Somatics, it’s all about moving through life

By Astrid van Wesenbeeck

Years ago I deeply fell in love with somatics. Amongst my Somatics teachers was Lisa Petersen who, in 2025, brought the Thomas Hanna Somatics TT to Yoga Moves (and the Netherlands!) for the very first time. Together with Yoga Moves colleagues Hilary Brown, Liesbeth Meijer and Zoe Gonzàlez, I had the pleasure of being a student in this training. In 2026, Lisa will return. 

We believe somatics can be a wonderful addition to your yoga practice, whether you are a fan of strong and dynamic yoga or, the more restorative styles. This blog is meant to be a teaser. 

‘Falling in love’ moments

Let me start by sharing some of the falling in love moments that I recall very well. 

The moment from shaping to sensing. In somatics, what you sense and feel is more interesing than the shape or the posture. By shifting attention towards sensing in moving, I felt an invitation to start building trust and reliance in my own body.  

The moment of curiosity. This explorative sensing approach awakened a source of curiosity that weaved itself into other physical practices such as skeelering (how can I yield in my obviously less strong leg?), walking (sensing the rotational / spiraling dialogue between pelvis and upper body through my spine) and active yoga (where can I do less when the pose requires more strength?). Probably needless to say that curiosity is helpful in basically all situations in life.  

The moment of rolling. I am sure this is what I did when I was a baby, melting into the innate desire to move through space, to discover with the support of the ground beneath and the endlessness of space around me. Rolling from the back, from the belly, rolling in a spiral or as a stick, rolling to come to sit or stand or just rolling into freeing movements.  

The moment of slow and ease. Somatic movement practices invited me to slow down in movement and look for sensations of ease and unnecessary effort. Since most of the day we are in movement, the practices became satellites, firing slowness and ease into daily occupations such as walking, hanging the laundry and cutting vegetables. When slowing down, it’s easier to detect unnecessary effort. Moving becomes easier.  

So….what is somatics?

At Yoga Moves most Somatics classes are rooted in Thomas Hanna Somatics, one of Moshe Feldenkrais’s students. 

Hanna Somatics addresses three stress reflexes that play out in the body during life and that lead to less and restricted movement in our gait, especially when they appear at the same time:  

• The red light reflex: muscles in the front body are overly contracted

• The green light reflex: muscles in the back body are overly contracted

• The trauma reflex: muscles in the side body are overly contracted

A muscle never operates alone, so when one muscle group is continuously contracted, another will be continuously stretched or inactive. On top of this, when these reflexes appear at the same time, we unconsciously move towards more and more restriction in movement. We can look at these reflexes and how they interact, as long term patterns, revealing themselves in our posture as we age. 

Somatic exercises gently teach the brain and the nervous system how to release overworking muscles and re-establish balance. It is a physical practice that touches (emotional) patterns that shaped you at the same time you learned to move around as a child. No wonder a somatics practice can lead to tears, frustration, joy and anger.  

three key concepts you’ll encounter

There are three other terms that are essential to understand what somatics is: 

Pandiculation - move like a cat waking up 

One of the glorious principles of somatics is pandiculation. If you have ever looked at a cat or a dog getting up after a nap, you have probably seen them organising these full body yawns. It is a leaning into an intentionally contracted muscle(group), followed by a lengthening and a softening of that same muscle(group). When we human animals pandiculate, we activate the motor part of our brain. And this is very efficient for all the complex movements we need to do in navigating life. 

Sensory Motor Amnesia

A term coined by Thomas Hanna himself; when a muscle group is overly contracted we lose sensation (and instead we might start to feel pain and soreness) which is called SMA. By moving slowly and mindfully, and by the art of pandiculation, we bring our brain back into our body and we start to sense again. Manifestations of SMA are a true delight because by bringing these into awareness you create the chance to turn SMA to sensory motor capability, which leads to more ease in and possibilities of movement. 

Repatterning 

Somatic the exercises are - like yoga asana - atypical. And precisely by doing novel things, the brain doesn’t say ‘yes i know exactly how i want to do it’. You create the perfect circumstances for changing unserving patterns. Being close to the floor in somatics is one of them. Personally this is one of the reasons that I like to weave in new movements in my own practice all the time. It is the novelty of movement that keeps our brain in the learning mode.

Curious?

Join us in one of our Somatics classes — and experience what it means to move with your body instead of pushing through it.