The deeper I get into mindbody science, the more I am blown away by what it has to teach me. In this newsletter I’ll dig into an approach to meditation I never really understood until now. I’ll share my perspective on what makes it powerful and explore how it differs from my traditional longstanding meditation practice. 1
First, the groundwork. A basic search of word “somatic,” or, “relating to the soma,” will lead you to the Oxford English Dictionary definition where you will learn that “soma” is a fermented ritualistic intoxicant (aka a Vedic version of Kiddush or Communion).
As truly fun as that drink sounds (and it does sound fun), I prefer Thomas Hanna’s2 definition of soma as described in his groundbreaking book: “the body experienced from within, emphasizing the mind-body connection and the body as a living, self-aware process.”
In other words, somatics is the study of how humans experience their bodies from within. This is a more nuanced take than I understood a few years ago, when I thought, like most people do, that our bodies are external objects moving through space, and that somatic simply meant “of the body.”
It’s an important distinction, and it relates to why somatic meditation has been misunderstood and underexplored. If your mindset is “a meditation for a body moving in space,” then somatic meditation is a pretty simple thing. In fact, as part of my early work on How We Feel in 2021, I produced this video on walking meditation:
