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SOMAYOGA
WHAT IS SOMAYOGA?
BY MOLLY MCMANUS (SHE/HER)
+ ANN MAXWELL (SHE/HER)
What is SomaYoga?
A unique methodology developed by Yoga North ISYI, SomaYoga blends Vedic Traditions and modern wisdom work. This article focuses on the central methodology of SomaYoga’s approach to embodiment. The practices build on increasing interoception: the ability to sense within, bringing back consciousness to our body and movement patterns to areas we lost touch with, and providing sensory motor reeducation to create more freedom and ease in the whole-being.
When guiding, we often begin with Somatics, created by Thomas Hanna. This provides more mobility and consciousness of the “soma,” the internal experience of the body, mind, and soul. Therapeutic Yoga adds stabilizing, which supports functional movement patterns. Classic Asana helps build good biomechanics, stamina, strength, and enjoyment. It is the interplay of these modalities that creates the optimal approach to health in the deepest sense: what we have come to call “whole being well being.” We use the infinity symbol to graphically represent this interplay in terms of the three components (mobility, stability, and strength as well as Somatics, Therapeutic Yoga, and Classic Asana).
SomaYoga Principles
Designed to build accessible, trauma conscious, student focused practices, all classes and trainings in the SomaYoga Methodology teach these principles.
Learn to Pay Attention
•Nourish self awareness through breath and sensing. • Pay attention to the process and internal sensations. • Break movements into smaller parts and get truthful. • The slower you move, the more you will perceive. • Keep movements novel.
Build Better Habits
•Learn to be efficient with movement patterns. • Move gently with the least possible effort and without force. • Build awareness and learn to self correct. • Radiate from your spine and support your limbs from deep core function.
Progress Responsibly and Compassionately
•Stay pain free, patient, and positive. • Align through gravity and good biomechanics. • Become conscious of habits and patterns. • Practice simple to complex, low load to high load, slow to spontaneous, and symmetrical to asymmetrical. • Get imposed standards out of the way and become more about authentic function.
Stay Current –Enjoy Your Freedom
•Freedom means embracing self-empowerment and increasing self-responsibility. • Move towards your freedom from a steady and easy stance. • Bring congruency to your Mind
Body-Spirit. This creates the direct experience of an integrated Soma.
Sustaining the experience of an integrated Soma is freedom.
Unique Tools of SomaYoga
Stress Responses and Sensory Motor Amnesia (SMA)
Hans Selye, founder of the stress theory, recognized physiological disease could arise from psychological causes like stress. This somatic viewpoint is that everything is a bodily experience. Sensory-motor systems respond to daily stresses and traumas with specific muscular responses or reflexes. Repeatedly triggered, they create habitual muscular contractions, which we cannot voluntarily relax. The contractions become so deeply unconscious we eventually no longer remember how to move freely. This is called Sensory Motor Amnesia or SMA.
The three main stress responses are:
•LANDAU (GREEN LIGHT): The tightening of the spine’s extensor muscles in preparation to move forward. An action response. • STARTLE (RED LIGHT): The tightening of the trunk’s forward flexors. A withdrawal response. • TRAUMA/CRINGE: The cringing of the muscles nearest the site of an injury or threat. A protective response. The body will contract, retract, immobilize, and often rotate away from the threat, creating a tilt of the trunk to one side.
Understanding Sensory Motor Amnesia (SMA)
The loss of interoceptive discernment of sensation around certain muscles and a resulting loss of ability to effectively control them. SomaYoga offers techniques to facilitate this type of neuro-muscular reeducation of the sensory-motor pathways. • SMA does not relate to age and can occur any time. • Specific sudden trauma, as well as chronic stress, is associated with SMA. • SMA often relates to a habit of the sensory-motor system and therefore can be unlearned or re-educated. • SMA can be both a contributing factor to and a result of anxiety, depression, and PTSD. • SMA can look like a limited range of motion, pain, or dysfunction.
Examples include TMJ, Plantar
Fasciitis, Low Back Syndrome,
Urinary Urgency, Pelvic Pain, Frozen
Shoulder, and Digestion Issues.
Pandiculation Rather than Traditional Stretching
SomaYoga uses a technique by Hanna called pandiculation to release SMA and to create more function and freedom in movement. A pandiculation is a strong voluntary contraction of a muscle or group of muscles followed by a slow voluntary release to the lengthened full potential. This process of sensory motor re-education wakes up cortical control of the muscles and effectively resolves SMA. It is different from much of the traditional stretching seen in classic asana that can create overstretching, instability, and injury.
Interoceptive + Proprioceptive Cuing
This focuses on anatomical brilliance and freedom, having the soma feel themselves deeply from the inside and move according to their own internal awareness, safety, and enjoyment. There is encouragement to build poses from present ability versus distal cuing, and to move from a steady light breath and a mobile, stable spine.
In addition to the SomaYoga Methodology’s embodiment practices, the larger tradition of Vedic studies always supports the work for the most profound shifts in the human experience. • Ayurveda practices for a life well lived. • Pranayama for working with the breath and life force. • Meditation and Training of the Mind. • Deep Personal Development. • Yogic Philosophy and Sacred Texts.
Growing our own kinder practice led us into the creation of SomaYoga methodology, which we find helps escort others into their own healing, creativity, and joy. +
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