A New Journey: Discovering the Mind and Body through SOMA

On a farm out in Buckley Washington a rooster crows, cows tend to new born calves, and a feisty little old woman named Karen gathers her 7 students in a yurt, to begin their journey.

Last spring I had the privilege of going through SOMA ( a specific type of bodywork treatment that targets neuromuscular integration).  After years of going to chiropractors and therapists for back pain, this treatment truly changed my life. Not only did it correct many of my posture problems and get rid of nearly all the pain I had experienced for years, it also reached much deeper into the psychological and physiological patterns that were affecting my body and my life.  After experiencing the profound changes it has had on me, I decided this was something I wanted to bring to others, something I wanted to understand more fully.

Every emotional and mental thought we have, everything within our conscious, is directly related to and interconnected with our physical body.  Every positive and negative thought we have works to rewire our brain-making physical changes! When people start talking about meditation, being in your body, and what often sounds to many like hippie mumbo jumbo (as my parents would say); there are actual scientific explanations for how focusing the mind changes the body.  Conversely, there is scientific evidence for how adjusting or changing the body, effects the mind.  It is interesting and rather silly that it has taken us so long to recognize just how interconnected our physical state is to our mental, emotional, spiritual state.

In the United States especially, I think there is a disconnect from physical and mental/emotional health.  Here we are so focused on training our bodies and brains to play sports exceptionally, learn chunks of information rapidly etc. While at the same time we often downplay emotions and the need to be mentally healthy.  We value toughing it out and pushing through, but over a long period of time this drastically affects our health in every way. Going through this training I am coming to learn just how important rest is and how healthy it is to take time for yourself to let yourself go and let others support you.

Breathe.  Breathe in.  Breathe out.  Simple enough? Breathing is our body’s most natural movement. It is the best way for our body to stretch and expand from the inside out, and believe it or not it directly AFFECTS your mind and emotions.  If you don’t believe me try breathing rapidly and heavily for 30 seconds…feeling anxious yet? How you breathe actually changes the chemicals being released in your body.  Often times as we get more stressed and more distracted we stop breathing fully, we limit our breathing to shallower breaths in the top of our chest, rather than full breaths that reach below our ribs and into our gut.  When we do this it causes our body to limit circulation and decrease the release of certain chemicals, in other words you will start to feel more tired, heavy and stressed.

I think this is one reason many people find meditation changes their patterns of thinking-it isn’t just a spiritual practice, it is a chemical repatterning. A simple practice that I encourage people to try is breathing fully for 5 minutes when you first wake up: expanding your chest and stomach as much as you can with each breath. Try this for a week. Hopefully you will notice a change in both body and mind.

Enjoy!