Movement & Modalities

Movement is a life-long learning process. Our brain develops along side our body and is continually informed by all sensory input. When sensation is compromised by stress or injury our body’s ability to respond to the environment is equally inhibited.

Movement can be thought of as a form of healing as when correct movement is applied our body can respond in a new or more effective manner. Movement also signals the responses of tone, strength, circulation, tissue regeneration and ease in our body. These ideas can be applied to one’s health as simply as the act of elevating an injured leg to allow circulation, or as complex as relearning movement patterns and sequences that allow your body to move without lower back pain. The goal of therapeutic movement is to bring sensation into parts of the body that have lost their sensitivity, and therefore their ability to heal or fully recover.

Somatic Movement

Somatic movement is a gentle and practical way to resolve pain and limited mobility in your body. Somatics was first created by Thomas Hanna Ph.D. (1928-1990), a Functional Integration practitioner, as a way to educate the body to change pain and debilitating movement patterns.

Hanna coined the term Sensory Motor Amnesia (SMA). SMA is the loss of the voluntary control of the nervous systems ability to sense and feel muscular contraction. This leads to much stiffness, soreness and restricted range of motion. Hanna concluded that the affects of SMA are often what we falsely think of as growing older or aging.

Somatic movement utilizes specific movement sequences and imagery to help bring new information and proprioceptive response to the nervous system. This means that when Somatic movement brings new sensation into a specific body region the tissue of that area is then capable of responding by letting pain release and new feeling in. At Rising Body, Somatics is used to help clients and students learn ways to move which restore their bodies to a place of ease, grace and sensitivity.