How We Twist out of the Way

Posted on March 16, 2021 by daysomatics

*Wringing out the center with the “wash rag” exploration from Thomas Hanna’s Cat Stretch*

We’re rounding off our Hibernation Somatics series tomorrow, with twisting of the waist. We’ll review a little of all the breath work from the last 3 weeks, and add some breathing into the waist to allow for greater twisting. I love this series, because it’s like “wringing out” the whole center of the body like a washcloth.

What’s so great about twisting the waist muscles? Well, they help us get out the way of trouble by turning the body one way or the other. Tom Hanna called this the “trauma reflex” because it helps you avoid injury and protects an injury while you heal. This reflex is very helpful to avoid spraining an ankle when you unexpectedly trip off the sidewalk, slip on ice, or jump out of the way of a speeding car (I think of that scene in The Matrix when Neo is twisting & turning to avoid a barrage of slow-mo bullets). As with the “green-light” and “red light” reflexes, all the muscles of this twisting reflex needs to be reminded that they have a full range of movement to jump to help when they’re needed. We are a culture of looking straight ahead, and generally don’t value our ability to twist to look behind us or side to side, and as a result, those waist muscles get stuck & feel tight, and potentially aren’t available to get us out of the way of danger when we need them. A Somatic practice helps to keep all the muscles of the center activated for their full range of movement in order to jump to action when we need it – and the ability to twist can be especially helpful to get us out of the way.

Somatics Basics Class

Wednesdays at 9amEST on Zoom

~~Week 1, February 24^th: Breathing into the low back~~

~~Week 2, March 3^rd: Breathing into the chest & shoulders~~

~~Week 3, March 10^th: Breathing into the pelvis~~

Week 4, March 17^th: Breathing into the waist

Wednesdays at 9amEST on Zoom. Hope to see you there!

I’ll send out the Zoom link Tuesday evening so it’s fresh in your inbox.

(Registration closes at 9pm the night before.)

Register here.

Classes run 35-45 minutes. Make sure you have a yoga mat sized space for the practice. Your video and audio will be off when you first get in the “room”, you have the option to turn both on. I’d love to *see* you, but feel free to remain off if you’re more comfortable that way 🙂

What’s Your Good Soil?

Posted on March 9, 2021 by daysomatics

*Growing micro-greens from seed for yummy snacks.*

A seed needs 3 things to start growing: warmth, water, and good soil. I’m playing around with growing greens this spring – it’s exciting to see what it takes for little seeds to root down into the soil, and reach up toward to sun. Sticking with our theme of coming out of hibernation – what do humans need for growth? What motivates us toward growth? We have our cycles just like all other creatures & plants on the planet. We have a time for rest, action, recuperation; tuning in & tuning out.

There’s a diagram I like to refer to – Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It suggests that we need to take care of our basic needs (food, water, rest, shelter) before we can grow into other needs – just like a seed does to grow into a plant. If we don’t have these basic things taken care of, our brains & nervous system can’t turn attention to things like personal growth or even cultivating relationships. If we experience pain in our body – like muscle pain or dis-ease – that interrupts our ability to grow as well, because that interferes with our sense of safety. Discomfort is distracting. Discomfort takes up a lot of brainpower in trying to get out of discomfort, so we don’t have the energy to cultivate the next level of our own growth and self-care.

Becoming aware of our own needs – and the order in which they need to be addressed – can help to open up pathways to actually getting those needs met, so we have the energy to move on. Doorways become clearer. So often I see folks get caught in a spin cycle of discomfort, not knowing there are ways out and habituating painful patterns.

What’s your good soil for growth? Are you getting your basic needs met as we approach springtime?

Tomorrow, we’re going to explore waking up from the pelvis & center of the lower belly. Being able to take a deep breath into the whole center activates deeper circulation and blood flow, which helps to release muscle tension. Hope to see you there!

Somatics Basics Class

Wednesdays at 9amEST on Zoom

~~Week 1, February 24^th: Breathing into the low back~~

~~Week 2, March 3^rd: Breathing into the chest & shoulders~~

Week 3, March 10^th: Breathing into the pelvis

Week 4, March 17^th: Breathing into the waist

Wednesdays at 9amEST on Zoom. Hope to see you there!

I’ll send out the Zoom link Tuesday evening so it’s fresh in your inbox.

(Registration closes at 9pm the night before.)

Register here.

Breathing Makes Change

Posted on March 1, 2021 by daysomatics

Breathing is both involuntary and voluntarily controllable. It’s always there for us to access when we need it, and it keeps going when we don’t think about it. It’s just – always there. When we feel under stress, our breath becomes more shallow and higher in the chest. And when our breath is shallow, we can become more anxious and fearful… causing more stress… leading to more shallow breath… and on and on… The body doesn’t function as smoothly as it could when restricted by shallow breathing. Practicing voluntary control over the breath allows you the opportunity to take those pauses to just listen. And in that pause you give yourself options. Gaining more control over the muscles you have voluntary control over, you can change the way the breath functions – and change how you move in the world.

What’s exciting about playing with the breath is that it’s all changeable. The more you play with breath and cross the line between voluntary and involuntary, the faster you can recover and respond to outside input that may cause unhealthy habits. If we create muscle habits to encourage healthy, adaptive breathing, we can face anything in life with expansion and fullness. No matter what it is.

The things that affect our breathing, and can cause us to breathe shallowly, are usually unavoidable facts of life. Things we don’t think about and the things we do. Our culture, the media, driving a car, interacting with other humans, bad news, good news, really anything that happens to you during the day requires us to constantly react and recover, react and recover. Breathing, being an automatic function in the body, has to happen no matter what. But we can habituate reacting and recovering, by practicing in the moments of calm.

Over the few days, see if you notice when you are holding your breath, breathing shallowly – when you do certain projects at work, or when you listen to the news. OR when you see something inspiring, hear a beautiful piece of music, or smile at with a loved one – notice how your breath moves with joy, as well as irritation.

This week, we will be focusing on breathing into the upper chest and shoulders. The neck and the shoulders must allow for deep breathing by releasing tension in order to let the lungs take in a full breath. We’ll practice releasing muscle patterns in the neck and shoulders to see how that affects deeper breathing.

~~Week 1, February 24^th: Breathing into the low back~~

Week 2, March 3^rd: Breathing into the chest & shoulders

Week 3, March 10^th: Breathing into the pelvis

Week 4, March 17^th: Breathing into the waist

Wednesdays at 9amEST on Zoom. Hope to see you there!

Register here.
(Registration closes at 9pm the night before.)

Spotting the Differences

Posted on January 12, 2021 by daysomatics

We all have our stories. Whether they are true or not, we have stories that we tell ourselves to make sense of the world. When things are uncomfortable – like we get pain in our bodies or our hearts – sometimes those stories (whether true or not…) may not serve us in the healthiest and most open ways. Pain can create disconnection with ourselves and others, we can shut down, close out the world, withdrawing into our own story of how we got here in the first place. And anything that threatens that story can be rejected outright, to preserve what we know, even if what we know is painful.

Differentiation can be a hard thing to do, but simple. Just noticing something that you’re not used to changes perspective, and may actually lead you to more easeful ways to move through your life. Remember those “spot the difference” pictures in the backs of some kids magazines? Two pictures look identical at first, but you look a little closer, and start to see differences. When I was a kid, it got so excited to find those differences! Something new & fresh! (TBH, I still get excited) The first step in changing habits & stories that no longer serve us is to notice what’s there, without judgement, guilt, or another story to pile on top of it. From there, we can start to notice what’s a little bit different. Nothing too drastic – we still maintain the story – but we can start to shift that story little by little by spotting the differences. The brain loves habits, but the brain also loves novelty to learn new habits. Novelty creates new neural pathways in the brain, helping you learn new actions, clearing the way for new connections inside the body, and out.

Somatics is a great way to gently and safely find ways out of pain by taking the time to get to know your habits and body stories. Creating a safe space at first to allow awareness, then you can trust yourself to move into other new, fresh place for change. Slow movement makes for big changes! Try this free soma scan to get a sense of how to start noticing “what is” in your body, and then explore any little differences that you might not expect to be there. See what happens from the new connections.

Have you Pandiculated Today?

Posted on December 9, 2020 by daysomatics

Let’s go back to some Somatics basics: Pandiculation! The simplest explanation of pandiculation is a “yawn-like stretch”. It’s that luscious reach & yawn you see cats & dogs do when they get up from a nap (like my kitty Chloe is doing in that pic). Human babies do it a lot. My eight year-old daughter still does it a lot, but not as much as when she was a baby. And adult humans tend not to do it much at all. It’s a basic animal reflex – anything with a nervous system pandiculates.

What purpose does this reflex serve?
Pandiculation helps to reset the central nervous system’s control over our voluntary muscle system. We develop muscle patterns by just living life, and sometimes those patterns can become painful or constrictive. This reflex helps to interrupt automatic patterns, offering more length & fuller awareness to otherwise “stuck” patterns. Try it now – yawn, reach your arms up over head in that “yawn-like, cat waking up from a nap” sort of way. What happens? You probably tightened in your arms, pulling them into your body, and then slowly lengthened them out – it’s like a contraction that you slowly lengthen out fully. That process goes through a full contraction to a full release of the muscles, which helps the brain to sense the full range of that muscle pattern. Doesn’t it feel good?! (It also may feel weird if you don’t tend to do it that often, and that’s okay too. Just be careful if you think you’re going to get a Charlie Horse & back off from any intense contraction)

Babies and animals tend to explore their bodies & worlds a little more than grown-up humans. As we grow up, we tend to sit more, we become distracted and prioritize other things, not taking time for self-care of our bodies, which as we all know, can lead to all sorts of trouble down the line. Pandiculation is one self-care tool we have reflexively. If we remember to access it, pandiculation can prevent a lot of habitual muscle pain as we gain more experience in the world (aka “age”). Somatics utilizes this reflex a lot in practice – practitioners use “assisted pandiculations” in in-person private sessions, and we also encourage clients & students to learn to utilize it themselves in an at-home practice. I always tell people, “If you do nothing else, remember to pandiculate first thing every morning, and throughout your day. It makes all the difference”. Making time in your day for a Somatics movement practice is great, but if nothing else – pandiculate often!

Downloadable Audio Classes

There is a FREE soma scan, along with other downloadable audio classes available here. I will be updating this site with new downloads all the time. Let me know if you have a request, I may have it in the library already.

Gratitude in the Body

Posted on December 2, 2020 by daysomatics

Greetings Dear Somas, I hope you had a week full of love and yumminess. I have been counting my blessings and trying to bring more (than usual!) gratefulness into my heart in the past week. Thank you to each of you for showing your support and practicing in your own ways. I’ve been trying to notice how the feeling of gratitude sits in my body – I feel a warmth in my heart, and a lift in my shoulder blades. Sometimes little excited butterflies in my belly too. How does gratitude sit in your body? I’d love to hear from you, and think about how we can cultivate this feeling more often!

I have created a new video with the message of how your Somatics practice can help to balance your nervous system, spreading calm and more thoughtful responses to the world:

Downloadable Audio Classes

There is a FREE soma scan, along with other downloadable audio classes available here.

Thursday Classes

For December, our Thursday classes will be all about resetting the nervous system through Hanna’s Cat Stretch. Here’s a breakdown of the three weeks of December:

Week 1, December 3^rd: Releasing the Lower Back

Week 2, December 10^th: Releasing Waist Muscles

Week 3, December 17^th: Twisting while Pandiculating

Here is the link for this week’s class: Thursday at 12pm noon eastern time. Register here for class.

Classes run 35-45 minutes. Make sure you have a yoga mat sized space for the practice. Your video and audio will be off when you first get in the “room”, you have the option to turn both on. I’d love to *see* you, but feel free to remain off if you’re more comfortable that way 🙂

It all starts with a Dream…

Posted on November 18, 2020 by daysomatics

This Sandburg quote reminds me of a tool we use in Somatics called motor planning. A dream is a plan that we imagine to be true, before it’s actually here. When any movement is too difficult, painful, or feels blocked, just thinking about how you would move in that way activates those neurons in your brain, and starts the movement even before anything happens in the muscles. I think that is SO COOL!!! If you feel like your shoulder is stuck, and you’re unable to raise your arm above your head, just focusing on the movement – planning it out, starts to allow those connections to be made so that you can accomplish it down the road. Overcoming discomfort, pain, and tightness in the body can be very frustrating, and can hold us back from making the improvements we know are possible. It’s easy to think we need to push through pain or force a body part to be more flexible, when the most effective and direct way to get what we want is the most gentle one. Taking that pause to make a plan brings so much more awareness and opens us up to the beautiful possibility of change.

What other things can we dream up in our lives? How can we dream of a better world for not only our muscles & body parts, but for every aspect of life? Of our own lives, and the entire world?

Audio Downloads!! (Yay! :-D)
Storefront here

Take a Somatics class anytime. I am working to add and grow this library of classes and series and make them accessible to everyone. Try out a free Soma Scan download for a nice little break. Check out these class series: Unraveling Neck & Shoulder Tension and Walking with Ease. There’s also a relaxing Seated Somatic Exploration class for a very discounted price!

Thursday’s Class this week:

We are continuing to focus on the Lower Back and Breath in our Thursday class. The muscles of the lower back hold us upright in gravity and helps to hold all our important organs of the belly. Tomorrow, we will explore some really subtle and tiny movements of the arch in the lower back.

Here is the link for this week’s class: tomorrow, Thursday at 12pm noon eastern time. Register here for class.

Classes run 35-45 minutes. Make sure you have a yoga mat sized space for the practice. Your video and audio will be off when you first get in the “room”, you have the option to turn both on. I’d love to *see* you, but feel free to remain off if you’re more comfortable that way 🙂

How Do You Know to Let Go?

Posted on November 11, 2020 by daysomatics

TransiTION! (to the tune sung by Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof) There’s a lot going on now, right?! The transition to a new season, upcoming holidays, transition to a new president in the US – many of us have strong feelings about all of these things that can cause conflict with others, conflict in ourselves, resistance, and tension in the body. Life is all about transitions and adaptations – if we aren’t open to adapting, we find ourselves held back. And that causes more tension and potential pain & inflexibility in the body (and heart). Sometimes we don’t even know that we’re holding onto something and not adapting. That’s what sensory/motor amnesia is – a kind of void in awareness of where you’re held back. So how do you “see” better in order to gain awareness, and then use that awareness to make a choice of how to move forward? Well, discomfort can be a good sign that something needs to change. Whether that’s muscular or emotional discomfort, it’s your own body’s alarm system to alert you that something needs to change. Can you look at your own discomforts with curiosity, just like leaves falling off the trees ? Think of them as just passing by, something you don’t need, just falling away? It’s so hard to let go of our discomforts sometimes – we can get pretty attached to them! Discomforts can be a comfort, especially when we don’t know what could be on the other side of letting them go. Can you find some curiosity in imagining what would happen if you could let them go?

For the rest of November and December, classes will focus on the lower back and how to release more of the center. Because I want to bring more focus to the nervous system and how a Somatics practice can help to bring more balance and calm to the nervous system (for greater world change!), classes will include extended scans with the breath and finding safety in the edges of the body. This safe space you find within your own boundaries goes with you everywhere, you can access it anytime you feel pushed out of those boundaries. Register here for this week’s class.

ALSO! I have audio recordings available for sale! HOORAY! I’m still working on formatting and cleaning things up, but they are up & running and ready for downloads! I have one class that is available for just $3 – it is a great seated exploration of the center, finding the most efficient place for YOU in the moment to be upright.

Here’s the link for more information on class downloads.

Taking Back Control of Your Nervous System

Posted on November 4, 2020 by daysomatics

“Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.” – Alexis de Tocqueville

*My Election Day emotional management strategy.*

The day after Election Day in the US, and I want to be positive. But sometimes my own nervous system highjacks me and I start to feel hopeless and scared. I am so ready for this election to be over. It seems to me that every one of us in the entire United States has had their nervous systems highjacked. It’s hard to act out of love and empathy when you feel like your life is being threatened. As a result of this fear, we make collectively bad decisions. It’s exhausting to have your nervous system on high alert – we’re always anticipating that metaphorical tiger to jump out at us. That exhaustion leads to even more stress, pain, and more highjacking. WE have the power to take back our nervous systems and act out of love, empathy, and INCLUSION. A highjacked nervous system DIVIDES and separates us from connection with each other. Can we please please please rise above, take a pause, and respond to each other with calm? We have a lot of healing to do, y’all. Let’s buckle up, and help others buckle up too. We can do this together – and only together.

I know I said we were going to do a Lower Back series starting in November, but I’m shifting that to even pre-basic Somatic movement. It will still help with lower back issues, however for November we’re going to be focusing on the nervous system, and how to reach a safe space that we can always return to when we feel like we’re tipping over into highjacked/exhausted/overwhelm brain.

Happy December (and upcoming classes, videos, sessions)

Posted on December 20, 2016 by daysomatics

I have a great class series coming up in January at Happy Body in Asheville. It’s one of my favorites: a 6-week Functional Somatics Series. Each week we will have an everyday movement as our topic (listed below). We’ll begin with an assessment of that movement, and then spend the class exploring how to improve that movement. We end each class returning back to that original movement, and see how it’s changed for us. I get really excited about these classes – it’s so much fun to see how everyone has changed after such simple and gentle movements. Below find more information on the series, and how to register.

6-Week Functional Somatics Series

Starting January 10, 2017
Tuesdays, 9:30am

Week 1 Reaching to the Top Shelf
Week 2 Twisting to Look Behind Us
Week 3 Getting Up & Down Off the Floor
Week 4 Improved Walking
Week 5 Better Breathing
Week 6 Bending Over to Touch Your Toes

Happy Body, Biltmore Village
25 Reed St, Studio
$99 for the full series
Register Here.

I finally got around to making some videos:

After much procrastination, I have started a YouTube channel with video talks and some basic movement explorations. Check that out here.

Private Sessions

As always, I offer private sessions in my office at 25 Reed St in Biltmore Village, Asheville. If you’re in the Asheville area, I would love to meet you. More information about private sessions can be found here on my website.

Blessings to you and yours, and I look forward to seeing you next year.