What is Somatic Yoga?
Bridging body, mind, and intuitive healing
Somatic Yoga is the new kid in the hood.
More and more people seem to be interested in practicing Yoga more impactfully and using it as support for their self-development.
The style itself is a rather broad term, and its expression as individual as the teacher.
The way I teach Yoga today is the natural evolution of distilling the best-of aspects of Vinyasa, Ashtanga, Yin, and Rocket, which all have great concepts and offer stable structures for practicing.
However, one personal truth that I found out for myself as a teacher, as well as a practitioner, is that the longer I gather experience with Yoga, the simpler my practice and teaching become.
“Somatic Yoga is, first and foremost, is a non-dogmatic Yoga practice that leaves soft borders and open edges, with the potential to be combined with any other healing methodology one takes up, as well as the simple inner process of understanding oneself under the viewpoint of well-being and happiness.”
In this post, I will introduce what Somatic Yoga is, what the differences are towards traditional Yoga forms, its benefits and principles, and how it can be combined with forms of self-healing, therapy, or coaching.
Enjoy the read!
Somatic Yoga - what does that mean?
First of all, let’s clear up some vocabulary.
“Somatic” essentially means:
“relating to the body, especially as distinct from the mind” (as defined by Oxford Languages).
This interesting side phrase points us straight to the crossroads of the mind and body connection. Whereas the original term “Yoga” alludes to the uniting aspect of the practice, primarily between our individual consciousness and the wholeness of being, “somatic” shifts the emphasis further in the direction of the embodied, body-oriented aspect of the physical practice.
The “distinction from the mind” puts the body itself into the center of our awareness and zooms in on our somatic, bodily felt experiences in relation to our Yoga practice.
This kind of embodied practice sees our “soma” as the bigger picture of our organism and travels the lines between the sheer physical shell, our muscles, skin, organs, and the more subtle, metaphoric layers of sensations, emotions, and intuition.
When we practice “somatically” we practice with the awareness of our whole Self, using our body and its communication with us as a pathway to understanding our needs and potential for growth, both on and off the Yoga mat.
Traditional vs. Somatic Yoga
Now that we have a clear definition, I understand the upcoming question.
Aren’t all Yoga styles somatic?
Good question. To answer it, we’ll have to take a moment and peel off the superficial layers of each practice to get to the truth of the matter.
While, yes, all asana-based Yoga styles like Hatha, Vinyasa, Yin, Ashtanga Yoga, etc. are for sure body-oriented practices with an emphasis on breath and movement, they don’t automatically qualify as “somatic”.
The distinctions are fine and are less found in what is practiced within each style but in how the practitioner engages with their practice.
Here are four key differences:
Authority
External vs. Internal.
Whereas in common Yoga practice, there is an unspoken (or spoken) hierarchy between the teacher as the “leader” of the sequence and the student as the “follower” of the instructions, Somatic Yoga puts the authority on the body of the practitioner.
While there might still be a sequenced flow present in a class, a Somatic Yoga teacher will act more like an exploratory guide than an expert, with an attitude of rather stepping back than interfering too much with the practice of their students.
Instructions are held more lightly and are offered more as a suggestion rather than a direction. They hold the explicit invitation to be adapted, added on, or ignored, according to the assessment of the practitioner who learns to take full responsibility for their well-being on the mat.
Alignment
Fixed vs Exploratory.
Whereas especially more traditional teachings like Ashtanga or Hatha put a lot of emphasis on “correct” alignment of each asana and see getting into that particular shape as the achievement of the practice, Somatic Yoga leaves much more room for individual expression.
The asana itself, as pictured in the textbooks, is no more the end goal of the physical practice but the starting point of exploring one’s unique experience with specific movements, sensations of stretching, discoveries of weaknesses, or pain points.
Limitations of movement are not primarily interpreted as obstacles to work through but as opportunities to meet resistance with patience and mental flexibility.
Staticly held postures are often infused with encouragement for micro-movements or pendulations in order to get a better feeling, try out different angles, and ease into challenging positions without overwhelming the Nervous System.
Intention
Preparation vs. Work-in-progress.
According to the “8 limbs of Yoga”, the Sanskrit word “asana” is meant to be a sitting posture, describing the stable and grounded attributes one would need to bring into their seat to be able to sit during long periods of meditation. The physical practice that was invented later in the development of Yoga serves primarily as a purification of the physical body and the quieting of the mind.
The body needs to be kept healthy, flexible, and strong so it won’t distract us from achieving higher states of consciousness.
While it is true that it is indeed challenging to find enlightenment with a hunch in your lower back, Somatic Yoga includes the physical discomforts of the body in the exploration process.
Instead of practicing as preparation for a seated mediation afterwards, the movement itself is leveraged as feeling into the present moment and noticing sensations that are showing up in response to it.
The body becomes a vessel for somatic inquiry and allows the practitioner to weave in whatever content is circulating in their organism, be it in form of physical tensions, emotional pressures, or circulating thoughts.
The intention of the practice becomes the private seed of the practitioner and includes the openness to let emerge whatever is alive and let release happen whenever it presents itself in form of deep exhales, free movements, or sounds.
By including our self-inquiry, we trust that our organism knows what to show us to move us forward, physically, emotionally, or mentally.
In that way, the Yoga practice itself becomes a vessel for soothing, changing perspectives, and even healing emotional pain and tensions.
Breath
Controlled vs Adaptive .
Just as in traditional Yoga forms, the breath also has a central role in Somatic Yoga. The basic breathing technique follows the principles of deep belly breathing, which continuously activates the parasympathetic nervous system and calms the organism.
In a somatic setting, we allow more freedom to the breathing, again trusting that our body will give us the right impulse for the “right” kind of breathing we need each moment.
While we keep our attention on our breathing for the whole session, I frequently invite my students to check in with themselves to see if there is any invitation of release. Those can come as a gentle sigh or, more vocally, as a deep, long exhale or a yawn.
Those signals of regulation from our organic intelligence can be trusted to move us closer to our center, back to relaxation and inner safety, should we choose to allow it.
What are benefits of Somatic Yoga?
Practicing any kind of Yoga or exercising in other ways is beneficial if done consciously and mindfully.
“Our body is our primary home, so it is easy to understand why engaging with it in a healthy way, strengthening, stretching, nourishing, and relaxing has long-lasting effects on our overall well-being.”
While Somatic Yoga fulfills all the benefits of common Yoga practice, it adds a few extras to it:
Freedom of movement and Body-literacy
The slow, exploratory attitude we bring to the practice is the key to well-being.
Moving outside the strict borders of classic alignment allows us to try out different angles, shapes, and intensities in a non-judgemental, non-dogmatic way.
By following the authority of the body, that is, paying close attention to the visceral feedback we receive while moving in and out of postures, we open a window for our physical body to lead us into the right felt positions to release tension or stimulate self-healing processes
The essential question to ask during a session is not “Am I doing this right?” but “Does this feel right for me?”..
We enter a two-way street of communication, weaving between inner awareness and outer activity, stopping and going, moving and sensing, and learn to understand what our body really needs in each moment.
Practicing in this way can be a first step into developing a relationship with our body and our authentic Self by learning the language it speaks and developing body-literacy.
Nervous System regulation
Even more than in traditional Yoga styles, the state of the Nervous System plays an even more central role in Somatic Yoga, supporting the healing impact of the practice.
Rooting in the knowledge that inner growth and physical tension release are most likely to happen when we are relaxed and feeling safe, an attuned Somatic Yoga teacher will keep an eye on the state of the Nervous System of their students.
The sequence itself might represent a navigation between where the student comes from in the beginning (for example, in a state of restlessness and overstimulation, both characteristics of our Fight or Flight mode) and where they’d like to get to by the end, which probably is a state of calm, peace, inner strength, and sovereignty.
This top state in the autonomic ladder, the ventral vagal activation, is the prerequisite for deeper healing and transformation and can be used effectively to facilitate repairs and physical growth or even open access to deeper insights and self-reflection on a personal level.
We are making use of the inbuilt regulation systems in our organism that directly or indirectly communicate with our Nervous System, like stimulating the front- or backline of the body, adapting the breathing to be either calming or activating, or even using intuitive self-touch in order to stimulate acupressure points connected to inner healing processes.
Somatic Self-inquiry
The most fascinating aspect of this kind of Yoga practice, in my opinion, is the inclusion of somatic self-inquiry.
As a Somatic Coach and Yoga teacher, it makes absolute sense for me to combine those two wonderful methodologies into an impactful practice.
Somatic self-inquiry is the process of sensing into your body, your emotions, your visceral experience in relationship to a topic you are bringing in from your mind.
It could be something that is going on in your life at the moment (which, let’s be honest, there ALWAYS is…), a situation that you find yourself in, a desire you are trying to connect with, a lifestyle change you’d like to figure out…
Anything that is somehow alive for you in the moment of practice and that you have an intention of changing or finding out more about.
In a Somatic Yoga session, I always give my students time at the beginning of class to center themselves, relax, breathe, and tune into their inner experience to see if anything shows up.
When we move into the physical movement practice, I invite them to let their inquiry move with them, without controlling it, pushing it away, or forcing an outcome. Simply moving and observing is often what brings about fresh, new insights about a pondered theme, inviting intuition to tell us things that the mind hasn’t yet thought about.
The somatic shifts from a session like this can be subtle but meaningful and serve as a stand-alone way of self-connection or can be of support during an ongoing exploration of life topics in therapy or Somatic Coaching.
Somatic principles in practice
Now that we have understood what Somatic Yoga is, let’s dive into what it means to practice somatically.
Here are four principles that I include in my Somatic teachings that allow my students to safely navigate the depth of their practice:
1. Personal Intention setting
When we begin any session, we give space to take a few moments to check in with ourselves and set a personal intention.
“The speciality of Somatic Yoga is that the intention doesn’t come from the mind, like a given theme by the teacher or a mantra.”
The Intention in this setting comes from a dive into our embodied self-awareness. The approach is gentle and without expectations, meant like a simple first touch with our inner landscape to see if there is anything at all that wants to show up for the practice.
The question I often suggest for my students to themselves is, “Why am I here today?” or “What do I need out of this practice?”.
This kind of intention setting allows full space for our bodymind to communicate its live, fresh-in-the-moment perspective and opens a process of self-realization that runs in the background of our practice to get us where our body wants us to be.
Oftentimes, we need not know exactly how we will get there as long as we have acknowledged where we want to be by the end, how we want to feel, and what we’d like to change within ourselves.
It can be a subtle intention and a gentle shift, but the “result” of following our present needs can be enormous.
2. Slowing down and Pausing
The foundation of accessing deeper layers of the Self is awareness.
When we practice Somatic Yoga, I will encourage you to slow down and take breaks. The slower we move, the more time we have to notice. The more we notice the more we are able to understand. The more we understand the more we can tune in, savour, or redirect when necessary.
“It all starts with the breath. ”
Slowing down the breathing is the first thing we do in any Yoga style. Not only does it help our minds to relax a bit and the thoughts to settle slowly, slow breathing also has a direct effect on our autonomic nervous system, stimulating the parasympathetic branch that is responsible for growth and repair.
When we utilize physical Yoga practice to support personal transformation, we will highly benefit from this supportive nervous system state of calm and spaciousness which invites us to look deeper.
Throughout the session, we will oftentimes alternate between sequences of dynamic, fluid movement flows that knit the dough of our body, moves around skin, bones, muscles and fascia, stimulating different energies in our nervous system; and moments of stillness, of lingering in a position, as if we stopped time for a bit and reflect on what’s happening.
It might seem unnecessary to take those breaks, especially when you feel physically fit. From a somatic point of view however, a whole new world might open up to you should you decide to break the continuous pattern of doing and moving on.
Simply pausing and staying with one moment, one sensation, or the overall experience opens the window to become aware of fresh-from-the-moment insights into your physical being, and can even show you more subtle hunches of intuition that you would simply not be able to hear if you keep repeating your known thought cycles (like we usually do within our days…)
In Somatic Yoga we handle this kind of awareness from a place of curiosity and “just being here with it all” attitude, not searching for anything in particular but letting our organism, body and spirit speak to us.
3. Exploratory Movements
Just as pausing, movement itself is essential in Somatic Yoga too.
No matter if we engage in more dynamic styles like Vinyasa-based Yoga, or in a more passive version like Yin, in Somatic Yoga we give special emphasis on exploratory and micro movements.
While we still follow basic alignment and sequencing concepts of traditional Yoga practices, we will weave in moments of simple, repetitive, free movements within the sequence.
“Those small, intuitive movements serve us as a tangible exploration of our natural range of motion, boundaries, and of what feels good (and what doesn’t!) in our bodies.”
It’s a bit like giving a kid that is sitting in school to learn something little breaks to play, run around, and be silly, so that they can come back to the desk afterwards with a fresh mind.
Our body as well has a certain capacity to follow our instructions, to push against resistance, and to go through challenges in order to become stronger or learn a new skill. It will always do what we want from it, as long as it has the energy to do so, as a supportive offering to serve us, move us wherever we want to go, and keep us healthy and alive during our time here on earth.
How would it be though to switch this communication around and, for a change, let our body tell us what to do, how to move and where to go, as an invitation of partnership and mutual care?
Our bodies are masterpieces of intelligence and equipped with numerous sensory instances that have the capacity to recognize needs, and initiate actions within that would fulfill them. In the context of Somatic Yoga practice, we actually allow our body to tell us what it needs in this moment in order to feel at ease, release tension, or relax.
The resulting movements are often simple, effortless, sometimes asymmetrical, and might not even look like Yoga asanas, but they hold exactly what we need, consciously or unconsciously, to be a bit more at ease.
4. Free Breathing
Yoga wouldn’t be Yoga if we didn't give the breath a special role.
My interpretation of Somatic Yoga orients itself on the principles of Vinyasa-style breathing - deep, rhythmic, effortless, and with gentle control mechanisms such as Ujjayi (gentle breath restriction) and Uddiyana Bandha (energetic lock around the navel).
The idea of establishing a strong baseline for the breath in the beginning and then keeping it of high quality throughout the entire practice is present in Somatic Yoga as well.
What I am adding is a more mutually-oriented way of interacting with the breath, and some more freedom for the practitioner to adapt their breathing however they sense fit.
“When we practice somatically, we automatically bring more awareness to the details of our body’s sensations and inner feelings.
When it comes to our breathing, through the slow, sometimes repetitive movements and our inner awareness, we might be able to notice feedback that our breath gives us with every move.”
Instead of just “directing” the breath to where it should go and how it should flow, we establish a two-way relationship with our life force, alternating between inviting the breath in, and sensing what it’s feeling like and if there is any impulse to change anything about it.
We trust that our breath, as part of our Self, the bridge between our outer and inner world, carries its own intelligence and has the capacity to let us know when there are possibilities to access deeper levels, or release something (physical, emotional, spiritual) through our lungs.
Embodied breathing is what makes Somatic Yoga so potent in terms of somatic release. We breathe how we feel, and we don’t push our boundaries by keeping up any pace or intensity that feels rather stressful.
Deep exhales, sighs, or even sounds, laughs, and tears are welcome in this full-Self practice, as we are learning to offer a safe container to ourselves and to actually let go of what the body wants to drop, no matter if it makes sense to the mind or not.
Try it for yourself!
What better way to understand Somatic Yoga than experiencing it first hand in your own body?
I have made a little Intro practice for you that walks you through the four principles of Somatic Yoga while you move along and get the effects of the Nervous System down-regulation that comes with it :)
It’s a super simple and accessible practice that you can do anywhere you feel comfortable.
Enjoy and feel free to share with a friend!
Can Yoga be self-therapy?
As long as Yoga has been invented, it has always been intended to be a self-study tool and its practices were supposed to help you facilitate growth through meditation.
Nowadays, we might have lost touch a little with this original intention, and might slide into using Yoga as a form of physical entertainment, exercise, in order to shape our bodies or in formats of achieving postures for the sake of accomplishment.
None of this is wrong and I encourage you to keep doing what you are doing, if it makes you feel good and happy. That’s what Yoga is all about after all.
“It’s really about your intention.”
However, should you be one of those who are a little more curious and not satisfied with sliding over the surface of things, you might be at the right point to take your practice to a deeper level.
(Not higher up, as more “advanced” postures, handstands, and pretzels, but deeper down, into the subtle layers your practice might unlock for you.
Connecting with your body, senses and intuition are the first step to create a sense of safety, which we need in our Nervous System whenever we are going through phases of change (self-inflicted or “happening to us”). It is an automatic process set up by our autonomic Nervous System, the Neuroception of Safety, which either allows us to to grow, or keeps us from trying anything new when it detects “danger”.
In order to work positively with this security instance in yourself, you can learn how to regulate your Nervous System through movement and attention, and set the stage to rewire habits and default reactions.
In case you are going through a phase of self-transformation right now, or feel overwhelmed by stress, unaligned situations, or just life in general, I invite you to explore more about the magic intersection of physical practice and inner awareness in the context of personal growth.
Sensing some curiosity? A gut yes? An interesting tingle?
If so, you are invited to follow your nudge and schedule a free Introduction call with me, where I will explain how I weave Somatic Yoga into my special practice of Somatic Coaching and how it might help you to make the next in your evolution.
