it just takes time to be able to sense into the body. It’s helpful to share with them your “failures,” too, to normalize body listening as not necessarily coming easily. Vata imbalanced clients will go into self-doubt, Pitta imbalanced clients will go into self-judgement, and Kapha imbalanced clients will go into shame. Encourage them to practice finding language for what they are noticing, and to use their imagination to describe it.
You can reiterate that it doesn’t “mean” anything, you are just running a diagnostics test to see what’s going on in each chakra, and then they’ll be able to do a deeper dive during their self-study.
BaselineVibration
Before we guide a client in to work an old trauma, or introduce the Destination Vibration, we want to get a sense of what their baseline is. For the client, this means bringing the unconscious vibrations present in their body into a conscience state.
You can do a full or abridged initial body scan, and then guide them back into their torso area (midpoint of the body) and ask them to bring attention where they are experiencing more sensation. Invite them to bring their attention to these places, and to note the qualities of these sensations, as listed above.
You can encourage them to begin each morning scanning their body for their baseline vibration so that they can recognize what they are bringing into their day, and where they are starting from.
DestinationVibrationAssociation
The Destination Vibration Association is a practice where we cue the client to tap into a memory where they experienced “flow” so that we can facilitate their access to higher vibrational states in their field. We are gently guiding them back into their hearts so they can build a more conscious relationship to their Bliss body, by reminding them what it feels like.
You can instruct the client to think of a memory (time, person, place, ritual, practice, etc.) that lights them up when they think about it. They can be thinking of a time where they felt joy, gratitude, contentment, optimism whatever vibration feels reachable for them. They can graft several memories onto each other to create a new fabricated memory, if this allows them to access these higher vibrations more easily.
From here, encourage them to “try on” this memory, or memories, in their body. When we do this, we are asking them to pull up the energetic record of this association in their field so they can merge with it and transport themselves back there. While we are utilizing the Sacral chakra and the power of the imagination to recreate the event, energetically, this experience is real, not imagined.
You can ask them to share with you pieces of what they are envisioning, and then you can use their key words to say it back to them so that they can be free to feel the vibration in their body, since you are now holding the container with them. When they have been here awhile, you can ask them what they are noticing, and if anything has shifted.
Remember, there is no right and no wrong. Some clients will be able to drop in right away, while others might not be able to access their heart yet. Some will even veer into grief (which needs to be felt so that it can be cleared).
While they are here, continue to offer guiding, supportive questions:
• Can you tell me more about what that feels like in your heart/stomach/hands?
• Is there a color?
• Do you notice any shifts?
If clients are able feel a shift in their Heart (warmth, lightness, opening), celebrate that with them! Tell them this is what “flow” feels like! It’s not actually about the association they are using. We are just using it as a “hack” to allow them to access their Bliss state.
The more they practice these vibrations, the stronger, and more coherent they become in their field. And the more they’ll be able to begin noticing when they feel that openness in their hearts during the day.
It’s important to tell them that we become so accustomed to our vibrations of suffering, pain, loneliness, and unworthiness, that we often don’t register these higher vibrations of joy and contentment. Bringing attention to these higher vibrational states in their field will allow them to expand and flow into regular daily life.