By Carol Verner, LMBT, RYT

What happens if your behaviors—your practices—are unconscious and habitual? Who knows?!

So much of what we think, say, and do is unconscious. Naturally, the results may surprise and disappoint us and others. What to do? For better outcomes in every facet of life, engaging consciously gives us the life-changing opportunity to choose.

Somatic Coaching is a practical way to recognize your own habits. When you pay attention to how your unconscious practices show up, you increase your awareness. It is your active awareness that builds a bridge from your unconscious and habitual ways to what actually transforms your life: purposeful choice. Do you want this behavior? Is it useful? Is it life-affirming? Is it life-negating? Do you want to behave differently? In what way? What you likely don’t know and weren’t taught, is how. “How” is about skill-building. Somatic Coaching is an exceptional resource for building the skills to shape yourself and your life in ways that hold great meaning and value for you.

What is Somatic Coaching?

We know the terms psyche and soma, and think of them as mind and body. Richard Strozzi-Heckler, PhD, who developed the principles and practices of Somatic Coaching, takes an expanded view. Richard gives us resources that teach us how to work with our whole self of thoughts and emotions, of bodily sensations and actions, a self of wonder and awe. Somatic Coaching invites and engages the resources of our whole self into the changes processes that make our lives more purposeful, more satisfying, more effective, more fun.

In a coaching session with you, I listen to what is important to you, what is working, and what is not working in your life. This essential inquiry is central in all coaching styles. In a Somatic session, we often work on standing practices that build your ability to become present in your body. “Embodied Presence” it is called, and it is widely valued, even in today’s corporate world. Practices that you do at home and interactive standing practices that we do together serve significant purposes for you. Consider if you need more of any of these: to relax and open; to energize; to build skills, such as communication and presentation skills; to work on boundaries; to change habits and learn new ways of showing up for and with yourself and others; to practice being seen.

Who Benefits from Somatic Coaching?

Some seek help when facing painful limitations. Sometimes help is about developing excellence. A change process is a unique experience for each and every person. Here are three examples of people that I will call John, Margaret and Carol.

John

John was a fine individual who got along well with people in many settings, much of the time. But he was puzzled as to why some kept their distance, why relationships that he wanted to flourish were closed doors to him. We worked together and began to uncover the roots of this.

In our Somatic Coaching sessions, I could see—and helped John to sense in his body—an old survival strategy. Most of us tend to go with one of the primal fight/flight/freeze responses unconsciously but consistently, thus shaping our behavior and personality. In a practice that often reveals which one, John’s consistent response was a fight response.

In our conversations and in John’s private reflections, he began to explore his early life. He remembered feeling insecure in his growing family with siblings that took his parents’ attention away from him, leaving him longing for affection and attention. The natural tendency to fight back or flee from this distress went in the direction of fight, an easy direction for him as the oldest child. Over time in our work, he began to see himself in the context of people he wanted to be close to, but how he would push back against them. His comments might be offensive; teasing was a standard way of relating.

John had a profound insight one day when he realized that these reactions came up unconsciously and consistently when he felt threatened. It often was not about the other person, but they were there and were the target of his offensiveness. As a student of Somatic principles and practices, John learned to be present to sensations and emotions within himself, and how to manage what was arising in practical and useful ways. Family and friends that had experienced John as disrespectful or untrustworthy gradually saw that he had changed, and those relationships grew healthier and happier.

Margaret

Margaret was a well-resourced employee in a corporate setting. She sought skills that would help her express her ideas and showcase her own skills as a presenter and teacher to corporate clients. Somatic practices that we did together, along with Margaret’s on-the-job self-observations, revealed that she actually made herself smaller when presenting. Her stance, her voice, her projected energy did not result in the contracts she wanted.

Margaret was fully engaged in all that we did, and her insights about herself were transformative. We were able to move through the foundations of her change process quickly enough that she could see results in her presentations. She experienced the power of her new skills in the outcomes, the contracts, the feedback of her peers and clients. Her confidence in herself translated to them that Margaret was a competent person for the job. It was not a mystery. It was practice. She was true to her conscious practice of identifying what she wanted, what held her back, and she was seriously committed to practices that supported her change from the inside out.

Carol

I taught a rigorous course in anatomy and physiology at the Body Therapy Institute from 1993 to 2016. I knew my subject, but tended to appease students who complained about the rigor, or acted up in class. Thank goodness for all of us, I met Richard Strozzi-Heckler! I traveled to the Strozzi Instititute in California and became a student myself. I learned principles and practices that developed my own embodied presence. When I learned to hold my own ground, I found that students trusted me to manage the challenges of their classroom. The outcome was that I could better support students over this high A&P hurdle, in order for them to have their own successful academic outcomes. This was immensely satisfying, and we had much more fun.