When we turn our attention to the life of our body we’re cultivating a Somatic Awareness and at the same time we’re strengthening our attention. The attention is like a muscle in that it can be trained. Just like going to a gym and doing repetitions with barbells with a certain muscle group to make it stronger, we can make the attention stronger by

Over the course of his work Geoffrey began to see that the question wasn’t “why” is something the way it is, but “how” is it the way it is? When we see how something is constructed we can see what it has served, but more importantly we can see how to dismantle it if we so choose. The how perspective gave him much more power in observing himself and

In aikido we call this zanshin, which roughly translates “what is happening between the techniques.”

The contemporary phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty characterized his thinking as a philosophy of the lived body or the body subject. Key to his analysis was the notion of embodiment, which draws a distinction from the objective body, which is regarded solely as a physiological entity, and the phenomenal body, which is not just any body, or simp

Somatic practices allow insights to become muscular commitments to action. A practice is a conscious choice we make so our behavior and actions becomes part of who we are. Underlying the practice is a narrative we have about why we’re committing to this practice. In other words if someone asked us why we’re committed to a certain practice we would

“How do I resist life?” “How do I position against change?” “How do I cling to that which is completed and no longer relevant?” The question “How” orients us to look to the continuous river of events that is our body, not to a logically constructed explanation. When we experience how we hold, we can then begin to deconstruct it.

The nature of our life energy, however, is to circulate in an unbroken cycle of forming and reforming; it’s life’s impulse to continuously move through the cycles of birth, growth, fruition, completion, and renewal. In counterpoint, the culture shuts this energy down through an egregious disregard for the wisdom of the body. Our institutions have f

Somatic Coaching is also distinct from mind-body-spirit coaching in that it doesn’t see these three domains as separate but the human form as the unified space in which humans act, perceive, think, feel, sense, express emotions and moods, and live their spiritual longing. In this interpretation the body is the energetic space where we build trust a

When our awkwardness (a sure sign of learning), resistance, and impatience to learning arise we’re coached to see how this reaction is historically embodied. Becoming aware of the frustration that can accompany the learning process allows us to more easily deal with our shame, embarrassment, or striving as we travel this new ground. We’re encourage