“In the West today, we have so many places in our body that we have forgotten. We have to broaden our movement range, using yoga or some other form of union, to feel our body as a complete thing again. It’s a process of tuning into your body and thinking of the body as an antenna. If you are tuned to it, if you are inhabiting all of it, you will likely make better decisions.” – Tom Myers, author of Anatomy Trains
Something is afoot in the world of yoga today, the makings of a mini-revolution, and it’s arising out of a reflexive response of sorts. A response to pain being caused from pushing a body beyond its limits, beyond its capacity to adapt and evolve – beyond its generative sweet spot. The body’s Somatic Intelligence Quotient™ -the innate intelligence of the Whole Self- is seeking a New Reality. It requires us to go within, through felt perception (i.e. interoception), and discover our somatic sweet spot from which our Soma (body) can reset and continue to evolve.
According to Tom Myers, there is a level of our intuition that is tied to our somatic reality. To the degree that we’ve lost connection with our Soma, we’ve lost access to the hunches and intuitive feelings it constantly communicates. We’ve lost access to our somatic sweet spot. From Myers’ perspective, broadening our movement range is an effective way to enhance intuition, and is very much tied to our somatic reality. Enter interoception, through the practice of Gentle Somatic Yoga.
The truly wondrous thing with Gentle Somatic Yoga is that this art-of-movement practice allows our body’s somatic awareness to deepen through interoception, and we are continuously able to discover new areas in our body that were forgotten. This forgetting is known as Sensory Motor Amnesia. Through the process of engaging interoception via the practice’s Somatic Movement Flows, we’re able to tune into those forgotten places and bring them back into our brain’s (somatic) awareness. As a result, the brain is able to resume its role in overall muscular function and coordination. We call this Somatic Awakening, and freedom from pain is its gift.