Somatics….

Can we please stop calling everything “somatics” just because it involves the body?

I said what I said, so hear me out...

Working with the body does not automatically make something somatic.

Somatic work asks us to meet the human being as an integrated whole.

Physical. Emotional. Psychological. Energetic. Relational. Spiritual.

All the dimensions of our lived experience, inseparable from one another.

And this isn't some shiny new wellness concept we've just discovered and packaged up for Instagram for coaching.

Humans have been relating to the body as a site of knowing, belonging, relationship and transformation for thousands of years.

It's indigenous. It's ancestral. It's what we are.

It's not NEW.

It's you.

The whole of you.

The you before and all of you to come.

Somatic work asks us to pay attention to what is actually happening in the lived, felt experience of a person.

Important part of the Roche Rant-

We work at the pace of the nervous system.

I'll say it again,

We work at the pace of the nervous system.

We pay attention to what can genuinely be felt, processed and assimilated.

We respect the edges of a person's capacity and resilience, rather than continually pushing them beyond those edges and calling the overwhelm transformation.

Because intensity is not the same as depth.

A big release isn't automatically integration.

Shaking isn't automatically healing.

And just because something looks profound from the outside doesn't mean anything meaningful has shifted on the inside.

True transformation requires capacity.

Enough safety to stay present.

Enough space to feel.

Enough repetition for new possibilities to become familiar.

Enough time for something to move beyond an experience we had in a class and into the way we actually live, relate, respond and meet the world.

It's not about overwhelming the system because “that's what it's supposed to look like.”

And often, the most profound transformation happens through the small, almost imperceptible moments.