Have you ever felt like your yoga practice just didn’t scratch a certain itch? You got a stretch but it didn’t feel like it was quite enough. You breathed deeply, but the calm, relaxed state that you craved never fully arrived. Jitters and a kind of moody cloud continued to cling to you.
Yoga helps you feel good, but sometimes you want more. A deeper sensation, a longer hold, or a quicker pace. Sometimes your mind and body don’t want to follow the cookie-cutter outline of a yoga class and wants to indulged in movement that goes beyond the bounds of your traditional yoga class.
Luckily, a new kind of emerging yoga will help you find that bit of extra ahhhh. Introducing: somatic yoga.
A brief history of somatic yoga
Somatic movement isn’t new. It started gaining traction in the 1970s when Thomas Hanna coined the term “somatics.” “Soma” in Sanskrit means body, and somatics focuses largely on reconnecting to the physical body.
Today, this practice is largely recognized as an incredible way to help heal the mind-body connection that is often overlooked in other healing practices such as traditional talk therapy. While I don’t discredit how impactful all healing modalities are, somatics offers a bridge between what the mind thinks and what the body stores.
Who is somatic yoga for?
Somatic yoga encourages you to reconnect with your body to learn the signs and clues that can help:
- Calm your nervous system
- Heal trauma
- Manage chronic pain
- Support mental health
- Process emotions
- Navigate daily or chronic stress
- Gain awareness: physical, mental & emotional
- Boost confidence and self-esteem
This practice truly is for most people. So how do you start blending it into your existing yoga practice?
Add somatic yoga to your existing practice
The goal of somatic movement is to help you move intuitively, which is easier said than done if you’re used to traditional yoga, where a teacher tells you where to place your foot, how to move your arm, and when to inhale or exhale.
Traditional yoga helps build awareness through alignment. Once you’ve developed that awareness, somatic yoga encourages you to move in a way that feels natural to you.
I often guide my students to start in familiar poses and add to them. Somatic yoga isn’t about brand-new postures, it’s about exploring non-linear movement within the alignment you already know. And chances are, you’ve already done some of these movements without realizing! Here are a few ways to start:
Rock
Instead of staying completely still in a pose and focusing on your breath, move with your breath. Rocking could look like rocking your shoulders forward past your wrists and then back in cat/cow.
It could also be swaying gently from side to side when you’re in a forward fold. Or flowing in and out of a single-legged seated forward fold.
Think of rocking as a way to self-soothe. Like when a baby is upset, they are often rocked back into a calm state.
Emote
This might be the weirdest or most uncomfortable part: making sound. But chances are, you already do this with a sigh or a yawn in class. Somatic yoga invites you to go further. Try blowing air through your lips and letting them flap, growling, saying “HA,” or even whispering yes or no. Sound is one of your greatest tools for releasing tension and coming back to a natural state of balance.
You could also explore chanting or change your breath patterns. Try inhaling through your mouth and exhaling through your nose to see how it shifts your experience.
Try this class to incorporate the somatics techniques listed here for yourself!
Spiral
Yoga mostly keeps you linear, moving up and down and side to side on your mat. Somatics opens up the possibility of non-linear movement, encouraging you to move outside those lines. Adding spirals into your poses can offer fresh ways to release and open.
You might spiral your wrists as you reach your arms overhead or create big circles with your arms instead of a standard sweep. You can spiral your hips in tabletop. If you think of your DNA, its shape is a spiral. Adding spiral movements to your practice is letting your body naturally play in its full range.
Touch
Touch can quickly bring a sense of release and calm. Think about how soothing a massage or savasana assist can be. You can bring that into your personal practice with intentional, gentle touch.
In a simple cross-legged seat you can give yourself a butterfly hug by bringing your hands to your upper arms and holding yourself. Let your hands travel up and down your arms or offer gentle squeezes.
In a forward fold, trace the backs of your legs with your hands. During a mountain pose, give yourself a mini head massage. My personal favorite? Using two fingers to massage my temples and jaw during neck stretches.
Somatic movement is something that you can add to any type of practice. But it pairs exceptionally well with yoga and is a great addition to coaching to help get you out of your head and into your body. Now it’s time to try it for yourself and feel its healing impact for yourself.
What’s next?
- Try somatic yoga classes for yourself for free with me on YouTube!
- Pick one technique from above and try adding it to your favorite yoga pose. Your body will let you know what it needs, you just have to listen.