What is Somatic Groundwork?

Somatic Groundwork is a gentle and developmental movement approach that provides therapeutic, creative and functional benefits. The movement system helps improve self-regulation, coordination, mobility/stability and feeling states. Yielding Practices, Unwinding Methods and Patterns of Connectivity are applied to basic movements in every Somatic Groundwork class. These Approaches influence sensory processing related to interactions between the nervous system and tissue architecture/ fascial matrix.

Somatic Groundwork (SG) commonly: 

• restores feelings of pleasure and ease
• promotes self-regulation skills
• reduces and/or eliminates low back, hip, neck and shoulder pain
• relieves emotional overwhelm and angst
• improves movement quality and function
• helps to develop compassionate partnership with our body
• attunes sensory awareness 
• offers recovery from chronic stress and overload

SG acts like a soothing tonic medicine and provides good feelings after each practice. From a neurofascial perspective, this comes from improved tissue glide and hydration due to alterations in the gel-like properties of fascia and from dampening chronic stress responses by eliciting the rest and digest system. Additionally, somatic awareness changes body-to-brain communication and alters sensorimotor processing. Collectively the results are commonly reported as ‘feeling more physically grounded, mentally calm and emotionally steady’. Over time with frequency of practice (this is called training) participants experience greater nervous system flexibility, a reduction in pain and angst, feeling more relaxed and moving better overall. 

The combination of cues, ground touch, somatic techniques and movements directly influence neurofascial interactions and bodywide effects. Based on developmental patterns and natural movement skills, the practice begins with resting and receiving through yielding practices like pandiculation, rhythmic rocking and soft body rolling. Slow flow unwinding, core support, dynamic movement and stability are progressively added to the movement design as appropriate.

Instead of quick-fixes, medications and surgeries that can fail to provide long-term solutions, SG offers another path: somatic patterning. Somatic patterning is a process of movement education and bodymind awareness used to uproot holding patterns and discover healthier replacements. Somatic movement practice is a method of embodied research. Our path of inquiry begins by tracking sensation. Tracking sensation opens learning doors, opportunities for participation, to identify and relate with patterns of behavior, response and tone. Tracking sensation brings us directly inside the learning cycle giving us access to change how we do things that are otherwise reflexive and subconscious.

Somatic patterning is a form of titrated behavior change- it happens bit by bit. The initiation for the change process, or point of entry is bodily-based inputs. Through somatic inquiry and movement, holding patterns and places of resistance are discovered and interrupted. New options for relating with the feedback are explored through the moving experience. Along the way, a variety of body systems are affected that lead to experiences of recovery, rest and renewal. With repetition through practice over time, phase shifts occur and change is realized. Patterning effects are both immediate and emerge over time as a result of repetition.

SG follows an inside out – ground up process and participates with sensory impulses and fundamental forces. Movement activities in SG flow between specific forms and creative improvisation. The gentle and nourishing movement repatterning approach provides relief from chronic stress, persistent pain, repetitive injury and emotional dis-ease while motivating curiosity, creativity and equanimity.

principles of practice

Listen & Notice
listen with awareness, slow down and notice what happens

Return Here
relate with resources of support, pay attention to direct experience and learn to relax

Practice Your Body
follow intuitive movement, cooperate with your limitations and track the effects

Explore Novelty
enhance motivation by experimenting with movement options and specific constraints

Somatic Relating
participate with tensegral forces, the surrounding environment and your own felt-state

Organicity
The principle of organicity reflects our inherent capacity as living systems to self-organize, adapt through direct experience and maintain a harmonious and coherent state. Organicity is instrumental to our basic motivation for learning or ‘desire to do’. Intrinsic motivation is sparked by curiosity and play and acts as a catalyst for development, growth and change.

Mutuality
The principle of mutuality lifts up our intention to value the interactions between ourselves and others as a mutual exchange of giving/ receiving. We work toward growth and change together for the benefit of all beings. Our interdependence is basic and inherent. Learning, development and growth happen through and toward relationship.

Circulation
The principle of circulation underlies our natural, relaxed and easy state. Movement activities and somatic processes are guided to circulate fluids, forces and impulses through the structural matrix. The soft matter qualities of dense, rigid and concentrated areas are encouraged to phase-change and flow more easily. Neural mapping enlivens sensory awareness improving body-brain communication. As bodymind obstacles are dissolved, circulation improves allowing for regulation and force distribution through the system as a whole.

Adaptability
The principle of adaptability is the ability to monitor reflexive behaviors, shift states and relate appropriately to fluctuating conditions. Adaptability comes from paying attention to participant feedback, attuning to the field through somatic listening and being willing to make adjustments when presented with novel situations. Shifting perspectives, revising strategies and modifying internal processes in response to new conditions, or appearances, are qualities of adaptability.

try a class 

Somatic Groundwork is guided in a way that provides both structure and clear direction while also encouraging personal choice and curiosity to follow impulse. Participants need a welcome place for practice with enough room for your body to lie and stand in X/star. Floors covered in wood, carpet or grass are good options. Wear comfortable clothing that allows for good body motion without big buttons, snaps or zippers along with appropriate layers to maintain warmth/ comfort.  For more classes, check out my YouTube channel.

Star-Seed & Core-to-Distal | developmental movement pattern

development of the work

Hi, I am Kaila! The bones for Somatic Groundwork were formed through dance research (training, performance, choreography, improvisation, somatics) and healing through injury and trauma. Floor-based contemporary dance, creative movement, Contact Improvisation, Bartenieff Fundamentals, Bodymind Centering, Authentic Movement and general yoga asana contributed to the early framing of the Somatic Groundwork movement system. As well, personal experiences with developmental trauma, chronic low back pain and sacroiliac joint dysfunction, birthing two children, psychosomatic illnesses, loss, despair and lineage repair have called for alternative healing solutions.  Somatic Groundwork has both developed from and been an abiding container for these events. I was also a full-time personal trainer for more than a decade and specialized in rehabilitative and performance training. The SG movement system teaches dynamic movement and functional movement patterns through floor to standing sequences. These practices can be specific and progressive, or exploratory and creative.

More than 2 decades ago, Somatic Groundwork began as a body-based creative exploration with a small group of dancers and artists. Next I started teaching Somatic Groundwork classes and workshops in studios and gyms. I also shared Somatic Groundwork while living with a traveling ecovillage called La Caravana Arcoiris por La Paz in Venezuela and Brazil as well as at retreats in Mexico and Costa Rica. I honed the patterning Approaches of Somatic Groundwork when I started my 1:1 client practice in 2009. These are generally categorized as Yielding Practices, Unwinding Methods and Patterns of Connectivity. Since 2018, I have taught Somatic Groundwork online to an international community of teaching professionals and movement enthusiasts in IMSomatics (300-hr ISMETA Approved Training Program) and the Online Practice Space.