Somatic Faith: An Introduction
Faith is an intimately personal and secret shaping inside that is invisible to all but the host. It is not logical. It can come on suddenly (or gradually) and builds a strange invincibility in the face of hardship, and a softness of heart that can provide rest and solace to the world in its quiet presence.
Faith is often held as an object in relationship to an outside doctrine, person, guru, God, belief that is typically applied to bandage and heal the inevitable wounds of being human. But shifting the view to a wider expanse, an inclusive ease, offers a fertile landscape in which small bodily experience of faith, fully felt – times that are gusts of awe that overcome, bring tears of joy, revelations of meaning, clarity of heart and mind – begin to build and reconstruct a strong and deep rudder of faith to navigate with during times of challenge and uncertainty.
In the early days of the Covid -19 Pandemic I felt a hunger for spiritual solace and wisdom. Granted an unexpected 3–year retreat by the presence of the virus, I was more than grateful for the many voices of wisdom that collided into my mind and heart every day with guidance and inspiration. Reading the words of Pema Chodron and listening to the wisdom of Jon Kabat-Zinn and Thomas Hubl, I noticed that each was shining a light on the ground provided by growing our sensitivity to living in and with our body as a guide.
After a life devoted to fulfilling early revelations of body truth through various movement practices and four decades of teaching and honing awareness of direct, felt experience as body truth to students from ages 3- 83, the shelter-in-place time coagulated into a central necessity for being in union with the moment-to-moment changes unfolding in my self, my family, my community and in the larger world due to the sweeping nature of the pandemic.
Now, 5 years since the beginning of that time, notions of “embodiment” and “somatic” practice have become more and more commonplace as structures and guidance for living well seem so elusive in a media-frenzied and information-saturated environment. We are constantly baraged with tips and tools on healthy living as we continue to evolve as individuals and as a species.
Somatics to the Rescue
Currently, the word “Somatic” has become a familiar descriptor for transformational approaches that promise a compassionate and easier relationship with the often hidden streams of healing held in the body itself. We can now find Somatic Yoga, Somatic psychotherapy, Somatic workouts, Somatic stretching and more. I served on the Board of the International Somatic Movement and Therapy Association for 6 years, including 3 as president. Our intention was to solidify the field of Somatic work into a viable profession with standards of practice that could offer reliable entry points into the well of wisdom and healing held within the tissues themselves. Through this work and the creation of an international registry of trained professionals, we have contributed to the field by making professional somatic approaches more widely available around the world.
In April 2020, I was invited to be a guest speaker on the Shift Network’s Somatic Movement Summit with over 60,000 participating. There was so much excitement following the event that my online classes took off exponentially. It became starkly evident that a world-wide yearning for a fresh and more in-depth relationship to embodied life was (and still is) surfacing.
Rewinding History
Since the early days of the industrial revolution, the body has been primarily seen as a tool with which to accomplish things. A mode of transportation, a machine – verily, an object. Yet, just as machines get rusty, and wear out eventually, so too do concepts, beliefs, and assumptions that no longer meet the times and the creativity needed to grow a more compassionate and loving world.
Because the body-as-object belief has so permeated our lives for nearly two centuries, we no longer are aware of the nuances and subtle aggressions that we are engaging in on a daily basis in relation to our bodies. Without a deeper experience of our organismic origins and creativity, “somatic“ practices can become another shallow overlay of attitudes and beliefs and lifetimes that actually seal off the life force from the host, cementing the notions of embodiment into a kind of crust, trapping vitality and aliveness deeper within.
“Soma“ is a word originating from Greek: translating as “body“. Miriam Webster defined it as “the body of an organism“. “Somatic” could imply simply “of the body”. But the oversimplification offered by a dictionary definition, has its pitfalls. When the values of deeper experiences are reduced and oversimplified, the essential life-giving presence of creative unfolding itself is lost. Here in this book, I am essentially Inviting the reader to drop previous notions of embodiment and expand the experience of the home, we call our bodies, to engender awareness and find the treasure of faith hidden in its very essence.