Soul

Where is Somatics Headed?, puts clinical somatic education into a larger context: that of somatic education (without the "clinical"). As we will see, that larger context makes for a more complete understanding of clinical somatic education and opens  soul  the potential for a more comprehensive and effective discipline-and also a transcendent one.

UNDERSTANDING "SOMATIC"

The term, "somatic", comes from Thomas Hanna's definition of the term, "soma", which he defined in the pages of the periodical he founded, Somatics - the Magazine-Journal of the Bodily Arts and Sciences, as "the body experienced from within."

I have to lay the groundwork for what I have to say by making this point. As a practitioner of the methods he developed and as a student of his somatological philosophy (I shall try to minimize the use of ten-dollar words, from now on), I see two deficiencies in his formal definition.

It neglects the "mind" or subjective side of experience - the counterpart to the "body" or the objective side.

It neglects "control", or action, which is the counterpart of "experience", or sense.

I maintain not only that these two aspects ought to be included in the definition of "soma," but that Thomas Hanna, himself, included them implicitly, explicitly, and at length in his writings throughout the years of his publishing of the Somaticsjournal and in his seminal books, Bodies in Revolt, The Body of Life, Letters from Fred, and of course, Somatics - Reawakening the Mind's Control of Movement, Flexibility, and Health, which all alluded to or spoke at length of awareness and self-regulation, which involve learning, adaptation, and control. It's just his definition of soma that was oversimplified.