Many new forms of yoga arise daily. Somatic yoga isn’t so much a unique style as it is a new way of looking at your practice. The word “somatic” means body and will enhance your relationship with your physical self.
Modern people rarely think about their bodies until something goes wrong and pain demands their attention. Somatic yoga can reestablish your relationship with yourself and provide many other benefits. Here’s why you need to discover the healing power of somatic yoga.
What Is Somatic Yoga?
If you Google “somatic yoga,” you’ll find multiple definitions. In general, it refers to a practice designed to restore the mind-body connection and help you heal from physical and mental trauma. It can help you transform unhealthy habits of which you might remain unaware and unwind tension patterns that result in chronic pain.
In general, somatic yoga focuses more on how poses feel in your body versus how they look or performing them to a certain standard. Your guide may suggest different movement patterns that might feel good to you, but they won’t assist you into poses as they do in other styles like Ashtanga. Instead, they’ll encourage you to move in a manner that eases aches and pains.
Somatic and Autonomic Nervous Systems
To understand somatic yoga, it helps to know what your somatic and autonomic nervous systems are. They’re two branches of the nervous system, the nerve fibers and electrochemical impulses that allow you to move and feel:
- Somatic nervous system: Governs voluntary movements, like kicking a ball or moving into a yoga pose.
- Autonomic nervous system: Governs involuntary movements, like heartbeat and digestion.
If you reflect on how your body works, you’ll recognize that you can influence your autonomic nervous system through physical movements. For example, somatic breathing, where you feel the rise and fall of your chest and belly, helps you relax muscles but also engages the parasympathetic half of your autonomic nervous system, which tells you to calm down, rest and digest.
Although your brain contains the most neurons, you have them all over your body. Deep, somatic breathing sends messages to these muscles to relax, easing the pain that results from ongoing tension. You might also clench up certain areas as a trauma response, which this methodology also addresses, teaching you to breathe through mental stress.
What Somatic Yoga Looks Like in Practice
What does somatic yoga look like in practice? Let’s examine a forward fold. The finished asana might look similar from the outside, but the internal focus could be completely different.
Straining to reach your toes quickly could lead to injury if you’re among the 80% of Americans who have occasional or chronic lower back pain. Instead, you’ll gradually move into the pose, letting your upper body waterfall forward and giving your hamstrings plenty of time to elongate, perhaps using blocks for support.
Doing so prevents unnecessarily compression of your discs — gel-filled donuts between your vertebrae that can crack, leak and cause considerable disability.
Five Benefits of Embodied Movement
There are multiple benefits to adding somatic yoga principles to your practice. Here’s what you can gain.
1. Reduce Injury Risk
You might not think you can injure yourself doing yoga, especially if you’re young and healthy. However, any physical activity increases the risk of injury when you use improper form.
However, somatic yoga encourages mindfulness with each breath and motion. You’re encouraged to listen to your body and adjust any uncomfortable or unpleasant movements.
It’s the opposite of the no-pain, no-gain mindset that can lead to trouble when you push past your limits.
2. Reconnect With Your Physical Self
When was the last time you did a mindful body scan and genuinely felt the tip of your right pinky finger or the inside of your left cheek? Your nervous system relies on stimuli to function, and turning all your attention to the mental aspects of life, like work, can make you forget your body until something goes wrong.
Consider how many people suffer from repetitive motion injuries they could easily remedy by adjusting their monitor height or taking more frequent breaks.
Somatic yoga reestablishes your connection with your physical self. Mindfulness is a skill you practice, not master. However, you’ll notice that tuning into your body on the mat translates to daily life, prompting you to adjust your posture or use aids like braces when stocking shelves.
3. Decrease Chronic Pain
Somatic yoga decreases chronic pain in multiple ways. Tuning you into your body creates awareness of the stimuli contributing to chronic pain. For example, a lousy desk chair might lurk behind your lower back pain, and finding relief is as easy as replacing it.
This practice also heals on the mat. As you use deep, somatic breathing to relax into a pose, you train your nervous system not to spasm from mild stimuli, decreasing the tension that can exacerbate chronic conditions.
4. Recover More Quickly from Injury
Somatic yoga could speed injury recovery. It’s natural to remain sedentary while you heal, but too much inactivity can cause painful adhesions to develop. An easy way to prevent them is by gentle, passive stretching.
5. Heal Trauma Trapped in Your Somatic Nervous System
Finally, this methodology can help you heal trauma trapped in your somatic nervous system. It’s best if you work with a therapist to help you process experiences that arise on the mat. However, having a trusted friend on-call can also help if you lack access to professional care.
Somatic Yoga: Healing Power of Embodied Movement
Somatic yoga reconnects your mind and body, making you more aware of your physical self. It embodies the true meaning of “yoga” as “union,” connecting your emotions and physiology through somatic breathing and slower, more focused movements.
Somatic yoga isn’t a unique style but a method you can incorporate into your practice. Get more mindful about your body as you move and reconnect with yourself.
About the author: Mia Barnes is a freelance writer and researcher with a passion for healthy travel and wellness. Mia is the founder and editor-in-chief of Body+Mind magazine. Follow Mia and Body+Mind on X and Instagram @bodymindmag!
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