Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/77424
something done once—or learned intellectually from a writing such as this one. It's a developmental practice applied over time, like meditation (the exception being clinical somatic education, which works extremely quickly), and, as a developmental practice, it has a cycle to it. Like all meditation and all ongoing personal practices, the cycle of somatic development involves four stages: awakening, differentiation, integration, and transcendence. The first stage, awakening, involves becoming aware of a new functional potential and getting rudimentary control of it. Think: learning that there's a discipline called massage. Differentiation involves getting distinct control of that function. Think: learning different massage techniques. Integration involves combining that function with other functions. Think: learning to apply different massage techniques appropriately. Finally, transcendence involves having enough attention left over to add something new (back to awakening). Think: learning to understand massage in the larger context of other health disciplines or the viewpoint of somatic education, itself. These examples point to a progressive development and mastery of our own faculties. The greater the mastery of our faculties, the more tolerance we have for random influences, such as somatic contagion. Even when compromised, our level of function stays higher than that of a person who hasn't developed as much self-mastery. Because it's a process of self-development and self-mastery, not everyone is attracted to it to the same degree. barriers in order to feel grounded. We awaken and integrate ourselves, apply ourselves well to our work (so that we minimize the effects we accumulate), and groom ourselves of the effects of somatic contagion and of our habitual way of working. As our own habitual ways of operating get refined, as our functional capacity increases, and as somatic contagion troubles us less, we feel grounded. Somatic means more than the BACK TO GROUNDEDNESS To stay grounded means the capacity to retain or regenerate our sense of organization—our cohesiveness and clarity. We feel grounded when we feel well put together and in control of our own faculties; we feel ungrounded when we lose integrity or experience somatic contagion in places where we have not developed sufficient integration, or sufficient, competent responsibility. The world is grounded in itself as the vast, unpredictable process of habits and changing conditions. If we don't sufficiently master our own habits (through somatic development and education), the interactions of life (somatic contagion) may make us feel ungrounded. To get grounded involves awakening and integrating our own faculties; grooming ourselves of the effects of subconscious habits and somatic contagion; and ongoing self-transcendence (integration and continued growth). There's no need for white light, grounding cords, visualizations, or subtle body. In its purest sense, somatic development encompasses the full spectrum of experience available to living beings through the entire developmental potential—physical, emotional, mental, and intuitive (lower and higher). It's a different approach to continuing education: knowing and integrating self. All our subtler functions, such as mind and emotion, express themselves as tensions and physiological changes. It's all somatic (though different functions are seated in and controlled from different layers of the being). Different disciplines address different somatic functions, but what they have in common is attention and intention and the cycle of development I have outlined. What's intriguing is that as we awaken and integrate ourselves in some particular way, such as solving one of our own problems, we may find that clients come to us who need exactly that kind of awakening and integration themselves. Because we've done the work ourselves and are functionally grounded in it, we know the territory and can help them. somatic educator certified in the Rolf method of structural integration and in Hanna Somatic Education (trained by Thomas Hanna in 1990). See Gold's video about somatics on YouTube (channel Lawrence9Gold). Contact him and see overviews of somatic exercises on his site at www.somatics.com. Lawrence Gold is a long-time clinical earn CE hours at your convenience: abmp's online education center, www.abmp.com 51