Photo: Pablo Heimplatz
Hanna Somatics
TRAINING THE BODY/BRAIN
Hanna Somatics is a system for changing muscle function. It’s a way of re-training the body/brain via first-person experience of the body. The word somatics comes from soma for body and from the Greek somatikos. It means relating to the body, experienced and controlled from within. The system was developed by the late neuromuscular pioneer, Thomas Hanna, PhD.
Thomas Hanna, PhD
Thomas Hanna was founder of the field of somatics, director of the Novato Institute for Somatic Research and Training in Novato, CA, and editor of Somatics: Magazine-Journal of the Bodily Arts and Sciences. He authored seven books, perhaps best know for Bodies in Revolt: A Primer in Somatic Thinking (1970) and Somatics: Reawakening the Mind’s Control of Movement, Flexibility, and Health (1989).
“Hanna Somatics is a way of re-training the body/brain via first-person experience of the body.”
Hanna often referred to F.M. Alexander and Moshe Feldenkrais as important teachers who influenced him. Many aspects of the Feldenkrais technique can be found inside Hanna Somatics but Hanna continued on to develop some innovative methods for brain/body recalibration that are unique to HSE (Hanna Somatics Education). Feldenkrais had said, and Hanna reiterated, that there is no limit to human learning potential, at any age. Hanna organizes his work around three basic stress reflexes and was inspired by the earlier discoveries of Hans Selye about the nature of stress and affects on health.
“MIND YOUR BODY”
— LAURA M GATES
