"Interrupting the pattern with new input is the first step - stabilizing the new information through repetition is what helps it take hold."

Somatic Expression - More than the Physical

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Somatic Expression is a body-based, creative approach to human movement and expression. Yet in this work, you are not just developing strength and flexibility as a body, or increasing your capacity to be creatively expressive. With Somatic Expression, you are also growing your brain by changing the way you think about and use your body.

We use the five somatic languages of breath, vocalization, movement, contact and stillness to awaken and develop the soma, or the thinking body. According to neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, somatic awareness is the foundation for self-awareness and consciousness. You cannot have more developed states of consciousness without bodily feedback. Consciousness is transformed by giving proprioception - your body's self-perception - more attention. Here is an example of that type of inquiry:

Go for a walk outside. Once you get into your stride, with your arms easily swinging in opposition to your legs, pay attention to where your eyes are landing. Now notice how your skull is balanced on your spine. Are you looking down at the ground as you walk? Is your neck flexed forward or your head cocked back? See what happens when you extend your neck vertically and let your eyes rest on the horizon as you begin to walk again. When you look forward this way, your skull easily balances on your spine and you can see more with your peripheral vision. If your habit is to look at the ground to stabilize yourself as you walk, you might feel insecure trying out this option, creating a tightening of both your breathing and your leg muscles. When we are afraid, we tighten, as the function of fear is to STOP movement. Consciously take a few deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth to re-center and soothe the anxiety. Go back and forth between your habit (looking at the ground to see what you are walking on) and this new option (looking out on the horizon to see where you are going). Let your inner attention begin to focus more on your feet, noticing your contact with the ground. Wherever we put our attention, the body adjusts itself. And after some time switching back and forth, both habit and option become equally familiar, so then both are possibilities.

This type of activity is not physical exercise, even though it happens through the medium of your body. When your mind is actively engaged in small postural and respiratory shifts based on sensory feedback, you are also reshaping your neural network. The dialogue between awareness and action makes this activity a somatic exercise - the thinking body in motion.

Each time you move a muscle, you activate the nervous system through a specific neural pathway. When you walk in your habitual way, you follow a specific neural pathway. When you change the movement by looking ahead rather than down, for example, you are interrupting the habit and charting a new pathway. Interrupting the pattern with new input is the first step - stabilizing the new information through repetition is what helps it take hold. The rhythm back and forth between repetition and innovation is what keeps the process natural and lively, with somatic explorations and expressive play keeping the whole self supple and alert. Walking backwards or sideways, crawling or rolling, shaking or rocking – by embodying these simple, non-ordinary activities, you chart new pathways in the motor cortex of your brain. When you breathe in a non-ordinary way, you also add a new pathway. When you touch your skin, you activate other neural pathways. All of these various ways to access your body's wisdom and support its ongoing evolution through somatic exploration and expression engenders neural innovation. And with somatic neural innovation, you have the skills to steward the garden of your body so you can live with as much grace and health as possible. You are not dependent on a specific form of movement or exercise. The landscape of your body knows how to be a self-regulating ecosystem as you have restored its original habitat - integrated soma and psyche, whole body and mind.

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