What Exactly Is a Somatic Practice?
A question I get a lot from people is “what exactly do you do in a somatic practice?”. Many are coming to understand that somatics is an umbrella term for integrating the experience of our body with our mind, psyches, and emotions. But many of us are left thinking “Okay cool… but how?”
A somatic practice is anything you do with intention, presence, and repetition.
Somatics is largely a practice of noticing. Creating conditions where you can be with the experience of your body, engage in a practice, and noticing what comes up.
Engaging in mindfulness practices can help us set the stage for our somatic practice. When we center ourselves into the present, we have more access to what our bodies are experiencing and what emotions we might be feeling. We can notice these things and choose how we’d like to proceed. Simply noticing “I am tired today” and giving your body some rest, or “I feel wound up” and stretching is a somatic practice.
New to mindfulness practices? Here’s a quick video I made called Somatic Slow Down which outlines three short practices to help you dip into mindfulness.
This becomes a regular practice through intention, an embodied practice, and repetition. It’s a lot like ritual in this way. We set an intention, we perform the ritual, we close and integrate, and then we come back to it.
Your somatic practice can be treated as a ritual practice if you so choose. It can become part of your morning or evening routine. You get to form a relationship to your somatic practice that is unique to you. It can be elaborate or simplistic. In fact, noticing simple subtleties is a big part of somatic awareness.
Okay so what does it actually look like? It can be as simple as:
Noticing your breath without altering it
Putting your hand over your heart
Hugging your body with self-compassion
Shaking your body out
Dancing
Going for a walk and noticing your surroundings
Belly breathing
Learning about your anatomy and nervous system
Intuitive movement and/or sound
It can look so many different ways- the key component is noticing what comes up for you. Dancing might make you feel bright and energetic, maybe it gives you a tingly feeling in your core. Notice that! Self-compassion practices -like hugging your body or putting your hand over your heart- might feel irritating or bring up some hard feelings. Notice that too! There’s information for us in all of this. (Some of which you might want to explore in session with a practitioner.) A lot of this might feel silly at first, like you don’t quite know what to “do”. And we notice that too. We can notice that “silly” feeling and deepen into “being”.
I’ll give you some of my regulars that I practice (almost) daily:
Placing my hand over my heart to check in with how I’m feeling, both physically and emotionally.
Going outside and putting my bare feet in the dirt- sometimes I’ll move into a low squat and breathe my energy into the earth on the exhale and breathe in earth energy through my feet on the inhale.
Sitting up against a tree and moving my awareness to the back of my body and noticing how my perception shifts.
I also regularly shout, growl, make outrageous noises if I’m feeling frustrated, along with a body shake or roll. This isn’t a daily practice but it’s one I turn to when I want to move through and with my emotions. I find this often ends in laughter for me, or a feeling that things aren’t as heavy as they felt prior. Sometimes it doesn’t work! I notice that too and make space.
Now that you know the “how”, we can move into the question of “when?” or “how often?”.
Deciding how to establish a regular practice can be tricky- it can feel overwhelming or like another thing to *do*. You get to decide what feels right. Figure out what your intentions are before beginning. Maybe you have a practice you enjoy and want to grow. Maybe you’re figuring out what works for you and what doesn’t. Maybe you’re really busy and need a gentle beginning to this. Notice where you are and start there. Grow where you’re planted.
This could look like:
Practicing once a day for 20 minutes a day for one lunar cycle
Folding a 5 minute practice into your morning or evening routine
Deciding to practice one thing daily for a set amount of time and see what shifts
Or deciding to try multiple practices before deciding to grow one
Still feel like you don’t know quite know how this would look?
An simple beginning practice might be:
Setting the intention: I want to engage in a somatic practice every day for a month and notice what comes up for me.
An embodied practice: Lighting a candle in the morning and placing your hand over your heart while noticing what that feels like. Maybe there’s a sensation you notice around your heart area. Or movement like glowing or waves. Maybe this feels edgy or brings up a memory. Maybe there’s a color or symbol that starts to arise. Maybe it feels soothing and regenerative. After 5 minutes, write about what you noticed.
Repetition: Showing up every morning for the month to place your hand over your heart and notice. And if you miss a day, notice that too. Notice what contributed to that. (ps we are human beings and we will miss days- noticing how you orient around missing a day can be an interesting way to come back into practice.)
At the end of the month: Read over what you’d written or check in with your baseline- do you feel differently than you did the month before? Would you like to continue this practice? Add to it? Modify it? Do something else instead? What did you learn about yourself? Your body? Your relationship to your body? These are all great journal prompts to explore once you’ve come to the end of the cycle you set out to complete.
Simply by having a body, you can practice somatics.
You get to weave in the things that pique your interest, and you get to leave out the things that don’t quite fit. Your practice doesn’t need to look like anyone else’s; it gets to suit your needs and the needs of your unique body. And if you find you get stuck, or that big emotions you’d like help sorting through come up, you can always reach out to a somatic practitioner. It can be helpful to engage in somatics with other people and their nervous systems. One-on-one and group practice can be really fruitful in this regard- so perhaps your practice expands to include other people.
Perhaps you simply start with the question, “How can I be more present with myself and my body in this moment?”
There are infinite ways to practice and endless ways to connect with yourself and your body, wherever and however you show up.