Awaken whole body aliveness. Inspire health and resilience.
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Somatic Sessions:
Bodywork, Movement Education, Embodied Therapy
Our bodies are our first homes, from which we move, act, feel and engage with the world around us. Our connection to ourselves as Body is impacted by our life experiences and directly influences our ability to have healthy relationships, homes, communities and cultures. By cultivating more awareness of the current, often unnoticed, patterns that shape our ways of being, we can begin to see and feel ourselves more clearly. In choosing practices that orient to and from our embodied experience, we begin to notice the patterns of stress and trauma in our lives and start to process them in different ways.
How do we Understand Somatics?
"Somatics is a path, a methodology, and a change theory, by which we can embody transformation, individually and collectively.
Embodied transformation is foundational change that shows in our actions, ways of being, relating, and perceiving. It is transformation that sustains over time. Somatics pragmatically supports us to align our values and actions. It helps us to develop depth and the capacity to feel ourselves, each other, and life around us. Somatics builds in us the ability to act from strategy and empathy, and teaches us to be able to assess conditions and “what is” clearly. Somatics is a practice-able theory of change that can move us toward individual, community, and collective liberation. Somatics works through the body, engaging us in our thinking, emotions, commitments, vision and action"
-from "What is Politicized Somatics" by generative somatics
"Somatics is a path, a methodology, and a change theory, by which we can embody transformation, individually and collectively.
Embodied transformation is foundational change that shows in our actions, ways of being, relating, and perceiving. It is transformation that sustains over time. Somatics pragmatically supports us to align our values and actions. It helps us to develop depth and the capacity to feel ourselves, each other, and life around us. Somatics builds in us the ability to act from strategy and empathy, and teaches us to be able to assess conditions and “what is” clearly. Somatics is a practice-able theory of change that can move us toward individual, community, and collective liberation. Somatics works through the body, engaging us in our thinking, emotions, commitments, vision and action"
-from "What is Politicized Somatics" by generative somatics
What is Somatic Movement Education?
Movement and sensation are inseparably the language of the body. Somatic movement education (SME) develops the body-mind intelligence through learning and listening to the language of the body. Through presence, communication, touch and movement repatterning Somatic Movement Education aims to support the integration necessary to be resiliently alive right now.
As Registered Professional Members of the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association, we meet the high Standards of Practice and uphold the Code of Ethics. For more information visit www.ISMETA.org
You're invited to read more about the scope of practice of somatic movement education, as defined by ISMETA.
Touch: Manual Therapy & Education (also classically known as bodywork) involves the hands on techniques to bring awareness to places of holding, as well as places of resilient intelligence and to restore balance and integrity to the system.
Movement Education & Patterning: Through verbal cues, imagery, anatomical education and guided awareness practices, movement patterning invites one to reeducate your body to move with more ease. This could be as clear as learning to move from the floor to standing with less pain, to re-patterning nervous system responses through releasing holding patterns.
“A movement therapist uses a system of awareness instruction and/or a fitness therapy system to reeducate your ability to accurately propriocept and understand how you operate in space so that you can function better via getting in tune with how you initiate and carry out your movements, know what proper biomechanics are, and come to see with more clarity(and resolve) your own body blind spots.” Brooke Thomas- Why Fascia Matters
What makes our practice trauma informed?
We know that our bodies hold and move our stories. We center relationship and "move at the speed of trust", as voiced by adrienne maree browne. We aim for collaboration and empowerment through bringing education and active consent into our sessions. We are in active practice of interrogating our positionality and learning/unlearning the ways that white body supremacy shows up. We aim to be culturally humble, accountable and responsive as we work across difference. We stay current to the field of trauma education and collective liberation. We invite and offer, instead of "tell what to do". We give options. We make space for all the feelings. We care.
Praise for the work:
"Amanda is gifted in her ability to convey healing and understanding through touch, word, and movement. She offered me solace and support through a difficult time and instilled more capacity in me to listen to and care for myself." -C.G., Collab Facilitation Co-founder
"I had the great pleasure of working privately with Abbi. As someone who loves dancing but is not comfortable with a lot of contact, i needed to approach the practice of contact improvisation and touch gently. I could not have asked for a more skillful, compassionate and attuned guide. She led me through experiences that opened doors, possibilities, and deepened my connection to myself, to gravity and to other. I walked out of the beautiful Everything Space feeling greater ease, peace and openness." ~Fearn Lickfield, Green Mountain Druid School
"I had the great pleasure of working privately with Abbi. As someone who loves dancing but is not comfortable with a lot of contact, i needed to approach the practice of contact improvisation and touch gently. I could not have asked for a more skillful, compassionate and attuned guide. She led me through experiences that opened doors, possibilities, and deepened my connection to myself, to gravity and to other. I walked out of the beautiful Everything Space feeling greater ease, peace and openness." ~Fearn Lickfield, Green Mountain Druid School
