The Somatic Movement Project is…. an exploration of Embodiment.
We educate, study and celebrate movement and bodywork modalities that deepen awareness, provoke curiosity and promote presence of being. SMP strives to open dialogue, push boundaries and build community. It continually evolves from the belief that embodiment is a state of being that can liberate us from the self-limitations in movement, behavior, emotion and thought.
What is Somatic Movement?
Non-purposeful movement used as a tool to improve our ability to feel our body and how it relates to its individual parts, to space and gravity. It is a vessel to improve our sensing, including interoception and proprioception as well as our empathic and intuitive senses. Somatic Movement is practiced with intention directed toward the internal experience rather than to the outer appearance. The result of practicing Somatic Movement is often a pleasurable feeling of ease or joy and an overall sense of connectivity.
Somatic Movement uses the body as a tool for fine tuning our awareness. We “learn to listen “ to what we sense and feel in ourselves physically: our breathing, our posture, our weight distribution or degree of ease or discomfort in our movements. We then expand to listening to the quality of our thoughts, reactions and behavior. Awareness does not discriminate. We can learn to apply this awareness to all of life. We get better at listening to what the world around us is saying without our hearing being restricted by the sound of our conditioned or habitual thoughts and judgements.
What is Somatic Education?
A field within bodywork and movement studies which emphasizes internal physical perception and experience.
What is Somatic Yoga?
An awareness-based approach to yoga. Yoga asana is used to experience somatic movement.
Somatic Yoga begins with simple inquiry, clarifying where we are physically and mentally, sensing parts of our bodies and fluctuations in our breathing or thought patterns. The practice explores functional movement patterns and alternatives to habitual movements or holding patterns. The intention of the practice is to evoke a heightened sense of connectivity, sensitivity and awareness.
