"By having these simple conversations with your soma, you recondition habitual stress responses, and dissolve the static tension so many of us live with and unquestioningly accept as irrevocable. You can take control of your well-being and let your body feel its own pleasure and ease more often."

The Five Languages of Somatic Expression

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I have been teaching movement-based work in different forms for the past thirty years, and have accumulated many diverse techniques and tools for working with the body somatically and expressively. For many years, my students in the US and Europe had encouraged me to write about my way of working. I finally set off on an extended sabbatical in 2000 to examine what I knew, what I taught, and what I actually believed could make a meaningful contribution to the field of somatic movement education.

Living by the ocean and being immersed in self-reflection, reading and writing, initiated a substantial revisioning of my work. I began to consider some primary questions: What does nature implicitly give us as human animals? What technologies are already hard-wired in our systems for health, well-being and pleasure? And how can we remember and activate this inherited vocabulary consciously?

As I sifted through my experience, and the teachings of other theorists of Somatics, I identified five innate technologies of the body that help us communicate pre-verbally both internally and externally. These five natural languages are:

• Breath
• Vocalization
• Contact
• Movement
• Stillness

After these languages, I turned to the questions - What are foundational skills of bodily awareness and expression? What activities are most relevant for a majority of people? Here are the ways I am defining these five basic languages so they can then be translated into practical activities.

Breath is the primary movement of your body. One of the first movements of life is respiration. Yet, breathing is not for oxygenation alone. Breathing is the central pulsating movement of your torso, strengthening organ tone, regulating blood pressure and digestion, and stimulating lymphatic flow, among other things.

Breath is a barometer of your changing inner states, as any disturbance — physical, mental or emotional — alters your breath rhythm. Breath is both involuntary and voluntary, so it is a bridge between the automatic and the chosen. Changes in thought and feelings change your breath automatically; you can also voluntarily change your breath to change your thinking and feelings. As such, breath practices are fundamental for physiological and emotional self-regulation.

Vocalization is the audible, vibrational exhale. Vocalization elongates the exhale by closing the vocal cords. The resulting vibratory sound transmits pulsation through the bones to stimulate micromovements in the muscle attachments. These micromovements both relax and energize the body by awakening proprioceptive feedback and recalibrating muscle tone. Vibratory sound also charges the brain's energy, balances endocrine function, and soothes the nervous system.

Vocalization is also connected to the emotional realm. The auditory channel is a direct pathway to the part of your brain that registers feeling - the limbic brain. Vocalization stimulates the emotional body and brings your feeling expression out into the world.

Contact brings you back in touch with yourself. People speak of being out of touch with their bodies. This is more than metaphor: wherever you touch or are touched, your mind follows, increasing sensation, circulation and body awareness. The tactile sense illuminates body image, the visualized inner map of your body. Intentional touch, either self-contact or in partnership, is a way to be in touch with yourself and others.

Touch receptors are another direct pathway to the limbic brain. Self-contact is a form of self-soothing and basic reassurance, creating the conditions to feel safer and less defended.

Movement is the bridge between the functional animal body and the expressive human being. Your body follows a developmental sequence that begins in the womb. Infants in all cultures proceed through the same stages of sequential, functional movement. Pulsating and radiating, flexing and extending, pushing in and reaching out are some of these basic movements. They increase in complexity over time. In this approach we follow this developmental map, covering the territory from primitive reflexes to complex motor behavior.

Another aspect of movement is postural alignment. Alignment is the collaboration with gravity to balance the bony structure of your body for optimal functioning. In sitting, you focus on the relationship between skull, rib case and pelvis through the centerline of the spine. In standing, which is more complex, you include your feet and legs. Attention to alignment refines bodily awareness, generating more stability, mobility and ease in movement.

Movement, though, is not only functional. It is also expressive. All people have their own unique movement signature. How you express your inner impulses reflects your individual humanity. And as you free up your movement impulses with awareness, you develop a personal form of psychological feedback and emotional release through expressive movement.

Stillness balances activity with rest and doing with being. Of the five languages, stillness is the most challenging, as it is an evolving capacity of the human organism. Stillness is an essential element of somatic practice. It is an antidote to the nonstop movement of the chattering brain. Stillness highlights inner movement and the subtle articulations of the body. It is the punctuation for moving and thinking, creating a pause for awareness, like the space in-between the exhale and the inhale.

By differentiating these five languages and focusing on them separately, they can then be woven back together in combinations of greater complexity. The simplicity satisfies the need of the lower brain for repetition and ease, and the complexity satisfies the need of the higher brain for complexity and innovation. The somatic focus gives the overactive brain something to occupy it so sensation and other sensory information can slowly and surely move into the foreground of awareness. Each of the five languages activates different sensory information, which stimulates different regions of your brain. They bring your attention inside so the buzz of anxiety can recede and the chattering mind can slow down, increasing your ability to listen to “the small voice within”, as the Quakers call it.

Having these varied and specific tools for bodily engagement is like having an atlas of road maps for the inner journey. Repeated over time, these practices become a predictable sanctuary from the demands of everyday life. You know where to go, and how to easily access the states of being you desire. By having these simple conversations with your soma, you recondition habitual stress responses, and dissolve the static tension so many of us live with and unquestioningly accept as irrevocable. You can take control of your well-being and let your body feel its own pleasure and ease more often.

You can use the practices in your daily life as a form of refuge and regeneration for five minutes at a time, or you can use them for more in-depth inquiry and creative expression. Yet whether you take even a few minutes sprinkled here and there throughout the day, or give yourself a more luxurious time frame for practice, this ongoing attention to your soma makes the difference between living life anxiously and breathlessly, or graciously and securely.

Selection from “Restoring Original Grace: Movement as Medicine,” a work-in-progress by Jamie McHugh. All rights reserved.

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Jamie McHugh.
Photo by Rick Chapman.