Somatics Library
Thomas Hanna's somatic insights are not only an inspiration to a member of the first class in Clinical Somatic Education, but a breakthrough in somatic learning.
Milz: Intellectual knowledge is knowledge for its own sake, but somatic knowledge is knowledge for oneself that allows us to have control and self-responsibility. Your own development and your learning process are examples of overcoming the traditional Western body-mind split. Could you briefly tell us about some stages in your own journey?
My Position in the Field of Philosophy
FROM THE PERSPECTIVE of the philosopher, I feel myself most closely connected to the American Pragmatist philosophers. I am most conversant, philosophically, with the dauntlessly broad outlook and the adventurous but-practical exploratory ways of such thinkers as John Dewey and William James.
Since 1970 the words “soma” and “somatic” have taken on a larger meaning and the archaic word “somatology” has re-entered the English language with renewed vigor. The innovator of these terms describes the emerging conception of the life sciences that has given birth to the somatic domain: “The house that Darwin built.”
Nowadays, there are so many different kinds of “body work” that even the body workers are confused about what each other is doing. Here, finally, is a way of making sense of a complex field.
The Cyclonic Image
WHEN THE TEMPERATURE, velocity, and moisture of the air are just right, a startling event occurs: a tornado. A twisting, surging cone appears from out of nowhere and commences to move about unpredictably, seizing everything within its powerful grasp, drawing the environs into its center, incorporating some things within its whirling system, and spewing other things out.
Synopsis
In Part One of this essay, somatics was defined as the study of the soma: namely, the body as perceived from within by first-person perception. Somas were seen to be self–sensing, self–moving, and in possession of conscious volition — the latter being acquired through the process of somatic learning which focuses awareness upon what is unconscious in order to make it conscious.