SoMAtic Samantha 

What is Hanna Somatics? It's an approach that uses gentle, accessible movements along with self-sensing exercises, to help you regulate your nervous system, to both combat pain and move and feel better.

What it does, is re-educate your brain to release over-tight muscles, and get you out of unhelpful movement habits that you've become "stuck" in, that cause you pain, stress, tension, posture problems and more (often without you even realising that muscle tension's the underlying cause).

This is why Hanna Somatics is so effective at addressing stress, pain and tension, increasing self-awareness and bodily comfort, and enabling you to sit, walk, rest and stand with far greater freedom and ease!

Hanna Somatics is amazing. It changed my life, just as it changes the lives of my clients and so many more people. It really helps you feel at ease in your own skin.

I'm a Certified Clinical Somatics Educator and Essential Somatics® Movement Teacher. Before that, I was a university lecturer in the UK and USA (in philosophy; film & literature; anthrozoology; cultural studies); a barrister in England & Wales; an overseas volunteer; an academic editor, and a trainee psychotherapist and grief counsellor... but discovering Hanna Somatics changed all that!

Why? Well, I was also in chronic pain for many years. And Hanna Somatics is the only thing that really helped. It's the one thing that enables me to now live free from pain - without meds, and without any physical therapies or other interventions or treatments.

A big part of Hanna Somatics is focusing on how you're moving, and what you're sensing - and not on achieving particular positions or postures, or someone else's idea of 'alignment' or how you 'should' sit, stand, and move.

Hanna Somatics works with your body, never against it - on all levels. Changes to relieve pain, improve comfort, and make moving easier and more efficient, are all achieved not by force, strain, or stretching, but instead through gentle, attentive movements and the key technique of 'pandiculation' (based closely on the three-step process all mammals use to release tension and ease pain, naturally).

Everything you learn in Hanna Somatics helps you know yourself better. It gives you skills you can use, develop and adapt, throughout your life. It stops you needing to pop painkillers or visit bodyworkers and therapists to "fix" you - because you learn to look after yourself, from the inside. You learn to self-regulate, and to self-heal - all through gentle movement and increased sensory awareness, that get you out of 'bad habits' and into new, more fluid and pain-free ways of moving.

There's much to learn, from Hanna Somatics. And yet, the core technique and the fundamental movements are simple, focused, and accessible to all.

All of this - and seeing the enormous relief from pain and renewed comfort in their own bodies my clients experience - is why I teach Somatics. And why I wish everyone did it!

I wish everyone did, because then fewer of us would have such long-term, frustrating and painful experiences of 'the body' - rather than ongoing, positive and easful experiences of being embodied!

In my case, I'd practised yoga for more than two decades, and was active and healthy. Still, I was increasingly plagued by chronic, long-term pain that got worse and worse. I tried  medications and stretching regimens prescribed by healthcare professionals, that either didn't work or made things worse.

I was told "it's your age" (in my 30s!). I was also told for many years that I had a "birth defect" and that my pain would only ever get worse.

I tried massage, physiotherapy, Pilates, PT, chiropractic, acupuncture, herbalism, osteopathy & more - including Rolfing, Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, Bowen therapy and even psychotherapy in attempts to lessen or find relief from my pain. Bowen and one chiropractor helped me the most - but not enough, and never for very long. (I had to have treatments every few weeks. That was not financially sustainable, and the pain never stayed away for very long anyway.)

This experience may well resonate with you - whether or not you have a diagnosis, or know the 'cause' of your pain.

Then, when I first experienced Hanna Somatics movements (in a three-hour workshop), I felt real, palpable relief from my neck pain for the first time in a decade! I also felt more sensation in my right arm than I had for years, and experienced a completely new freedom from pain along with new sensations of ease and suppleness in my right SI joint, hip, and lower back.

I felt that day that I'd finally discovered the real possibility for creating change, from inside myself - a way to get out of pain. I was right.

It's Hanna Somatics that's enabled me to live pain-free. And if I ever do get into pain now - perhaps by 'over-doing' it, or straining a muscle when gardening! - I know how to deal with it, effectively, so the pain goes away, instead of getting 'stuck' and getting worse...

Always working to refine and improve how I can help clients, I keep up with advances in neuroscience and developments in other movement and awareness practices that have taken on Hanna's term, 'somatics'. In particular, I'm interested in body-focused therapies (especially as it was attention to the body that I felt was missing from psychotherapy and made me re-train in Hanna Somatics. That's also why I'm currently a student on the Somatic Experiencing® professional training).

Once you've grasped the basics, Hanna Somatics really is something you can incorporate into your everday life, well-being, and self-care. It enables you to stay free from everyday aches and pains, as well as longer-term chronic pain; to stay comfortable in your body, and to keep yourself moving well - whatever your age, and whatever your level of fitness.

Do check out my in-person and online courses and programmes, and start your movement away from pain today.

Discover and maintain greater ease and comfort in your body. Develop more self-awareness and better habits. Create more space for joy in your life!