What Is Somatic Awareness Training?

Transcript

Okay. What is somatic awareness training? The word somatic comes from the Greek word soma which means the body in its lived experiential wholeness. Different from the word s means more like a hunk of meat. So the essential idea here is the body is a key part of who we are. It's the subjective experience the body. Sometimes sematic is used as a synonym with the word embodiment. It's what I'm probably most associated with. We have a sematic approach to coaching. I train coaches to work with the body is to notice sensations in the body and to be able to work with that. There are a number of traditional schools around this. This comes from different roots. Mo say Felden Christ. The Feldon Christ technique is awareness through movement lessons. The Alexander technique originally from was it Tasmania, Australia definitely founders of this. A lot of these guys met in Eelan Institute in California. Fry was there and it combined sort of psychotherrapeutic techniques mixing with eastern practices. So there's some sort of a controversy. Is this all just Asian mindfulness? I would say no. It's a mix of Asian mindfulness mixed in with often western practices which may have been coming from theater. There was a bunch of different actually mostly women coming out of 20s and 30s Germany who had a bunch of semantic practices that were well worth looking up. Wilhelm Reich who was actually a student of Freud who was the founder of body therapy could be said to be associated with this. Alexander Lohan who's sometimes described as a neorikian another one of the people involved in this. Elsa Gindler, Charlotte Silva, two sort of pioneers in this field. I'm going to be missing people out. Martha Eddie, wonderful modern semantics practitioner, someone I know personally, lovely lady, has a book on the history with many, many more people in than this. I think a key idea here is sematic awareness is a skill. So you'll actually see children, they might have some semantic skills, but they're actually quite unbody aware in some ways and learning to pay attention to have consistent attention in the body. In my book on embodied meditation, I talk about having more detailed, more deep, and more consistent body awareness. So aware of more of the body more deeply in more detail more of the time. You could put it in four things if you wanted. For me that's the essence of sematic training. For some people sematic awareness is just about the awareness. So more like mindfulness. For other people it might include changing one's state. I sometimes talk about awareness and choice. This is a key model in our coaching schools. Uh that semantic awareness kind of yes one's being aware but it's also about having some ability to change oneself. There's various other practices of course yoga, conscious dance, uh breath work, maybe even improv comedy that intersect with sematic awareness. These may be influenced by you know the sematic awareness practices or you could think of them as sematic awareness practices in their own right. You know whether it's a sort of awareness of tantra in a sensuality or in a comedic kind of theater sense these are different elements and I think each bring a different flavor to the sematic awareness field. key thing there's many many kind of um claims you know indigenous traditions Asian western theater martial arts you know like Aikido we could say is a sematic awareness practice no one knows all of them often there's some sort of hustling about you know competition between them or claims this is the OG in some ways I think sematic awareness practices as old as humanity like indigenous traditions and the like however there's no doubt that there was this particular flourishing on the west coast of America. Uh you'll also see it coming out of Berlin though World War II interrupted that. It's back in Berlin in a big way now. So I think we can say that there are these sort of flourishings and traditions that come throughout the years. It's also hard to know certain culture like for example France has some sematic awareness practices but because of language because the nature of French culture uh they're quite detailed and some quite in-depth ones and some of them I hadn't heard of till quite recently I was I never heard of that even though this is my field. So things can also exist in isolation and be reinvented in different times and places. Okay. What are some of the benefits? Now it's so broad, right? Seatic awareness could be used to um make a dancer more beautiful, right? And a dancers who do fel in Christ for that reason. I think for a lot of people it's just relaxation. It's it's a healthy for one's physical health, one's mental health. It's a relaxing thing. You only you know you have to be aware of tension in your body to let go of the tension. Yeah. So for a lot of people there's health benefits. It can be looked at as a health practice. For some people it's to enhance their acting. You know for martial artists it's just about being a better fighter. I think there there is a case to be made that is an end in itself to be more human to be more embodied to be more in oneself. This is I think a good in and of itself. Obviously in the modern era the narrative trauma has been very strong and I think trauma awareness is super super key here. uh trauma like the trauma field without sematic awareness. It doesn't it doesn't really make sense as a field. So um yeah, I think that's a very modern perspective, but one that's super helpful. You'll see other applications, men's work, women's work, more political activism. There's all sorts of elements to it. Sometimes I think too political these days. Uh but basically sematic awareness, there's loads of forms of it is all good. I just encourage anyone watching this to try something. Uh if nothing else, you'll find it's probably pretty chill and good for you. are checking out.