How does Clinical Somatics WORK?

Because it works with the brain, central nervous system, muscles and more, Clinical Somatic Education (or ‘CSE’) is quite a complex process to fully explain and understand. What matters, though, is that it works for so many people, and so many types of pain, stiffness, discomfort and stress.

Fundamentally, in CSE (and so, in Essential Somatics® Movement classes), you’re helped to feel and change the amount of tension/contraction held in your muscles, as it’s the largely unconsciously-held contraction that causes pain, tightness, tension, shallow breathing, etc.

(The same problem can keep even elite athletes from fulfilling their full potential!)

So, for example, through a movement class you may discover that when your shoulders feel ‘at rest’, they are actually something like 50% contracted: your brain has got used to this feeling of contraction over time, so regards it as ‘normal’ for your shoulders. I

t (you) does not notice the ‘resting’ level of 50% contraction. And your brain is interested in ‘normal’ - in getting you through each day, in a familiar way - rather than what is ‘good’ or ‘better’ for you.

As a result, even when you try to alleviate such tension - e.g. by using heat packs on your shoulders, or by stretching them - your largely unconscious level of contraction means you can’t really achieve positive, long-lasting change: you are ‘stuck’ with the underlying 50% contraction level as a starting point, beyond which your muscles will not release and relax - because they (you, your brain) don’t know how to. (So, when you then suffer additional stresses that tighten your shoulders, your contraction increases… and the related shoulder pain, tension and tightness gets worse.)

Through bringing back conscious awareness to the areas of contraction in your shoulders, and using voluntary control to ‘override’ your brain’s information about what is ‘normal’ for you, Essential Somatics® Movement enables you to release, lengthen and relax the contraction in your shoulders below the 50% level in our example: it helps you get ‘un-stuck’, so you can start to fully relax your muscles and use them more efficiently, effectively, and free from pain.

Basic Essential Somatics® Movements are actually pretty simple - even if the ‘science’ behind them is not!

They are slow, easy, and often small movements: the key is in your paying attention to the movements and to what is going on inside your body while you make them… This is what Certified Clinical Somatic Educators and Essential Somatics® Movement Teachers help you learn.

Check out my free resources (ebook on signs that your pain, stiffness or stress might be neuromuscular, and video series on the truth about pain) and get in touch if you have any questions or want to be on the waitlist for my new online course starting January 2023, “28-Day Embodied Stress Release: Nurtuting Freedom from Stress, Stiffness, Discomfort & Pain”.