The Magic of Hanna Somatics

Karin Scholz Grace, M.S.
Certified Hanna Somatics Practitioner and Somatic Yoga therapist

Hanna Somatics is known for its astonishing effectiveness in eliminating pain and promoting free movement, healthy alignment, and embodied self-expression. It is highly valued in rehabilitation and sports medicine, yoga, martial arts, dance, music, and theater arts.

Beyond the purely physiological benefits, it promotes the capacity for learning and change, and fuller embodied presence and self-mastery. In this way, the work is used in somatic coaching and leadership development as a tool for developing personal presence and the body of a leader.

Although the practice is physically gentle, the effects are profound—even magical.

Enhancing Physical Health

Hanna Somatics works to stimulate balanced, efficient patterns of posture and movement, producing a wide range of physiological benefits.

Do you have tight muscles that you don’t know how to release? Whether or not you are aware of it, you probably do. This work empowers you to recognize, release, and reverse chronic pain patterns resulting from imbalanced muscular contractions that you cannot presently voluntarily control. The clinical methods help you reset the resting tone of your muscles in a more balanced configuration, reducing tension and strain throughout your musculoskeletal system.

Hanna Somatics is particularly helpful for conditions such as back and neck pain; joint and muscle pain (shoulder, elbow, wrist, hip, knee, ankle, foot); nerve compression; headache; TMJ; repetitive strain injuries; fibromyalgia; breathing problems; tinnitus; impaired balance, walking or movement.

It is also highly beneficial for those with neurological challenges such as Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, dystonias, neuropathy, and stroke, helping clients to engage the motor and motor planning cortices of the brain to modulate other portions of the central nervous system, helping to compensate for some deficits.

Somatics also enhances systemic health by reducing stress responses of the sympathetic nervous system, promoting improved circulation and tissue healing, and helping to regulate autonomic functions such as breathing, blood pressure, and endocrine function.

Improving Performance

Somatics is sought-after by athletes , yogis, martial artists, dancers, musicians, and theater artists: benefits include optimizing motor patterning, eliminating unnecessary or inefficient movement, and enhancing freedom, flexibility, balance, and energy.

Developing Presence

Gaining increased self-awareness and self-mastery is profoundly empowering, which is why this work is used in self-actualization and leadership development.

Our bodies are a rich source of intelligence and of expression, a resource for enhancing our connection to each other and to our own inner wisdom. In somatic work, we ask: how can we integrate the mind and body as powerful partners, intrinsically and essentially one.

Both self-actualizing and being an effective leader require bringing my full self to bear in my actions. My capacity in my life and in my roles—my ability to listen with attunement, sense what is called for and what is missing, take action for new possibilities-- derives not just from my mastery of my mental and emotional faculties, but from skillful use of my whole self, my embodied self, sensing and acting in the world.

By cultivating the dialogue between mind and body, we transform ourselves, becoming someone who can take actions that were previously unavailable to them. This unfolding capacity is the basis of our full flowering of our potential.

For more information on somatic coaching, please email Karin to request her article “The Wisdom of the Body”..

How is it taught? How does it work?

Hanna Somatics is taught through individual hands-on sessions and group classes, and results are deepened through your own ongoing practice at home. In sessions or classes, a practitioner guides you through specific sequences of self-sensing and movement that neurologically awaken your ability to perceive your body fully and accurately, and move your body deliberately and freely. And most importantly, you learn somatic principles and a series of key somatic movement patterns, so that you have the tools to continue to rebalance your musculoskeletal system and enhance your neurological flexibility on a daily basis.

Although the results may seem miraculous, the principles of the work are based in solid neuroscience. A core technique of this neuromuscular re-education is known as pandiculation. Pandiculation involves slow, coordinated muscle contractions and elongations, which engage and stimulate your sensory and motor cortices— the powerful parts of your brain responsible for awareness and voluntary control of your movement, which are able to modulate lower brain centers. Pandicular movements, done with assistance in session and on your own at home, are simple and powerful, creating great improvement in your coordination, mobility, and capacity.

What are Individual Somatics Sessions Like?

Individual Somatics sessions last 60 to 90 minutes, depending upon your particular needs. Clients describe the work as pleasurable and even fascinating.

At a session, I assess your posture and movement, noting where you move freely and in balance, as well as any fixations and imbalances in your present alignment. Based upon this assessment, you are guided, verbally and physically, through specific slow movements designed to stimulate your brain to rebalance your musculoskeletal system.

Through most of the session you are lying down, or occasionally seated or standing. I use gentle pressure to guide, support, or provide resistance as you move, and use touch to highlight your awareness of muscle action, and tension and movement habits that may have been unconscious.

Clients generally experience significant improvement in comfort and freedom of movement within three to six sessions. Some clients choose to continue sessions to deepen their somatic integration and continue to refine their coordination.

Please wear stretchy, non-restrictive clothing such as yoga or sportswear to your session.

Doing Your Homework

You will also learn a customized series of pandicular movement patterns that address fundamental reflex patterns and core muscle groups of the body. These movements reinforce your brain’s ability to efficiently direct your muscles, and are part of your self-maintenance and ongoing self-enhancement. By doing your somatic movement routine on your own daily, you compensate for inactivity or for harmful movement patterns you resume due to life’s demands.

Most people look forward to the physical pleasure of doing their somatic movement routine each morning, and enjoy the sense ease and comfort in their body that results.

What are Group Somatics Classes Like?

During group classes, we work predominantly lying on the floor, occasionally moving into seated or standing positions, or exploring upright patterns of movement such as walking.

During class, you will focus on your breathing and capacity to sense deeply into your body as we do various breath and movement patterns. I verbally guide your attention and movement, also offering cueing and feedback through touch, as you sense and move. You will focus on exploring how to engage your body with ease and pleasure, avoiding strain or over-effort, moving only within a comfortable range (even if for you that means making your movements exquisitely tiny).

I suggest modifications for individuals with specific limitations, and support and encourage your ability to sense your own present limits within movements. The classes are supportive and safe, even for those recovering from injuries or living with disabilities. If you are working with a particular injury or condition, I can support you best if you let me know before class what you are working with.

Group classes teach you somatic principles as well as many somatic movement patterns. Even if you have had individual sessions, group classes reinforce and deepen your Somatic understanding and experience, and introduce you to novel Somatic Movement patterns you haven’t yet explored. For familiar Somatic Movements, being coached and directed offers you the relaxing and pleasurable experience of being guided through the movements, facilitating relaxation and surrender.
If you have a preference for using your own props, you may want to bring your own mat, blanket or large towel, or pillow to class. At Yoga of Sausalito, blankets are provided (and most people fold up extra blankets as pillows, too).

In response to requests, I occasionally offer special topics classes such as: Somatic Breathing, Somatic Walking, Flexible Hands and Feet, Relaxed Neck and Shoulders, and Somatic Facelift. If you are interested in a special topics class, let me know.

What is Somatic Yoga?

Somatic Yoga is a safe, gentle style of yoga focused on somatic principles of inward sensing and conscious rebalancing of the body.

In Somatic Yoga, we use both the voluntary and involuntary nervous systems to promote healthy alignment and movement patterns. We perform specific movement sequences to engage unconscious reflexes that balance muscle tension and promote muscle lengthening. We also consciously release holding in the body by being mindful of our internal sensations, learning how to inhibit muscle tension and allow greater flexibility and relaxation.

Yoga asanas become easier, safer, and more natural when agonist/antagonist groups are working in harmony, and unconscious holding is released. In Somatic yoga, we begin working outside of the requirements of being upright against gravity, exploring activation and inhibition of muscles in safe positions that allow exploration without undue strain. Gradually we integrate the new muscular patterns into more challenging asanas, maintaining the neuromuscular balance alongside greater demands for strength, balance, and coordination.

Who was Hanna? The History of Hanna Somatics

Hanna Somatics was developed by the late Dr. Thomas Hanna. Hanna coined the term somatics in 1976 to describe disciplines that address the mind and body as inseparable. He used the term soma to describe the body experienced from within: a subjective view of yourself, fully aware of your own internal sensations, behaviors, and intentions. This differs from an objective view of your body without reference to your internal experience.

Hanna felt that cultivating this integrated self-aware perspective is key to promoting individual health, freedom, and self-actualization. The therapeutic use of the subjective perspective distinguishes Hanna Somatics from conventional therapeutic approaches.

In the early 1970s, Hanna began working with Moshe Feldenkrais, whose methods of body education embodied Hanna’s somatic philosophy. As director of the Humanistic Psychology Institute (now the Saybrook Institute), Hanna arranged the first Feldenkrais Method training program in the United States.

As he practiced as a body educator, Hanna observed characteristic postural difficulties in people of all ages and in all walks of life. He also saw that many clients had lost ability to voluntarily contract and release muscles with full control, which he termed Sensory Motor Amnesia. He also noticed that certain specific techniques were extremely effective in helping clients regain control of muscles that were holding them in maladaptive postures and restricting their movements. He described these principles and techniques in his groundbreaking book titled “Somatics”.

On a linguistic note, over the decades since 1976, the term “somatics” has been adopted into broader use to describe a variety of mind-body disciplines other than the somatic work that Hanna pioneered. The original work of Hanna has come to be called Hanna Somatics or Hanna Somatic Education to distinguish it from other somatic approaches, although (perhaps confusingly) many of us still say “Somatics” in reference to “Hanna Somatics.”

Sensory Motor Amnesia

We stand arranged in a characteristic posture because involuntarily contracted muscles hold us there. When our muscles are balanced in tone— front, back, and sides— and contracted only as much as needed to hold us upright, we stand in a relaxed comfortable posture that supports good health and function. When our muscles are more contracted on one side than another, we are pulled in that direction, compressing joints, nerves, and organs, constricting blood flow, and causing compensating muscular contractions elsewhere.

Muscles contract and release in response to signals from the nervous system originating in the brain and spinal cord; some of these signals are involuntary, but can be modified by voluntary signals. When our involuntary nervous system continuously sends “contract” signals, and our voluntary nervous system loses the ability to modify these signals, habitual patterns of hyper-contraction occur in certain muscles. This leads to imbalanced posture, restricted movement, and pain.

Sensory Motor Amnesia is the loss of full ability to accurately sense and move muscles—loss of ideal neuromuscular control of our posture and movement. Sensory Motor Amnesia often leads to pain, and always leads to less comfort, freedom, and ease in our movements.

The Four Maladaptive Postural Patterns

In his work with clients, Hanna identified four maladaptive postural patterns: the Green Light Pattern, the Red Light Pattern, the Trauma Pattern, and the Dark Vise. These patterns originate as instantaneous involuntary reflexes move us into certain positions momentarily, but can become habituated into long-term characteristic postures.

The Green Light Pattern

The Green Light Pattern is an action posture in which the extensor muscles of the body are activated, arching the back and extending the neck, arms and legs, like a skydiver in freefall.

The Green Light Pattern originates in the instinct to go forward actively into the world, beginning with a baby’s first reflexive efforts to raise her head and crawl, elaborating as we age into our multi-faceted efforts to perform in response to life’s demands.

The Red Light Pattern

The Red Light Pattern is a withdrawal posture in which the flexor muscles of the body are active, rounding the body forward, tucking the arms and legs in, and squeezing the eyes and mouth closed, like the fetal position in utero.

The Red Light Pattern originates in the instinct to withdraw to protect ourselves from perceived danger, which we reflexively do when startled, and which we can generalize into a long-term stance of guarded retreat in response to life’s stresses and challenges.

The Trauma Pattern

The Trauma Pattern is a protective posture in which lateral and rotational muscles of the body are imbalanced, bending or twisting the body asymmetrically to one side, as in scoliosis. This originates from reflexive guarding and splinting that occur in response to injury, which become habituated and persist even after the original injury has healed.

The Dark Vise

The Dark Vise is a pattern of co-contraction of agonist and antagonist groups, where muscle groups that normally alternate their contraction contract simultaneously, pulling against each other. This can originate when a hyper-aroused nervous system causes generalized contraction throughout the body; or when antagonist muscles contract in compensation for contracted agonists.

These debilitating postures all result when first the normal reflexes of the body become habituated into involuntary chronic contractions, and second we lose our neurological flexibility to release these chronic patterns.

Restoring Balance and Freedom

Hanna Somatics resolves these problems by reeducating the voluntarily controlled parts of your brain to correctly direct the balance and control of your muscles, which triggers the involuntary parts of your brain to reset as well.

It transforms your body by awakening your accurate internal awareness of your position in space, and of your own muscular effort. By learning to identify the sensations and intentions of your movements, you empower your brain to move more efficiently, naturally, and with flexible coordination.

Through Hanna Somatics, you can successfully keep your musculoskeletal system in a state of relaxed balance, promoting comfort, ease of movement, and health on every level of your mind and body.

You are powerful beyond measure—your mind, with a balance of focused intention and relaxed surrender, can create greater and greater health and freedom in your soma as you age.

Karin Scholz Grace is a certified Hanna Somatic therapist, bringing a wide range of training and skills to her diverse healing arts and coaching practice. Based in Sausalito, California, she offers individual sessions and group classes in Hanna Somatics, Somatic Yoga, somatic coaching, leadership development, meditation, stress reduction, and the Enneagram. Karin holds an MS from Stanford University, and is currently a student of the Diamond Approach.

In addition to her private practice, Karin also facilitates Interpersonal Dynamics and High Performance Leadership at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and at USF School of Law. She is also a regular speaker and presenter at workshops and conferences such as the Association of Hanna Somatic Education conference, the International Enneagram Association Conference, and the International Association of Yoga Therapy Conference.

Having used Somatics to recover from her own debilitating spinal injury, Karin embodies this transformative healing practice from a place of personal experience and deep compassion. She loves empowering each student with the tools to make dramatic shifts within themselves and find greater capacity, flexibility, and comfort.
Karin can be reached at karin-at-marinhealingarts.com, or at 415.331.9950.