What is Somatics, and what does it have to do with Human Design?”

Nova here...

It took me FOREVER to get into somatic type of things (bodywork, practices, therapy, etc), because I never really heard someone describe it in a way that I knew what it was + its benefit to me.

Even now, when I search Google for a definition, Oxford dictionary says “relating to the body, especially as distinct from the mind”.

How informative is that?

(Not so much)

It’s no wonder it took so long for initiation to move through me, to begin my experiment with it.

And it’s no wonder I haven’t had the words to describe it to people much who have heard me share my journey with it.

The world of romance was my entry point into somatics. Specifically, through masculine-feminine polarity coaches, and then coming into awareness of how trauma is stored in the body and leads to a disregulated nervous system.

Basically, I learned that I lived in a heightened state of “fight, flight, freeze, fawn” (soooo much fawn), due to complex post-traumatic stress injury.

I lived on the verge of overwhelm almost my whole life, because the system that gets “activated” (due to normal life things) was already holding a shit-ton of childhood + adult trauma and fears, so I was living on the edge of my capacity of what I could hold.

—

My journey with my somatics experiment began about a year and a half ago.

1.I began with devotion to awareness + regulation of my nervous system. So, what activated it and what was needed to bring it back to a state of resting.

2. I started getting bodywork done that helped my nervous system deepen into a restful state and stay there longer — massage, cupping, chiropractic, acupuncture.

3. I sat with + did my best to heal what came up during the bodywork, as emotions, memories, and energetic gunk came out.

4. I began somatic therapy, which is not talk-therapy (from the mind), but body-therapy, which included things like feeling into my body for where sensations were as I worked through stuff I was aware of, listening to what my body had to tell me, moving my body in ways that moved stuck energy out, expressing a LOT of emotions that were buried in me, anchoring my points of power down into my body, and more.

Just like I hadn’t realized what a heightened state of anxiety I was living in, before I began nervous system awareness + regulation, I didn’t realize how much body pain I’d been living in, until I began bodywork and had some contrast.

—

I’d been working on pain and injury/weakness in my shoulders for about 6 months with my team of bodyworkers. My chiropractor kept recommending surgery.

One day, I was working with my somatic therapist and I was working through some anger around boundary violations, and she asked me what my body wanted to do to keep those people away/off of me.

I had a silly vision of, like in the cartoons, where the arms spin in a circle really fast, to hit or scare people to get away.

My therapist invited me to grab some pillows from my bed and start pounding my bed with them.

I tried to re-invoke the anger, before I hit the bed with a pillow. She said it wasn’t necessary.

As soon as I hit the bed, anger rushed up into me. Old anger. Latent, now alive.

WOAH

I sobbed, I screamed, I hit the bed again, I sobbed some more, anger ripped out of my throat and flushed out through my muscles, out my skin. I hit the bed some more. Went through the cycle until I was suddenly instantly empty and at peace.

I noticed, after the call, that my shoulders didn’t hurt. They haven’t since. They were instantly not in pain and instantly not “injured/weak”.

That was when I realized

• how much lantent anger is stored in Manifestor bodies,

• how much pain, inflammation, and injury/disease could be due to latent anger

• what a barrier it was to body peace

• and that there were Human Design specific ways somatics could be used based on a person’s chart, to help them empty their specific wounding and live more themselves

—

For the past year or so, since the spontaneous shoulder healing, I’ve continued deeper into the experiment with this (including experimenting at the Manifestor Women Retreat last summer).

I’ve gathered more types of somatics to my repertoire and started taking notice of (and revisiting) somatic experts (especially ones with Human Design expertise, as well).

THIS is what we are bringing to our Somatic Human Design retreats. Starting with Undeviatingly You (March 2024), that allows time for each type to specifically focus on type-specific things, as well as experiences all together.

I am not a somatic expert, so we brought Somatic Human Design experts in, to give each person a powerful unique healing experience.

Also worth mentioning, there will be fun and lightness at the event as well, because this is just as important for the body as depth and healing transformation.

Btw, I found a better definition for somatics:

“Somatic psychology is a form of body-oriented therapy that uses techniques and holistic approaches to help people gain awareness of the body and to heal themselves.”

Human Design provides the blueprint for each of us.