Somatics exercises uses the field of gravity so you can use the brain to get muscles to lose tension and relax more quickly. This is one way to act as your own bodyworker.

Doing a pandiculation, which is at the heart of somatics, is what we do when we do somatics exercises. When a trained somatic bodyworker works with your muscles this is called an assisted pandiculation.

Bodyworker and assisted pandiculations.

Hanna Somatic Educators are trained bodyworkers and movement experts who help people restore the function of muscles with either bodywork or specific exercises or a combination of both.

This training takes place over the course of three years since even for the so-called experts, there is a shift in learning how the body responds neurologically and well let’s face, the practitioner needs a lot of practice to fully understand the thousands of combinations we all move in and how we articulate ourselves.

In the last decade, I’ve noticed many shifts of internal organization as I too have learned my way out of compensatory habits and established newer, easier movement patterns which evolve and continue to surprise and delight me as I age.

A hands-on bodyworker in cooperation with a person has to figure out what needs to be released. By assisting a person with a pandiculation, both parties can sense a result taking place.

These assisted pandiculation often turn into the self-pandiculations that a person will do as the somatics exercises or homework to keep improving mobility, flexibility and the diminishment of panful signals.

Become your own bodyworker

As you become familiar with the somatics exercises, you can learn how to become your own bodyworker using gravity as the load or weight of resistance when you move yourself in the variety of movement patterns to restore function and improve coordination.

You can also use your own hands to provide the resistance with some of the somatics exercises. It’s best to be led by a Hanna Somatics Practitioner who can give you the idea or guide you along this path to help restore balance in the muscles.

When we use our own hands as a bodyworker on our self, we may be able to learn how to modulate our efforts with a little bit of practice.

Be your own Bodyworker Class

Reminding the movement system as to how it moves is what all healthy vertebrate animals do to keep themselves moving well. After all, what kind of bodyworker can they go to themselves?

For the most part, nature has set it up so all vertebrates can move well merely be reminding the nervous system to reset, or reboot if you will.

Fortunately, we can apply a systematic approach through the somatics exercises and use these tools to be our own bodyworker when needed.

This Friday, August 19th, I’ll be offering an online class in somatics exercises so you can do your own pandiculations in the field of gravity.

You’ll also learn how to use your own hands and be a bodyworker so you can do things like sit more comfortably crossed legged and free up your hips and hip flexors.

When we use our brain and neurology in novel ways, we can foster growth and education in the ways in which we move. We can actually move better as we age.

Now I’m only saying that when I compared myself to a group of 55 high school athletes and few if any had the hamstring flexibility of someone 3x their age.

Register for this Friday’s class. Find out for yourself how free you can be. Sign up and be your own bodyworker.

Since healthy vertebrate animals naturally pandiculate, that is to say, they can take out any charlie horse or muscular stiffness, it may be appropriate to give them their due the next time you get a butt cramp, rather a charlie donkey.

Since we’re not going to see a cheetah pull a hamstring running at 70mph, if it did, would that be a charlie cheetah?

Would pigs be offended by the cheetah… since maybe they have a claim on the charlie hammie.

When you get laid out by a back spasm? Is that a charlie elephant?

Muscle cramps can happen as the spinal cord sends a signal to the muscles to pull back quickly… and if you use the animal know of a pandiculation, you can quiet down the zoo.

What’s your animal? Who’s your charlie?

These methods can be quite useful but we may not always be successful with these approaches.

Your brain is set up to use the natural process of a pandiculation by using Somatics Exercises. These unique exercises send a message from your brain’s cortex through the spinal cord and out to the muscle or muscles which need to let go.

If you practice Somatics, you may be aware how to use the simple 3 step process by actually contracting your muscles followed by the s-l-o-w release and pausing to sense the effect.

When you feel or sense the release of yourself letting go, you are in a state of learning and reminding your nervous system as to the “how to” of actually letting go.

We often try to deal with accumulated stress, tightness or pain by just breathing into it. This works “if” you already know how to let go in that particular area of your body.

Using your mind to communicate with the muscles, reminds them of their function, and serves to creates a memory pattern which reinforces the learning of how to let go.

You are actively creating and releasing the chemicals of relaxation into your body through the 3 step process of a pandiculation which you can use any time you feel the need.

In other words, you’re also creating a reservoir of the feel good chemicals of relaxation which you can bank on.

The more you practice with the 3 simple steps, the more easily you can tap into your natural resource of turning off stress, tightness, discomfort and pain.

Then once you have the hang of it, and your muscles know and remember how to let go, then breathing, visualizing and following through with your intentions and mantras will move you up a notch in realizing your healthy lifestyle.

Letting go is easy once you know how… you can join us on Saturday, August 14th for a live webinar on how to use the P word to get your muscles to let go in your legs, hips, knees, ankles and feet.

While I normally comment on movement as a key to well-being. Moving to the refrigerator and in the grocery store or sitting down for a prepared meal in a restaurant is another part of a strategy to well-being.

If you’re loading yourself up on packaged foods and expect your body to move well… please try it again and see if you get the same result. I applaud the efforts of Jamie Oliver’s television show and his intent to plant seeds to improve not only how school children eat… it’s a lesson for us big kids too.

Moving well also requires you to nourish your being with food that gives you positive energy and one of the simplest of foods is merely drinking clean and healthy water.

Lack of hydration, ill nourishment and medication, both legal and illegal will take you away from moving well as nature intends, otherwise, all the pandiculators, the healthy vertebrate animals would be in a mess too. Some of them are on account of what they have access to as well as your children and the community you live in.

I know when I travel and can’t get organic food, I’m in a literal bind, which thankfully only lasts for a small duration and when I discover areas which have co-ops and healthy restaurants which I even discovered in Sin City, Las Vegas in a soccer tournament I was competing in…

My hope is that Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution will re-spark what so many have come to understand how food is delivered to children at school, what is available at the grocery store, and what we ingest as fast food.

Healthy minds thrive on good food, physical activity, great relationships and the inner feeling of connectedness. This is somatics. To move with intelligence is our birthright as is evidenced by how we pandiculated in our mother’s womb. To continue to move well is fostered by this intelligent act of pandiculation.

To eat well is a choice to wield another and further intelligence to allow us to move, think and act freely with a consciousness promoting well-being for all of us. Our health care reform moves onward when we all participate in promoting well-being and practicing it… and modeling it for all children.

It’s not always easy to take the time to prepare a good meal, move with intelligence, think clearly and act in a positive manner… but when the seed is planted and we repeat the simple practice of hygiene in all it’s varied forms, then we truly progress to living life as easy and as well as it can be.

It’s an effort that is well rewarded with feelings of pleasure, confidence, and self-actualization. Life is simple… eat well, move well, think well, be well. The paths can be varied, overlap and your somatics sense of yourself will feel and know it. It’s just practice and revolutions such as Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution remind us of our greatness, our capacity to feel it, and that desire which calls us to move forward.

Related Blogs

• Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution: Keeping It Healthy
• Food Revolution with Jamie Oliver | Politicol News
• Jamie Oliver’s ‘Food Revolution’ Stirs the Pot – Kim O’Donnel – Licking Your Chops – True/Slant
• Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution | Blacknell.net

Check him out on Live with Regis and Kelly.

Did you also notice that after what appears to be a yawn… how relaxed he became? Of course you had to watch it in progress to see him show the response of relaxation.

When you’re at the top of your game or wanting to keep pace with younger talent, you’ll use any edge necessary, though in this case, Apolo is using nature’s process of a pandiculation…

And he may not even know about it, as most people don’t… but it doesn’t matter what it’s called since this is just like many natural processes we use without knowing why.

Healthy animals with spines use this little known process to remain agile, quick and strong.

They’ll practice a series of pandiculations first thing in the morning and periodically self-adjust throughout the day. This explains how well they can move and it serves notice to us what we may need to remind ourselves on a daily basis…

How well you move is up to you? Can you improve with age? I think so and though I was living in chronic pain for the better part of two decades… years later I earned only a couple of medals in my 40′s.

My secret training method… pandiculate of course. Now I’ve got some work to do to catch up with Apolo and the rest of the healthy animals.