Better Walking with Somatics Exercises

Hi, I'm Ed Barrera, Hanna Somatic Educator and founder of Gravity Werks and I teach people "online" how to overcome physical pain, reduce stress & tension and recover quickly from injury using safe, simple tools known as somatics exercises.

As a 10 year practitioner, I finally figured out that all the movement classes I had been teaching had to be recorded.  If only I had known that 10 years ago... 'course I was a bit green then.  Now I have 150 movement classes and each week I offer a class on a particular subject.

This week's class will be on some of the movement involved in walking.

You can join in either live or get the replay.

Somatics exercises evolved from the work of Moshe Feldenkrais who taught the delightful ATM (Awareness Through Movement) or Feldenkrais classes.  Thomas Hanna, the author of Somatics actually brought Moshe to the U.S to begin the Feldenkrais trainings.

They were friends, each with valuable insight into how movement can facilitate change.  Now we know from the likes of Norman Doidge, "The Brain That Changes Itself", that simple movement has profound and altering effects.

Personally I know this as I used to live with fibromyalgia in my 20's and 30's.  Now 14 years pain free, I just recently won a gold medal at the Washington State Senior games.  While the gold medal was nice... it was nicer not to have any stiffness, soreness, or aches after playing 4-90 minute games in the course of 2 days.

While I had no need for a hot tub, I could hear the cries of my fellow senior athletes and see them limp to their cars afterwards.   If they only truly knew how to self-care, they could move as simple and as easily as any healthy vertebrate animal.

Somatics exercises actually use the animal process of a pandiculation to release contracted muscles and high tension levels by getting the brain to release the neurochemicals of relaxation.

By creating both functional use and the release of chains of muscles, the pandicular process is our natural birthright.  It is what we did as babies. 

Besides, when is the last time you saw a cheetah pull a hamstring running 60 mph?  What does it take for the human animal to do the same?

I'm going with the animals and hope you or your clients can join me on Friday's online somatics classes.