What Exactly Is Somatic Movement?

In this educational talk, you'll discover what somatic movement actually is — a body-led practice rooted in the wisdom of sensation rather than thought, and one of the most effective tools available for nervous system regulation, stress relief, and emotional release. Somatic movement works with the patterns where your body holds tension, bracing, and stored emotion, gently supporting relaxation, anxiety relief, and a deeper sense of embodiment without needing any prior experience. This video will help you explore if somatic movement is right for you.

Transcript

Most of us have learned to process things from the neck up.

We've learned to reason,

We've learned to question,

We've learned to talk about everything.

Somatic movement and somatics teaches us the opposite.

It teaches us a bottom-up approach to healing.

This means quite literally working with the body first.

The Greek word soma translates to body.

In somatics we learn to listen.

With awareness.

With playful curiosity.

With acceptance and compassion to what the language of the body is telling us.

Thematic movement is often misunderstood.

Often people think it needs to be really out there,

Intuitive,

Creative,

Playful.

A model is a place for this.

Somatic movement in the way I believe it to be is movement that is done with the awareness of the body.

So any movement can be done somatically.

We can dance somatically.

We can take a deep breath in slowly,

Somatically.

We can walk somatically,

We can do yoga somatically.

As long as we're paying attention to the body and we're listening to the senses and we're listening to the feedback that is giving us about a situation or about what's going on for us right now.

And it doesn't mean questioning and it doesn't mean being.

Probing of what is going on too much.

It means to just listen.

To listen and accept.

And let whatever is true for you to come to the surface.

Some of my favourite somatic movements to do are somatic shaking,

This really helps to get rid of any unwanted energy regulating the nervous system.

I also really encourage you to practice breath.

Breath when tuning into the felt sensations of the breathing is somatic movement.

And of course,

Somatic yoga,

Where yoga becomes less about the performance and the pose and more about what it's doing for us in the moment.

Somatic movement is great for people who are worried,

Maybe anxious,

Maybe spend a lot of their time in the monkey mind.

It helps to ground you and regulate your nervous system.

It takes you from that frantic fight or flight mode to that state of rest and digest.

And I'm a big believer that unless we work in tandem,

That means together with the body and the mind.

No amount of mindset work is going to actually happen because if we're not feeling safety within the body then there's always going to be a mismatch there.

I really do encourage you to explore some somatic movement on Insight Timer.

With this track,

Let me know how it was for you.

I can't wait to see you inside Insight Timer.