The field of somatic healing teaches that our physical bodies contain vast stores of knowledge: a perfect record of all our memories, triumphs, failures and feats. Every surprise, every ecstasy, every barely escaped danger – are all stored in the wondrous intelligence that is our body.

There is also a deep, intrinsic relationship – an interweaving – of the layers of our bodies (physical, mental, emotional, energetic, and spirit bodies respectively). What happens in one of our bodies has ripple effects in the others. 

For example, something that manifests as a physical symptom of disease in our physical body, may in fact have its root cause in our emotional body or spirit body.

Somatic healing is the understanding that we can heal the physical symptom by addressing its underlying cause in the emotional or spirit body. Or, we can reverse engineer: by laying hands on the physical ailment, we can make contact with the underlying emotional or spiritual issue.

This concept is very antithetical to the way we are taught to experience our body. Many of us think of our physical body as a machine that carries around the mind, when in reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

The body is constantly perceiving and interpreting stimuli in our environment. In fact, a majority of our perceptual awareness comes through our physical body, whereas our mental body is quite limited in what it can perceive.

Learning to listen to and interpret our physical body’s messages is called Somatic Awareness. Cultivating Somatic Awareness is much like learning any other language: it takes time and regular practice to become adept.

Unfortunately, our modern day society is set up in such a way that there are many obstacles to cultivating somatic awareness and cohesion between the bodies of the soma, and as a result, it can be quite difficult to live from an embodied, wholly integrated place. 

Many folks learn that it’s not safe to inhabit their physical body for a variety of reasons. Many are numbed or disassociated, trapped in their thinking mind/mental body, unable to access their animal body’s amazing capacity for pleasure and healing. 

Many of us are at war with our bodies, particularly those of us who live with chronic pain due to physical or sexual trauma, birth trauma and religious trauma. Or we get so caught up in obsessing over the aesthetic of our physical body, that we take for granted the simple, sacred pleasure that is inherent in having a body that is responsive to life’s many powerful experiences, and therefore enlivened.

We protect ourselves from the relentless pain and insecurity of life by numbing or disassociating from feeling our physical & emotional bodies, and consequently, we diminish our ability to feel pleasure and connectedness in the same. 

Many of us come from backgrounds, communities and families of origin that have taught us that pleasure is indulgent at best, and selfish at worst. While simultaneously glorifying the pain, burnout, and overwhelm so characteristic of this rise-and-grind culture we have inherited and choose to perpetuate (or not).

  It is through the somatic awareness and cohesion between all the layers of our bodies – collectively, our soma – that transformation and deep healing is found. By remembering that our pleasure system is there to resource us for our pain, we can better confront our pain or trauma, rather than lapsing into substance abuse, workaholism or other forms of socially approved disconnection. 

By re-learning to not only inhabit one’s own body, but to actually savor it – relishing in the awake and alive space of feeling – we can live from a more honest, embodied place. We can integrate all the layers of our soma and remember and reclaim our own wholeness.

From this place of wholeness, we can create intimate experiences with those we choose that are inspired from what actually feels good to our soma, rather than mimicking what we see displayed on porn or pop media. 

It is through radical acceptance of our deepest, most essential nature as animal-bodied creatures designed for pleasure, connection, intimacy and sensuality that we reclaim our bodies and ourselves.