THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN SOMA AND BODY

Somatics is the field which studies the soma: namely, the body as perceived from within by first-person perception. When a human being is observed from the outside -- i.e., from a third-person viewpoint-the phenomenon of a human body is perceived. But, when this same human being is observed from the first-person viewpoint of his own proprioceptive senses, a categorically different phenomenon is perceived: the human soma.

The two distinct viewpoints for observing a human being are built into the very nature of human observation which is equally capable of being internally self-aware as well as externally aware. The soma, being internally perceived, is categorically distinct from a body, not because the subject is different but because the mode of viewpoint is different: It is immediate proprioception -- a sensory mode that provides unique data.

First-person observation of the soma is immediately factual.

It is fundamental to recognize that the same individual is categorically different when viewed from a first-person perception than is the case when he is viewed from a third-person perception. The sensory access is categorically different as are the resultant observations.

Medicine takes a third-person view of the human being and sees a patient.

The categorical distinction between these two viewpoints establishes the ground rules for all studies of the human species. Failure to recognize the categorical difference between first-person observation and third-person observation leads to fundamental misunderstandings in physiology, psychology, and medicine.

Physiology, for example, takes a third-person view of the human being and sees a body. This body is an objective entity, observable, analyzable, and measurable in the same way as any other object. The universal laws of physics and chemistry are brought to bear on this body, because-as an observed body it richly displays universal physical and chemical principles.

From a first-person viewpoint, however, quite different data are observed. The proprioceptive centers communicate and continually feed back a rich display of somatic information which is immediately self-observed as a process that is both unified and ongoing. Somatic data do not need, first, to be mediated and interpreted through a set of universal laws to become factual. First-person observation of the soma is immediately factual. Third-person observation, in contrast, can become factual only by mediation through a set of principles. It should be understood that this difference in data is neither a difference in truthful accuracy nor of intrinsic value. The difference is that the two separate modes of cognition are irreducible. Neither mode is less factual or inferior to the other: they are coequal.

When a subject is looking back at you, it is not easy to pretend that the subject is merely a complicated rock.

Psychology, for example, takes a third-person view of the human being and sees a body of behavior. This bodily behavior is an objective datum that is observable, analyzable, and measurable as is any other behavioral datum. The universal laws of cause and effect, stimulus and response, and adaptation are brought to bear on the behaving body, because -- as an observed body -- it richly displays these behavioral principles.

But, from a first-person viewpoint, quite different data are observed. The proprioceptive centers communicate and feed back immediate factual information on the process of the ongoing, unified soma-with the momentum of its past, along with the intentions and expectations of its future. These data are already unified; they have no need to be analyzed, interpreted, and later formulated into a unitary factual statement.

Medicine, for example, takes a third-person view of the human being and sees a patient (i.e., a clinical body) displaying various symptoms that -- when observed, analyzed, and interpreted according to universally known clinical principles -- can be diagnosed, treated, and prognosed.

The human is not merely a self-aware soma, but it is acting upon itself.

But, from a first-person viewpoint, quite different data are observed. The proprioceptive centers communicate and feed back immediate factual information on the continuous and unified past of the soma and its expectations for the future. The somatic appreciation of how this past led to ill health and how the future may restore-or not restore-health is essential to the full clinical picture. Ignorance of the first-person viewpoint is ignorance of the somatic factor that permeates medicine: the placebo effect and the nocebo effect.

Thus, the human being is quite unlike a mineral or a chemical solution in providing, not one, but two irreducible viewpoints for observation. A third-person viewpoint can only observe a human body. A first-person viewpoint can only observe a human soma -- one's own. Body and soma are coequal in reality and value, but they are categorically distinct as observed phenomena.

Somatics, then, is a field of study dealing with somatic phenomena: i.e., the human being as experienced by himself from the inside.

Somatic learning is an activity expanding the range of volitional consciousness. This is not to be confused with conditioning, which is a bodily procedure imposed upon a subject by external manipulations. Conditioning deals with the human as an object in a field of objective forces, and thus it is a form of learning reflecting the typical viewpoint of third-person science, notably of psychology.

The Pavlovian and Skinnerian models of learning are manipulative techniques of forcing an adaptive response on the body's involuntary reflex mechanisms. Conditioning is an engineering procedure that opposes the function of somatic learning by attempting to reduce the repertoire of voluntary consciousness. Conditioning neither requires focusing of awareness nor does it result in the learning of conscious somatic actions. Rather, the aim is to create an automatic response that is outside the range of volition and consciousness.

But we should be aware of the fact that this same form of conditioning can also take place in uncontrived ways by the fortunes of environmental forces that impinge upon our lives. Environmental situations that impose a constant stimulus on deep survival reflexes will, with sufficient repetitions, make them habitual -- the reflex becomes learned and "potentiated".

Awareness is a somatic activity that is exclusionary.

Reflexes, like all other organic events, are both sensory and motor; and, thus, when they become habituated and involuntary, there is a dual loss of both conscious control of that area of motor action and conscious sensing of that motor action.

We should refer to this as a state of sensory-motor amnesia. It is a state that occurs universally in the human species as the predictably conditioned result of long-term stress conditions. Constant repetition of stressful stimuli will cause loss of conscious voluntary control of significant areas of the body's musculature, usually predominating at the center of gravity, i.e., the musculature at the juncture of pelvis and rib cage.

Once sensory-motor amnesia occurs, these areas of musculature can be neither voluntarily sensed nor controlled. The victim can attempt to relax his amnesic lumbar muscles voluntarily, for example, but he no longer has the ability of doing so; both the sensing and movement of these muscles are beyond the reach of his conscious voluntary control. The muscles remain rigid and immobile, as if they belonged to someone else.

Because such reactions to constant stress can build up over sustained periods of time, the resultant chronic muscular contractions are associated with aging. But age is not a causative factor. Time, in itself, is neutral. It is what happens during our lifetime that causes muscular reflexes to habituate. Accumulated stress and trauma are the causes of sensory-motor amnesia, and what we mistakenly ascribe to the effects of "old age" are the direct effects of sensory-motor amnesia.

There is no bodily "cure" for sensory-motor amnesia. The chronic muscular rigidities habituated during aging are impervious to medical remedies. Third-person manipulations are of no avail.

There is, however, a way of releasing the involuntary restrictions of sensory-motor amnesia: it is somatic learning. If one focuses one's awareness on an unconscious, forgotten area of the soma, one can begin to perceive a minimal sensation that is just sufficient to direct a minimal movement, and this, in turn, gives new sensory feedback of that area which, again, gives a new clarity of movement, etc.

Somatic learning begins by focusing awareness on the unknown.

This sensory feedback associates with adjacent sensory neurons, further clarifying the synergy that is possible with the associated motor neurons. This makes the next motor effort inclusive of a wider range of associated voluntary neurons, thus broadening and enhancing the motor action and, thereby, further enhancing the sensory feedback. This back-and-forth motor procedure gradually "wedges" the amnesic area back into the range of volitional control: the unknown becomes known and the forgotten becomes relearned.

In another writing it was remarked that "...all forms of somatic education use this human ability to enlarge and improve the degree of our somatic self-awareness. Like two knitting needles, the sensory system and motor system are made to intertwine, creating a greater sensory awareness of our internal activities and a greater activity of our internal sensory awareness."(1)

Somatic learning is evoked by the teaching methods of Moshe Feldenkrais, but it is of central concern in the methods of Elsa Gindler, F. Mathias Alexander, Gerda Alexander and a host of contemporary practitioners. The techniques of somatic education taught by these teachers are applicable to any form of sensory-motor amnesia, including motor paralysis.

Somatic learning could be a response to amnesia, or it could just as well be an activity that is practiced all one's life, so as to avoid the habituating effects of stress. In whichever case, it is a learning that expands the human soma's range of action as well as perception. As a consequence, the more that is learned in this manner, the greater will be the range of voluntary consciousness for the constant task of adaptation with the environment.

A soma that is maximally free is a soma that has achieved a maximal degree of voluntary control and a minimal degree of involuntary conditioning. This state of autonomy is an optimal state of individuation, i.e., one having a highly differentiated repertoire of response possibilities to environmental stimuli.

The state of somatic freedom is, in many senses, the optimal human state. Looked at from a third-person, bodily viewpoint, somatic freedom is a state of maximal efficiency and minimal entropy. Looked at from a first-person, somatic viewpoint, somatic freedom is what I would term, a "fair" state -- the ancient English word fair, meaning a temporal progress that is unblemished and without distortions or the befoulment of inhibition.

Sensory-motor amnesia occurs universally in the human species as the result of long-term stress conditions.

The Fair State of the human soma is a state of optimal synergy, wherein any intentional action evokes the spontaneous coordination of the entire somatic process, without any unconscious, involuntary inhibition. This can also be expressed from the third-person viewpoint which would view the Fair State of the soma as a condition of optimal mental and physical health.

In summary, somatics is study of the soma, which is not only first-person perception of the living body but is its first-person regulation. The soma is a unity of sensory-motor functions, some of which are conscious, volitional functions that have been learned and others which are unlearned and involuntary. The involuntary functions can be incorporated into the volitional system by the selective use of awareness to isolate the unlearned function and, by association, learn it — that is, make it part of the conscious functioning of the sensory-motor system.

To understand this a bit better, let’s begin with some basics about muscle function:

The brain and central nervous system controls your muscles and movement. Muscles have no control of their own; they only respond to electrical signals from the brain and nervous system to contract and move. The brain can teach you and your muscles to ride a bicycle, walk, dance or play a sport. The brain can also teach you and your muscles to stay tight and involuntarily contracted due to emotional trauma, accidents, injuries, repetitive tasks, or on-going psychological stress. Accumulated muscle tension makes it impossible for muscles to contract efficiently and fully, and to relax completely. This is called Sensory Motor Amnesia: the loss of voluntary control of a muscle group and its synergists.

If you sit at a computer all day long, your muscles can learn to stay contracted in your “computer sitting posture,” ready to hold that same position again the next day. In other words, our muscles habituate to whatever it is we do repeatedly. Muscle length can become set, by the brain, at a slightly shorter length depending upon the repetitive movement, stress or holding pattern we’ve become habituated to. If a muscle is tight, it is being held tightly by the brain and sensory motor system.

The general intention of static stretching is to pull a muscle into a specific length or state of relaxation. We all know the feeling of pulling a muscle farther than is comfortable. Some of us even stay in the stretch for a while, breathe and hope for the best. The reason this doesn’t work – and that it can, in fact, result in over-stretching injuries such as herniated disks, muscle trauma, and muscle dysfunction – is because the brain, the command center of the muscles, is not engaged in the action. There is no sensing necessarily in static stretching – no feedback loop to the sensory motor cortex. In order to change what the muscles are doing the brain must be fully and consciously engaged in the process.

What do I do instead of stretching

There’s a simple movement that we’ve all been doing since the beginning of time. It is nature’s “re-set” button – a way of restoring full muscle function and length to a muscle. It is far more effective and safer than stretching. It is called PANDICULATION. It is like a “software update” for your brain: it “re-boots” the brain’s sensation and control of the muscles every time you do it.

“If you want to untie a knot, you must look at the cord carefully then gently undo the tangle. Yanking on the cord will only make the knot tighter.” — Thomas Hanna

If you have ever watched a cat or dog as it gets up from rest you know that it arches its back, then drops its belly and curves downward lengthening its legs, back, and belly in a full body “yawn.” Animals aren’t stretching. They’re pandiculating. After it does this simple maneuver, it jumps off the couch and goes running off to play. Do you remember when you used to do that? You’d wake up, gently tighten your arms and legs inward, feel a yawn coming on, and then reach your arms above your head, then reach one leg down and then the other. You would first contract your muscles, then slowly lengthen them, then completely relax.

There are three elements to a pandiculation:

A voluntary contraction into the tension of your muscles (it doesn’t have to be vigorous!)…

Followed by a slow, controlled lengthening….

And a complete relaxation. This gives your brain time to integrate the new feedback you just gave it.

This action, much like a pleasant yawn, re-sets both muscle length and function at the brain level; it “reminds” our muscles that they don’t have to stay stuck in a contracted state. Pandiculation “turns on a light” in the sensory motor system and improves proprioception, which helps you sense your own body more accurately. When you contract a muscle tighter than its present contraction rate, the brain (the command center of the muscles) receives strong sensory feedback, which allows it to “refresh” its sensation of the muscles. By slowly lengthening from that initial contraction, the brain can then lengthen the muscle past the point of its former, tighter length and into a new, fuller range. The result is a more relaxed muscle and renewed voluntary muscle control and coordination.

Because muscles only learn through movement (remember: riding a bicycle, dancing…), new information must be sent to the sensory motor cortex if the muscles are ever going to learn to release their accumulated tension and be able to move freely and intelligently. Static stretching is passive rather than active and it can evoke a protective reflex in the muscles that actually contracts back against the stretch. This reflex, aptly named the “stretch reflex,” is meant to protect your muscle from trauma. It is the fastest reflex in the body and has no feedback loop to the brain. When you pandiculate, however, the action is voluntary and information goes straight to your brain: you contract the muscle, then slowly lengthen it and completely let go. This requires focus and awareness.

When you think about it, animals pandiculate; they don’t stretch! And animals don’t sprain their ankles, nor have chronic back pain. The fact that animals pandiculate approximately 40 times a day means that they have full, voluntary control of their muscular system at all times. Doesn’t it make sense that we should do the same?

So next time you want to stretch, try first contracting the muscle that’s tight and then slowly lengthening it. Then completely relax. Note the difference not only in sensation and control of the muscle, but also in your range of motion and sense of ease in your body. You may even feel more “connected,” less tense.

Clinical Somatic Education uses the reflex of pandiculation to teach people to re-set muscle length and function as well as the inability to sense and control themselves from within. Somatic Movements, which are gentle, easy, movement patterns that incorporate pandiculation, retrain your brain and muscles to “remember” how to move more easily and effortlessly. Remembering how to gently twist, bend, extend, and flex will go a long way toward retaining flexibility, control, balance and coordination for as long as you live. Done every day, these easy and gentle movements can make a world of difference in your body…while reversing your muscle pain!