SOMATICS & LISTENING TO THE WHOLE PERSON: Exploring Hanna’s Somatics

SOMATICS & LISTENING TO THE WHOLE PERSON: Exploring how Hanna’s Clinical Somatics can deepen an understanding of clients as embodied beings – and help you feel more comfort & ease in your own embodied self

Exploring the significance of physiological stress responses in humans, in this workshop you’ll learn – experientially – how sensing and movement combine in Clinical Somatics to move individuals away from stuck stress, chronic pain, and stored trauma, towards greater suppleness, freedom, and ease.

As well as some practical skills designed to help you feel more at ease in your own body (e.g. when sat for long hours with clients), you’ll explore what ‘Somatics’ is, focusing on how Hanna’s Clinical Somatic Education uses not just sensing but also gentle neuromuscular movement and specific techniques to address stress, trauma, pain and the nervous system dysregulation around these experiences.

The workshop emphasises the importance of seeing Somatics not as an ‘add-on’ involving ‘the body’, but as an important way of understanding the whole person as embodied (the ‘soma’). You’ll be invited to consider what all this might mean to you as a counsellor, psychotherapist or other listening helper, and to your understanding of yourself, and your clients, as embodied beings.

We’ll consider the relationship of Clinical Somatics to experiences (and labels) like ‘anxiety’, ‘depression’, ‘stress’, ‘chronic pain’ and ‘MUS’ (medically unexplained symptoms). You’ll also discover what Hanna’s concept of the ‘soma’ shares with Carl Rogers’ ideas and Gendlin’s Focusing practice, and the relevance of Peter Levine’s development of Somatic Experiencing®.

Somatics can shed light on why chronic tightness, tension, and pain (including e.g. ongoing back pain, tight shoulders, hip pain and more), MUS, and other ‘conditions’ or ‘syndromes’ confound not only medical and healthcare professionals but also many mental health professionals and therapists. It also helps explain why so many of us still feel ‘stuck’ – in emotions, in discomfort, in pain, in trauma – even when we’ve talked through issues, and even when we’ve made significant ‘breakthroughs’ in counselling or psychotherapy.

In practical terms, you’ll:

· be invited to experience specific stress response patterns in your own body (or ‘soma’);

· learn the technique Hanna Somatics uses to ease out of tightness and pain, into more ease;

· consider how this can improve your own comfort in your practice and in your life,

· use case studies plus Q&A to discuss how Somatics – and a somatic awareness – might inform and enhance your work with clients and your understanding of them as embodied, neuromuscular beings.

The workshop will be especially beneficial to anyone who wants to feel more at ease in their own body; for those who work with trauma, stress, anxiety, depression, and MUS; and for anyone wanting to explore more about the embodied, somatic nature of the ‘whole person’ at the heart of their work.

Samantha Holland, PhD (Cultural Studies, 2001) is a Certified Clinical Somatic Educator, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Certified Essential Somatics® Movement Teacher, RSME (ISMETA-registered Somatic Movement Educator), BFRP (Bach remedies), with MAs in Philosophy (1994), Communication Studies (1996), & Nature (Philosophy & Anthrozoology) (2013). A university lecturer in the UK & US for many years, she also practised as a barrister, volunteered overseas for several years, then obtained a Foundation course and Certificate in Counselling from Academy SPACE in Sheffield. She continued her training and volunteering at Share Psychotherapy and Cruse, with the goal of practising as an existential psychotherapist.Then her life changed: she resolved almost all her long-term chronic pain in a matter of weeks after discovering Hanna Somatics, and soon thereafter shifted her path to train in Clinical Somatic Education, to share this remarkable work with others. Her interest in counselling & psychotherapy endures: she's a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner as well as Certified Clinical Somatic Educator, and her practice is Polyvagal Theory informed. In addition to the various requirements to qualify as an SEP, Samantha studied chronic pain and long Covid in-person with Peter Levine for five days in 2023. She teaches Somatics in the Scottish Highlands (where she also runs a bookshop), online, and sometimes in Sheffield. An active member of the US-based Association for Hanna Somatic Education, she runs an innovative online programme for counsellors, therapists, and fellow SEPs interested in how Clinical Somatics can help them and their clients.