#somatic practice

The alchemical body emerges not as a mystical curiosity nor as an esoteric ornament appended to an otherwise secular understanding of embodiment but as the primary site in which desire, praxis, and spiritual power are woven into a single fabric of liberation that refuses the disciplinary regimes of capitalist biopolitics and their insistence that the body is merely a productive instrument, a…

The Somatic Movement practices are now available as part of Soften into Stillness.

These practices are designed to help you slow down, move gently, and settle your nervous system, especially when you’re feeling overstimulated or at the end of the day.

You can access it by becoming a free Patreon member or by trying the Ultimate Membership (first month is free).

There goes week four. Plugging along doing things that need to be done, which never seems to be what I want to be doing.

Going to look at Berlin for my next place to be. Hoping someone has suggestions.

Finding new somatic details every day I’m trying to apply them carefully.

Andrea Olsen struck home this week when she says in “The Place Of Dance”—> “when we dance beyond muscle power, sense of control, endocrine high, buff physique, and societal praise; when we source more deeply, we open to the mystery within each moment.”

The practice of Focusing involves noticing and welcoming felt senses. Felt senses are indistinct sensations that ordinarily lie below the radar of attention, but which can be noticed and felt if we are receptive to them. Felt senses don't have the clearly defined quality of purely physical sensations like touching a hot stove or stubbing your toe. They are initially quite vague or fuzzy. They are non-conceptual, yet they relate to parts of our lives—work, relationships, fears, creative challenges. They have a quality of “aboutness,” even when we can’t tell specifically what they are about.

Occasionally a felt sense shows up that can’t be missed—like having a “knot” in your stomach, a “lump” in your throat, or a “broken” heart. All of these are distinctly felt in the body, and yet are clearly “about” events and situations in our lives. But most felt senses are so subtle that we don’t notice them. They lie below the level of ordinary feelings, but they can be triggers of strong emotion. An episode of anger may be preceded by an inner tightening, a jittery sensation, a sinking feeling. If we can notice these slight inner sensations before we erupt in anger, we gain psychological space in which to choose our words and actions rather than being overtaken by them. It is the difference between reacting and responding.

Felt senses function as a kind of borderland between the unconscious and the conscious. Being with felt senses in a patient, friendly way primes the pump of intuition. Although intuition by its nature is spontaneous and can’t be forced, if we know how to enter the borderlands of the felt sense, we prepare the ground for intuition to strike. When it does, we gain unexpected insights that can manifest as fresh articulation and action.