A SOMATIC APPROACH TO BODYWORK FOR MODERN TIMES
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Somatic Bodywork Practitioner Training with Ateeka is rooted in the awareness that bodies heal themselves. Somatic Bodywork Practitioners have a role of supporting another (client or student) to realize one’s most adaptable and creative possibilities for integrated physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being.
A 250 hour training curriculum offers an in-depth experiential process in which participants learn the healing significance of full body holding, contact, movement, breath and sound to deepen their own somatic awareness and apply it directly to an innovative and sensitive bodywork application.
No matter what the state of the receiver, our primary objective is to bring to light that which IS already healthy. The investigative, exploratory process of the Somatic Bodywork Practitioner Training emphasizes direct experience and how to apply it's multitude of techniques and "non-techniques" for its intrinsic life affirming, feeling-sense, non-verbal communication and deep listening through movement and stillness.
Each of the training modules has 5 aspects:
1. Technique: A complete study and practice of somatic presence, full body holding, cradling, transitions, contact techniques, meridians, acupressure points, sound and energetic work used in a Somatic Bodywork Professional session.
2. Somatic Education: Techniques to recognize repetitive movement, breath, thought and behavioral patterns in your client during a Somatic Bodywork session and tools and home practice exercises to empower your clients healing process.
3. Integral Anatomy: Experiential study into the integrative functionality of human anatomy, especially anatomical systems and how they relate and support one another.
4. Mindfulness: Formal instruction in Mindfulness techniques will be taught and suggestions for developing a home practice will be introduced. By quieting the mind and opening to the present moment, a Somatic Bodywork session becomes a deep meditative and healing experience for both client and practitioner.
A mindful attention to "being with a person, rather than doing something to a person" through neutrality and presence, the practitioner welcomes a deeper connection and healing potential for each session.
5. Personal Development: By honestly coming in contact with one’s inner self, in all its bright and dark aspects, we become clearer and more neutral containers for our client’s healing process. This course offers many opportunities to dive deep into the shadows, discover and ultimately express your “inner gold” (ever-evolving life potential) through the process of giving and receiving Somatic Bodywork.
Somatic Bodywork Practitioner Training is an ideal continuation of professional skills for bodyworkers, massage therapists, Watsu practitioners, yoga teachers, movement specialists, dance/somatic practitioners, healthcare professionals, physiotherapists, personal coaches, psychologists, counselors, creative arts teachers. Somatic Bodywork is a meditative practice that enhances well-being, connection and awareness in a wide scope of fields.
This training is also open to those who are curious about movement, health, creativity and meditative presence for their own personal enrichment.
Somatic Bodywork Practitioner Training is facilitated by SOMATIC AWARENESS INSTITUTE, The institute offers a multi-dimensional terrestrial and aquatic bodywork instruction dedicated to the training of YogaSomatics and Somatic Bodywork Practitioners, focusing on somatic education. The classes of Somatic Awareness Institute are taught by institute director, ATEEKA, and an international team of guest teachers as a way to expand somatic movement, education and the awareness of Somatics worldwide.
By inviting somatics into traditional bodywork and healing techniques, our exchange with another becomes an ongoing open inquiry into body, feeling, emotion, organic movement and nature as a creative entity. We have developed specific inquiries that relate to SOMATIC BODYWORK exploring contact, containment, freedom and witnessing.
The human has evolved to its present manifestation due to his/her inherent drive to explore the environment that surrounds him or her. Deep within, we are all pioneers, all explorers that seek the new. Hundreds of years ago, the “new” was considered to be undiscovered continents, mountains never climbed or oceans never crossed. Now that human has discovered much of the "outer" world, our curiosity has begun to turn inward again. As somatic explorers, we reverently explore new, uncharted internal landscapes that are in constant change. Our very nature is to move, to breathe, to fold in, to expand out, to be in a joyous inter-play with our environment. We do not “do” movement; essentially we “are” movement.
How we orient and exchange with our environment shapes who we are. When life has left the body for some time the tissues remain, but almost immediately movement ceases. The heart no longer pulses, lungs collapse like sails in a doldrum, the body’s fluids stop flowing and grow stagnant. Life IS movement and movement informs.
Bodywork with a somatic approach draws upon the primordial callings of pulsing, spiraling, expanding, enfolding organic gestures to re-ignite the inherent wisdom of the body and its inherent urge to regenerate and self-heal. The contact and breath meditation of SOMATIC BODYWORK invites us to become increasingly sensitive to our own “bio-system” and in touch with our internal movement and its manifestations. We learn to trust in our sensations, the bio-intelligence of our body as a systemic whole and the resonance of all of its collaborative parts. These internal inquiries enrich us physically, psychologically, emotionally and spiritually.
Vitality infinite lives in the flux of action and stillness. Wisdom from the Tao Te Ching reminds us, “The Tao abides in non-action, yet nothing is left undone.”
The intentional touch, or movement, or sound, or breath . . . whatever the moment’s practice/inquiry may be, has its own very unique function . . . to initiate waves of vibration, to gently, lovingly gain access through the habitual, hardened patterned responses, to learn how to FEEL again. We shift from believing to sensing.
The body and its senses are given back their role as the primary sense organ, rather than the habit of orienting through thinking and habits. In this feeling-sense, arises the opportunity to navigate between void and fullness, movement and stillness, action and non-action. As we ride these waves, either by ourselves or as giver or receiver, we are set free from the redundancy of day to day rational activities and enter a nourishing dimension of trans-rational flow. With complete awareness, we explore a time of “being” free of functionality and open for intuition. We experientially learn that as consciousness pulses and flows through our body, our tissues become saturated with fluid. Movement becomes less and less about survival or performance and more and more about trust, intercommunication and pleasure. A flourishing system is in a bath of pleasure. Pleasure is a vital nutrient for the body-mind. Its benefits have been subdued, repressed, distorted and even demonized by our Western culture. Western education and upbringing has placed unbalanced emphasis on rational thought processes and the dissociative, mechanical movement that comes from that place. Pleasure is not about “excess”, it is instead a deep intimate acceptance of joy and its ecstatic kinesthetic experience in our systems.
Etymological roots of the word “pleasure” are from the Latin, placare, which means, “to soothe, quiet, smooth and make even.”
In old Norwegian language, the word for pleasure was flag, which literally meant “an open sea.” This “somatic joy” of pleasure returns us to the ocean that flows though our bodies and deepens our connection with our inner and outer environment. As we dive into a movement meditation or relax into a SOMATIC BODYWORK session, we can be permeated with waves of pleasure between the two of us, throughout our entire bodies.
True pleasure brings us to a place of deep acceptance and rest into who we are. It is not necessarily an “excitement” but instead a wide sensation of wellness that increases coherence, connection and communication. With an attitude of willingness to let go of all our ideas about what movement is . . . and simply become aware of our infinite potential, exchanging bodywork with a somatic approach invites us to become goalless explorers of pulsing awareness. This awareness lingers softly and forever in the space of nondoing. It is here, in this “no-place” that we are healed.
