Somatic Groundwork

natural movement patterning and systems sensing

Somatic Groundwork explores natural movement and patterning from the inside-out and ground up.

The experiential practice leads with sensory awareness or systems sensing.

Our attention and presence in movement helps improve movement quality, function and efficiency.

 

Practitioners of Somatic Groundwork experience mental and emotional benefits like calm, safe and nourishing feelings. The method is effective for reducing (and eliminating) low back, hip, neck and shoulder pain, calming the nervous system, increasing vagal tone and improving neuromyofascial patterning. Further, Somatic Groundwork also reduces chronic pain and other unfavorable symptoms from daily stress overload, repetitive injury and illnesses like COVID-19 (here is a class for that).  

 

A tonic is an agent that is used in small but frequent doses to help restore feelings of well-being.

 

Somatic Groundwork is like a tonic medicine, a soothing balm, an act of embodied self-care that offers gentle healing, recovery and equanimity. In practice we learn how to track sensations through force flow, volume changes and effort fluctuations in relatedness with the gravity, ground and space. These attentional games in movement exploration/play change the density and circulation of our tissues and harmonize the branches of the nervous system.

 

Somatic Groundwork effectively alters nervous system tone by way of sensing into and participating with the global fascial matrix.

These two autonomic self-regulatory communication systems are interdependent networks.

 

With research indicating that the fascial matrix is our largest sensory organ and whole body tensioning system, tracking sensation and moving with the organic impulses from our body (unwinding) gives new imput to our brain and influences the quality of our tissues. The fascia gifts us with feeling-felt and in turn, our sensorimotor system maps new possibilities. The outcome is embodied well-being, or feelings of okay enough. 

 

 

250-hr Teacher Training

Interdisciplinary Movement & Somatics is a 250-hr somatic movement training for teachers and therapists who want to offer skillful movement practices to help folks with self-regulation, embodied recovery and gentle myofascial re-patterning. Learn how to guide movement techniques with a fascia-oriented and trauma-informed approach through Somatic Groundwork. Weave the teachings with other methods or modalities, or teach Somatic Groundwork as a stand alone practice.

Interdisciplinary Movement & Somatics (IMS) is a 100% online somatic movement training designed with a balanced mix of theory and practice relevant to the somatic skills needed to guide therapeutic movement experiences. IMS provides a framework for applying the art and science of somatics to your movement classes, client sessions or workshops.

Somatic Groundwork as a moving meditation

Somatic Groundwork is a moving meditation. Participants begin with the experience of yielding which is also the first of the Somatic Groundwork ten basic patterns. As a whole, yielding practices are about resting into the support of the ground (or other contact surfaces) while allowing weight to sink and be received by gravity.

Yielding practice includes natural breathing, sounding, releasing weight and basic unwinding techniques like rolling, rocking and pandiculating.

Through embodied attention, open awareness and relational participation, Somatic Groundwork teaches systems sensing to help cultivate regulation, inner stability, improved tissue gliding and easeful movement. With practice, the experiential play alters brain neuroplasticity and the gel-like properties of fascia.

Somatic Groundwork returns us to pleasure, presence and possibility through guided movement experiences.

Somatic Groundwork is a form of self-care for nurturing body intimacy and presence of being. The progressive movement vocabularies develop physical support, improve motor control and encourage perceptual flexibility. Transferable skill-sets include moving with ease and better function and having more creative access and choice in our actions.  In turn, with honesty in self-research, somatic practice bolsters our ability to pattern healthy relationships.

principles of practice

Linger in Curiosity

begin with inquiry and wonder, stay with the question, allow for the unfolding

Return Here

experience this presence of now, explore resources of support, embody the felt-sense of ease and okay enough

Practice Your Body

pay attention to your body impulses, make agreements as you move, aim to cooperate with your body rather than control the outcome

Lean into Possibility

stay with the process, explore somatic channels of awareness, experiment with possibilities

Relational Participation

listen to the spaces in between, dance creatively with arising phenomena, participate with the forces that be

try a Somatic Groundwork class

Practice a gentle and nourishing movement practice that is made for you, every time.  Each class is guided in a way that provides both structure and clear direction while encouraging personal choice by following your own body impulses and needs during practice. Through somatic movement inquiry and relational practices with the elements of gravity, ground and space, organically tap into and tune your autonomic regulatory systems.  Somatic Groundwork naturally alters the fascia in movement practice shifting patterns of chronic stress and emotional dis-ease to feelings of well-being and embodied presence.     

Practice Somatic Groundwork from the comfort of your home:
Learn the ten basic patterns
Explore somatic myofascial unwinding methods
Improve your stability and mobility
Experience the nourishment of yielding practices
Explore the educational resources
private sessions somatic movement

development of the work

The bones for Somatic Groundwork came from dance training, dance making, improvisation and embodied movement research. 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 childhood sexual abuse, 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 inquiries.

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. Then I honed the basics of Somatic Groundwork (ten basic patterns + primary core support series) when I started my 1:1 client practice in 2009. These early vocabularies became the foundation for every client no matter age or background because they promoted physiological recovery, healthy spines and core integrity. Further, these movement vocabularies offered a developmental approach to locomotion, stability and daily living activities. Since 2018, I have taught Somatic Groundwork online to an international community.

The movement system continues to develop and evolve as people participate with the work. Somatic Groundwork is a dynamic system whose form appears in response to somatic and social interactions.  My inquiries and embodied research continue to revolve around movement patterns, human development, healing (or not) cumulative injury and trauma, Indigenous worldview, ancestral lineage repair, creative expression and movement science.

Kaila June SomaKinese School
monkey town
daughter cells dance
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