Soma is the name for the body, to differentiate it from soul and spirit. So somatic exercise is the practice of being present in the physical body in a calm, peaceful way. There are a lot of different activities that may be put under the umbrella term somatic practice, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are related to what we are doing in this class. Class is experiential, follow along.

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Are you dealing with chronic symptoms and want support?  Are you experiencing chronic pain, and/or brain fog, chronic stress, anxiety, depression, allergies, reactivity, sensitivity, trauma responses, and other chronic symptoms?  Join us to help your body get in a state where it can heal.

 

In my somatics classes, I teach you to care for your body, without fear and with love.  You will learn how to notice your body, and give it attention without being hypervigilant.  Your body is an amazing gift, and deserves care.  Have your struggled with caring for your body from a place of calm and peace, and instead do so hyper-vigilant and fix-it mentality?  Or maybe you jump from that to just trying to ignore you have a body so you don’t have to feel all the sensations?

 

Together in somatics class we practice being present with sensations, and supporting our body. It’s an amazing practice and skill that supports you for your life.  We teach our body to feel safe.  I often hear that we need to learn to trust our body again, but the truth is, we need to teach our body to trust us.  To learn to communicate to our body that we care, so that it follows our instructions, and responds.  Join us to learn to care, and to get your body to safety, and trust.  The Align Membership is the best option for unlimited live and steaming classes, a library of individual somatic exercises, and loads of other benefits.  We also have the option to simply drop-in for a class.

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In my classes, we will be using many different techniques to stimulate the vagus nerve with neutral or positive information.  This will cause the vagus nerve to tell the autonomic nervous system that all is well and we are here now, where our spirit and soul reside.  The vagus nerve is basically a gas pedal and brake pedal between the sympathetic (fight flight or freeze) system, and the parasympathetic (rest, digest, ventral vagal, and social interaction) system.  There are even more depths to this, but this is a start.  We may think it would be wise to always stay in our parasympathetic system, and we do want to be there the majority of the time, but not all the time. The parasympathetic state should be our base line.  In parasympathetic (rest and digest, ventral vagal) our immune system is functioning well, and we are building up new tissue, regenerating, restoring, digesting, etc. For many people this is not the baseline for their nervous system, or has not been, so we are training for it to be the baseline, and/or to help cement it in as baseline. It’s where we want our nervous system to come back to and spend the majority of our time, but we don’t stay there every second of every day.  We are building resiliency in the nervous system.

 

The nervous system naturally helps us respond to situations around us, by using the vagus nerve that’s constantly taking in information to decide if we should be in parasympathetic (rest and digest, ventral vagal) or if it needs to get us into sympathetic (fight flight or freeze), or dorsal vagal shut down. Then, if we have a healthy autonomic nervous system, we return naturally to parasympathetic (rest and digest, ventral vagal), when the vagus nerve receives information from the body and sends a signal to the autonomic nervous system to let it know all is well and we can return to that baseline. But if our vagus nerve isn’t practiced in taking us back to ventral vagal, we don’t always return there, or especially not as quickly as we would like.  So we are sort of strengthening the vagus nerve; toning it, waking it up.  We are training the vagus nerve to respond to neutral and positive input to get the body into that place of homeostasis, or ventral vagal presence, parasympathetic nervous system. We are strengthening the transition through somatic exercises.  We are also spending some dedicated time where our body can strengthen its immune response, rest, digest, and restore and regenerate tissue.

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Our bodies and nervous systems were designed so amazingly.  We were designed as babies to regulate off our mother or caretaker to be in parasympathetic (rest and digest, ventral vagal). Babies traditionally get held, hugged, stroked when cleaned, nursed, etc.  The presence of another calm nervous system soothes babies’ nervous systems.  Some people didn’t have that co-regulation as much as they needed or in the way they needed it, so it didn’t develop into self-regulation, but they can learn it now; it’s never too late. Other people did develop that self-regulation initially, and yet it was lost due to chronic illness and/or chronic stress. So they are getting it back. 

 

Much of what we do is to give physical input to the autonomic nervous system to let it know we are in the here and now, and all is well.  The nervous system has lots of nerve fibers going to our skin and different areas, to take in information, so it can make a decision about how to respond.  Should it respond in a socially connected, present, calm, way; that allows us to naturally detox our bodies, and regenerate, and digest our food, etc?  Or should it respond in a more reactive way; by having blood flow shunted away from the brain and digestive system, and shunted to the mover muscles of the body so we can run away from a perceived threat, or freeze, or shut down. We are tapping into the natural systems we were designed with, bringing our body into the present; so we can get our minds there too.  As a result, we can rest, digest, restore, detox, regenerate, and increase our immune response, etc.

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Align Memberships allow you to come to unlimited live classes, and also get a library of individual somatic practices and exercises to use any time, and the live class recordings, as well as a whole library of other resources to support you spirit soul, and body, adn develop communication to your body, so your body learns to trust you, and you can align your body and soul to your spirit! Check out Align Memberships HERE

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Class is on Zoom, and for class I will log on up to 5 minutes early. I will start the class usually about a minute after the start of the hour.  Feel free to come and go and be on or off video. If you haven’t already, please download the free zoom app on your device so you can log on easily! And please have your name displayed (first name and initial is fine, or some way to identify you)

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Your participation on zoom in this class constitutes consent to receive instructions by Janet Massey, PT, DPT, and participation in any instructions during or after live or recorded class is at your own risk.