For Mental Health Awareness Month I'd like to offer an introduction to an idea from the world of professional psychology that is both ancient and new. "Somatic" is at least as old as its Greek root, σωματικός (sōmatikós, “bodily”), σῶμα (sôma, “body”) [no more Greek forthcoming, I promise], which refers to what is known these days as "embodiment." The philosophical era which brought us Rene Decartes (Mr. "I Think Therefore I Am") formalized the idea that the mind is best imagined as essentially separate from the physical body. The former's proper place is then to control the latter, a higher executive function ruling over/dominating a lower animal nature, a principle also vigorously in use in the politics of industrial domination of other creatures--also imagined as lesser for no more reason than that they can be dominated.

 

Somatic embodiment proposes an also ancient notion that the organism we shorthand by saying "human" is a dynamic complexity. It can be looked at as though the "mind" is primary, or as though physical/brain/body is dominant, but the most useful point of view is one in which any way of looking at an entity is a question of coming to understand how you are looking at it. Which filter is in use, or which kind of attention is primary at the moment? I'm thinking as though Mind is writing the story and making the rules. What would it be like if I were "thinking with my body?"

 

Why does this matter for mental health? The responses to this question are so many that one cannot hope to encompass them all, because all that Body does is psychological and related to mental health. The inverse is equally true, though equating the two is metaphorical and not literally precise. Your thinking, feeling, imagined inner world directly impact how you believe, choose, and as a direct result move your constantly communicating body to change the world around you.

 

I have the privilege of working at Learning Pool, where this week's theme is “Movement: Moving more for our mental health.” For the more mechanically minded (data = truth being an example), quantity is an excellent place to start. If you stand or sit in front of a machine for most of your waking hours, then almost any kind of non-traumatic movement in balance will be a good thing for your somatic (embodied) reality. Measure it. For those wanting more nuance, allow your attention to be drawn to how your movements change with your feeling, how your felt sense of your life alters or fails to adjust your habits and rituals (repeated movements). With thoughtful feeling, subtle changes may be brought about that can have tremendous impacts on work, relationship, wellbeing, potential lifespan, the list is too long to enumerate. There is also a cost. As we become more aware, with therapeutic help or not, our moral obligation increases to respond to our own needs and the needs of those in our spheres of influence. I believe we are up to the challenge of growth. if you would like to talk further, please reach out.