Somatics
ABOUT
THE FIELD OF SOMATICS
Somatics is the interdisciplinary field that explores the body from within. The word soma comes from the Greek meaning
"the living body in it's wholeness", not just as a physical structure but as a living, sensing, meaning-making experience.
The field of Somatics spans movement, voicework, breathwork traditions, martial arts, yoga, dance, western somatic psychology, neuroscience and poly-vagal theory, and body-based wisdom to understand how our thoughts, emotions, histories and identities are lived and expressed through the body.
In somatics, the body is not separate from the psyche or spirit. Rather than treating the body as an object, somatics honours it as a living subject, a source of intelligence and memory, and a primary site for learning, healing and transformation.
SOMATIC / MIND-BODY
COACHING
This is an approach to coaching and transformation that is body-led, includes the mind and cognitive modalities and techniques, also utilises somatics (different somatic modalities).
It supports you and your nervous system in breaking repetitive patterns, processing and integrating, building capacities and skills, embodying more of yourself and what you desire to. And in taking actions that align with your values and what you care most about, even when you're under great pressure and stress.
SOMATIC PARTS WORK
Somatic Parts Work or Somatic Internal Family Systems work is an embodied approach to working with the different "parts" within us, they are almost like sub-personalities each with their own feelings, beliefs, protective strategies, and body patterns. This modality is rooted in both Internal Family Systems and Somatic Psychology, this modality, recognises that we are not one unified self, but a constellation of inner parts shaped by past experiences, relationships, and survival needs. For instance, some try to protect us (e.g. the pleaser, the controller, the achiever, the analytical one), while others carry the wounds (e.g. the hurt child, the shamed teen, the frozen one).
In Somatic Coaching parts work becomes more than a mental exercise, it becomes a sensing, feeling process, where instead of just talking about these parts, we meet them directly in the body. Through attunement, compassionate inquiry and somatic guidance, clients learn to sense, listen to and relate to their parts, not just analyse them. This allows for deeper integration, as each part can be seen felt, supported to soften, shift or take on new roles.
At the heart of this work is the emergence of Self Energy that exists beneath all our parts. This is our natural leadership presence. Self energy expresses itself through 8 core qualities: calm, clarity, curiosity, compassion, confidence, courage, creativity, and connectedness. From self we can: meet our inner parts with care, unblend from reactive patterns and protective strategies, experience embodied re-patterning, take action from wholeness not wounding.
"Somatics is not about fixing yourself.
It's about becoming more of who you are
- more whole, more connected, and more able to take action aligned with your values."
STACI K. HAINES
Why do you include somatics in your coaching and consulting?
Because the body remembers everything ever experienced. What the mind compartmentalises, the stories the mind has learned and held on to, the postures and ways of moving and speaking during pain trauma and survival, the things the mind wants or has forgotten, and the things it wants to remember. The body is also insanely capable of taking on new shaping and new capacities, new ways of being, feeling, experiencing and responding, with the right supportive conditions and guidance. Those things and shifts carry over into the cognitive experience, just as cognitive things and shifts carry over into the somatic experience.
Some clients come to coaching new to personal development and therapeutic work, they have not yet tried coaching, therapy, or any self-help.
While others have tried mindset work, self-development, or talk therapies before coming to work with me. They've journaled, reflected, intellectualised, talked with loved ones. Some have also tried meditation, healing retreats, and spiritual experiences. But despite insights gained, a little progress made here and there so far, and despite any short lived cathartic and enlivening experiences - they still struggle and remain stuck in their experience/s, in repeating patterns behaviour, in ways of feeling, thinking, connecting, reacting, coping, functioning - and not experiencing and building the things they want in their life, health, relationships and career,
This usually is because more and deeper awareness and insights are needed. At both the mind and body levels. There are more skills to develop. There are more pieces to integrate - experiences and parts of themselves that they are not in connection with, or not able to relate and engage with in a healthy and helpful way.
I draw on both cognitive and somatic modalities, to support my clients, because cognitive approaches can be incredibly supportive and powerful, they help us make meaning, build awareness, understand our experiences, try on helpful thinking and framing. But without meeting and working with the client - at the somatic level - and without them meeting and working with themselves there - awareness, insights and changes can be left lacking.
Shame, anxiety, pain, trauma, joy, pleasure safety and absence of it, complexity, functioning, patterns, different capacities - everything - lives and plays out in the body, not just the mind.