3 Easy Ways to Release Your Tight Psoas Fast

Do you have a tight psoas? Have you been stretching it unsuccessfully? Are you tired of being unable to get it to release in any meaningful way? Then you’re in the right place.

A chronically tight psoas can contribute to;
Low back pain, groin pain, hip flexor pain, difficulty/pain when trying to stand in a fully upright posture, buttock pain, radiation of pain down the leg, pelvic pain, limping or shuffling stride when you walk.

Chronic psoas pain and/or tightness is often the result of the muscle (or muscles) simply being in a constant state of contraction. That just means it is constantly tensed to some degree. There are any number of reasons why that might be the case, too much sitting, an injury, a fall or slip, an emotional event, etc.

When any muscle is constantly tense it creates a sensory motor problem, in Somatics we call this Sensory Motor Amnesia (SMA). If you cannot fully contract AND relax a muscle or muscle group you cannot use it properly, as it means you do not have full control over it. Now you have a muscular dysfunction. And if the muscle in question is the psoas, you have a psoas dysfunction.

It’s pretty easy to imagine how any muscle that is constantly tense would eventually feel stiff, sore and make you move less well and less freely.

It’s also easy to imagine that a muscle that is constantly contracted would be tired and fatigued. And a tired muscle is a weak muscle. Anyone who has ever exercised at all can attest to that. At some point, your muscles fatigue and they can no longer exert the same amount of force. They feel weaker.

Now, any muscle that is constantly tensed is being held in that contracted state by your unconscious brain. So stretching it is not going to help. You have to change the order/command/output coming from the brain. Instead of constantly telling the psoas to tense or tighten, you want to tell it to relax and lengthen. Hmmm…. interesting. But how do we do that?

Well you don’t do it by stretching, or foam rolling or painfully pressing on trigger points. While these strategies may provide some temporary relief, they don’t change that output from the brain. So the tightness comes back pretty quick as the brain is still telling the muscles to contract.

Okay, so what else can we do?

Well, what if you contracted/tensed your tight psoas muscle on purpose? Made it even tighter than it already is. By tightening it voluntarily and deliberately, wouldn’t you be re-establishing your conscious control over it? Yep! And then once you had contracted and tightened it deliberately wouldn’t you be able to slowly and carefully CEASE contracting it? Why yes, yes you would. And once you had relaxed the muscle deliberately wouldn’t it feel more comfortable? Absolutely.

In Somatics we call this process, deliberately contracting muscles, then slowly relaxing them; pandiculating. It’s easy to do and it works fast.

You can apply pandiculation to all and any muscles of the body. Including your psoas! To assist you in that regard, I’ve made a playlist of all three of my Somatic Movement tutorial videos that address the psoas (and the low back and hip flexors too!) If you’d like to learn how easy it is to pandiculate your way to a soft, relaxed and comfortable psoas, you can check out the playlist below. Any one of these movements will do a good job of releasing a tight psoas, or you can combine all three for more complete learning. And I’ve added a bonus movement at the end of the playlist that improves control of the hips and legs that should feel really enjoyable to practice after releasing both your psoas.

If you find these videos helpful, please like, comment and share.

Need help with a specific problem? Want to Learn Somatics faster? Book an online appointment with me here: Online 1-1

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time!

Feel Better And Move Better In Just 15 Minutes!

I’ve got something special for you today to help you feel better and move better. I have put together a short video of 7 Somatic Movements, that makes up a simple but effective daily Somatic Movement routine. You can find it at the end of this post.

I’ve really enjoyed sharing individual Somatic Movement tutorials on my YouTube (and Odysee) Channel. But I know and understand that for many people the real challenge is knowing which movements to practice regularly. 

Well you don’t have to wonder any more. In this free video I will guide you through a standard daily Somatic Movement routine in just 15 minutes! That means in just 15 minutes you can;

• 1. Reduce muscular tension throughout your entire body
• 2. Relieve the physical effects of stress
• 3. Increase comfort and feel better
• 4. Move better and more freely
• 5. Improve your sleep

Whilst this sequence is designed as a daily reset of sorts, you can also use it as a warm up, or cool down for any sport or activity, or to set you up for a good night’s sleep. All the movements in this sequence are fundamental Somatic Movements that I personally use pretty much every day to keep myself feeling loose limber and relaxed. I dread to think where I would be without them really.

Somatic Movements are designed to be used every day, or at least most days. The reason for that is because every day we can potentially accumulate excess muscular tension as an involuntary response to stress. And we do not want to let that tension build up over days, weeks, months or even years and become a problem.

So we can use a Somatic Movement practice every day (or almost every day) to release the tension and stress built up during the day, and allow us to feel relaxed, comfortable and at ease again. And of course the more regularly you practice the better the results

Furthermore, by practicing regularly, we can become proficient at the movements more quickly. The more proficient you become at pandiculating, the less repetitions of each movement you will need to perform to attain a state of relaxation, and therefore the shorter and ore efficient your practice can become. Once the muscles are relaxed you can move on to the next movement or if its your last movement, finish up and carry on with your day.

So why not follow along to the video below and reap the benefits of a simple but amazingly effective Somatic Movement practice. If you find the video helpful please leave a comment and/or share it with anyone you think might benefit from it.

If you haven’t already you can subscribe to my YouTube/Odysee channel so you don’t miss out on my regular Somatic Movement tutorial videos.

Thanks for reading, and until next time, keep on moving!

Featured photo by Timon Studler on Unsplash

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Is Your Back Pain Getting You Down?

Does your back pain make you feel miserable? Are you frustrated by the endless pain and discomfort? Does it make you feel hopeless? Are you petrified by the thought that your back pain might never end?

I’m not surprised, I felt the same way. Back pain sucks big time! And it can really take over your whole life!

You wake up in the morning already exhausted, why? Because your back pain was so bad you couldn’t get comfortable, so you lay there, sore, aching and exhausted. You pray for the sweet embrace of sleep. But it never really comes, you may doze for a while, but deep sleep evades you. You just can’t get comfortable enough to sleep well. So morning rolls around and you start another day tired, frustrated and in pain.

When the alarm goes off you are faced with your first challenge of the day; How am I going to get out of bed? Which will be swiftly followed by challenge #2, how am I going to get my socks on?

Sound familiar?

So you somehow manage to get out of bed and get dressed, grimacing in pain throughout the whole ordeal. But now it’s time for challenge #3, walking downstairs. Will I go down sideways? Or one step at a time? Or maybe backwards? But they all hurt! You struggle down the stairs holding on to the banister for dear life.

Sound like your experience?

Finally downstairs, you shuffle to the kitchen and prepare and eat your breakfast standing, of course. Not that you really enjoy it or have much appetite, because all your attention is consumed by your constant back pain.

Does this ring any bells?

Now its time for back pain challenge #4, sitting at your desk trying to get comfortable for your days work. (Pre pandemic this might have been a slightly different challenge, getting into your car, or on to public transport, or maybe mounting your bike) But now you’re working from home. So you head to your “office” and desperately try to find a sitting position in your chair that allows you to pay attention to your work, and not the constant aching pain in your back. You tried standing at the desk, but that just made your back hurt even more. Eventually you get into a position that is somewhat tolerable and start working. But its hard to concentrate when you have back pain.

You do your best tho, because you have to keep going right?

When lunchtime rolls around you consider taking some painkillers AGAIN but deep down you know they are not the answer, and you worry about taking them long term. Your mind briefly asks, surely theres’ got to be a solution. But there’s no time to think about that right now. You need to get some lunch. But that means now
you have to stand up, Challenge #5; “Hmmm… how am I going to get out of this chair?”

Sound like you?

During your lunch you wonder how long you can carry on like this.

In the afternoon, work gets busy, the pressure mounts a little. And you notice that the busier you are, the more intense you back pain becomes.

What’s that about?

But you grit your teeth and finally make it through to the end of your work day. You used to enjoy going for a run a few evenings per week after work to blow of the cobwebs. But since you developed this back pain you haven’t been able to run at all. In fact even walking for any distance is a challenge now, and afterwards your back pain seems to increase.

You really miss going for that run…

During dinner you snap at your partner, they were just asking you a question, but you feel so exhausted from the constant pain that it’s really beginning to affect your mood. You think back to your work day and realise you were quite abrupt in conversation with a colleague earlier too. You feel bad about being irritable, it’s just because your back pain is really getting to you now. But you don’t want to complain, and they wouldn’t understand anyway.

So you sit in front of the TV and try to distract yourself from the pain, binging on the latest series. And it kinda works, but eventually you have to go to bed. Which means you have to navigate the stairs again, undress, wash, and get into bed. Repeating all the challenges you started your day with in reverse order.

Sound familiar?

And to finish your day you are left with the prospect of another restless, painful and sleepless night, before you have to repeat it all tomorrow. With back pain. Again.

No wonder your back pain is getting you down.

If any of this sounds familiar to you, if you are currently living this reality, I’d like you to consider a possibility:

Imagine your life without chronic back pain.
What would it be like?
What would you do?
How would you feel?
Who would you be?

If you are interested in exploring the possibility of a comfortable pain free back, check out my Back Pain Relief Video Tutorial below. I want to help you because I had chronic back pain too. But it doesn’t have to be permanent. I want to share with you a simple Somatic Movement sequence I use to keep my back feeling comfortable and pain free. Watch it, follow along and experience what happens. Change is possible. Let me know how you get on. I want to help YOU.

If you know someone who is struggling with back pain, perhaps you could share this blog post with them.

P.S. You can also find this blog post at learnsomatics.ie/blog

If you are a regular reader you might want to sign up for the Learn Somatics email newsletter. Somatics news, tips, videos, events and blog posts to your inbox. Sign up here.

As always thanks for reading!

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If It’s Not Easy You Haven’t Learned It!

More words of wisdom from Thomas Hanna, the smartest guy you never heard of. It’s such an obvious statement though right?

If you find something difficult you have not learned it yet. If you find something easy, you have clearly learned it well. Remember learning to drive? Difficult at first, but once learned, very easy. Now you can listen to music, chat with a passenger and navigate traffic as well as operate the vehicle. In fact the operating of the vehicle seems to happen automatically. It’s something that goes on in the background, you’re barely consciousness of it at all. If you started to think about it too much, you might even drive worse.

And so it is with everything we learn. What we intentionally learn transitions from perhaps seeming impossible, to difficult, to manageable, to easy, to automatic. For some reason though we tend not to apply this thinking to our movement. Even though you learned to walk! Without any help at all. Before you could even think!

We may look at a movement or activity and say, “I can’t do that”, or even worse “I’m too old to do that,” but what if we were to reframe it as, “I haven’t learned how to do that yet” or “I have forgotten how to do that”. That reframing changes everything. When you think about a particular movement as being either not yet learned or somehow forgotten, suddenly you have the possibility of learning or relearning.

Unfortunately we do tend to move less well as we age. But! This has very little to do with ageing and a lot to do with the fact that most of us do not intentionally practice or maintain our movement. So we forget, right? In Somatics we call this phenomenon Sensory Motor Amnesia (SMA). We have forgotten (there’s that word again) how to sense and move our muscles, and therefore our ‘selves’.

Anything that we learn has to be practiced in order to maintain that ability, whether that’s a language, playing a musical instrument, a skill like drawing, or even something more on the intellectual side of things, like doing algebra. If you don’t practice these things you will forget or lose the ability to do them, or at least do them well.

This is because those neural pathways that are not used regularly will atrophy and die away. Conversely, the brain will strengthen and consolidate pathways that are used regularly. In other words ‘Use it, or lose it’.

It’s unfortunate that a lot of the basic movement patterns we tend to lose, (either through lack of use or via stress, accidents and injuries) are the ones we need the most! The gross movements of the trunk and spine that are essential in order to walk freely and move well generally. Extension, flexion, side bending and rotation. These are the most fundamental movement patterns to do any activity or sport skilfully. If you have good Sensory awareness and Motor control of the muscles of your trunk and spine your general movement will likely be good and problems in the limbs much less likely .

Somatic Movements can help you learn or relearn how to move freely and comfortably, particularly as regards your trunk and spine. A Somatic Movement practice allows you to ‘Use it’ so you don’t ‘lose it’. Strengthening and consolidating those neural pathways associated with free and easy movement. When your Somatic Movement practice becomes easy and pleasurable your movement in general becomes easy and pleasurable. Then you inevitably want to move more. You might even feel inspired to take up an activity that you had abandoned, or learn a new sport or activity.

So when learning something new, think about in those terms, how can I make this seem easy? When it is easy it will become more enjoyable, when enjoyable you will want to do it more, and when you do it more you will strengthen those neural pathways even further, making it even easier!

You can start learning Somatic Movements right now over on the Learn Somatics YouTube Channel. Give it a try and see if you can learn your way from difficult to easy!

Featured photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

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Making Somatics Part of Your Routine – Part 1

Maybe you’ve been reading these blog posts for a while (thanks by the way!) but haven’t actually explored any Somatic Movements yet. I’d like to help you change that. In this series of blog posts I’m going to give you some pointers on how to build a daily Somatic Movement practice into your routine.

A daily Somatic Movement Practice does not have to be an hour, or even a half an hour, in the beginning 10-15 minutes can be very beneficial and help you to get started. You can begin by introducing just one Somatic Movement into your daily routine. Arch & Flatten is the movement we generally teach first, we’ll get to that in a moment but first let’s consider…

When is the best time to do your practice?

Well, anytime is good, but when we are trying to build a new habit, it helps to have some consistency. So pick a time of the day that fits in with your timetable and try to stick to it. I like to practice at night before bed, others prefer first thing in the morning, this is also a good choice. If you’re working from home right now, you might decide to practice on your lunch break, just before you eat. But any time is good as long as you can be consistent and stick with it.

Some things to consider when selecting a time to practice.

Bedtime Practice: A pre-bed Somatic Movement practice will allow you to release any stress/tension you may have accumulated during the day, and calm your nervous system, leading to deeper, more restful sleep. If you struggle with getting to sleep or staying asleep, I would strongly recommend practicing just before you go to bed. After all high quality sleep is essential for health, and a good nights sleep makes everything better.

Morning Practice: A morning practice will help to prepare you for the day ahead by allowing you to restablish control over your muscles after a period of inactivity, ie after being asleep. If you find you tend to feel stiff and sore in the morning, placing your practice just after waking is a great idea. Also, upon waking allow yourself to yawn! A yawn is after all just a reflexive pandiculation, don’t stifle it, let it happen and enjoy it. Pay attention to how it feels. That’s the kind of feeling you will be looking to recreate with your Somatic Movements. Then when your finished yawning, take to the floor and begin your Somatic movement practice.

Lunchtime/Middle of day Practice: Practicing in the middle of the day is also totally fine if this is the time that works for you. It will give you an opportunity to reset your nervous system so you can go back to your afternoon’s work calm and refreshed. It’s probably best however to practice before you eat a large meal. Furthermore your Somatic Movement practice will help shift you back into Parasympathetic Nervous System state, associated with ‘rest, digest’ and repair’. So you may find that you enjoy your food more, and your digestion improves when you are relaxed from your Somatic Movement practice.

So now that you’ve decided when you are going to practice, all we have to do is start.

Let’s Learn Somatics!

This is how our practice begins, if it uncomfortable to lay with legs out flat you can bend your knees and put feet flat on the floor

To begin lay out flat on the floor on a comfortable rug or yoga mat. Just make sure you are warm enough. If you need a pillow for your head or a bolster for your knees, please use them. As you practice more Somatics you should find your need for pillows and bolsters diminishes.

Close your eyes and spend a minute or two just noticing what it feels like to lay flat on the ground, notice where you are tense, where you are comfortable, where you are uncomfortable, scan your whole body. Then, rate your comfort level out of 10. Make a mental note of it, or jot it down in a note book. This is and important baseline reading. Got it? Great!

Now go ahead and follow along to the Arch & Flatten video below.

Now that you’re done with Arch & Flatten, spend another minute or two, repeating the scan you did at the beginning. Noticing what it feels like to lay flat on the ground after practicing Arch & Flatten as compared to before, noticing where you are tense now, where you are comfortable now, scanning your whole body, rating your comfort out of 10 again, and seeing if your comfort has increased.

Congratulations! You’ve just completed your first Somatic Movement practice. Pretty easy right?

If you have followed the instructions attentively you should sense a noticable increase in the comfort of your lower back. You may even feel more comfortable in your hips and legs, and neck and shoulders, as these all attach to your spine. You will also have experienced how easy it actually is to regulate, modulate, and manipulate how you feel. This type of self-regulation is a powerful skill to have in your back pocket.

Repeat this practice at the same time each day for the next week. Use my video for as long as you need to, but strive to be able to practice Arch & Flatten effectively by yourself without any guidance. When you can do it without guidance you OWN IT! That’s when it becomes truly helpful, educational and useful to you.

After a few days of doing Arch & Flatten once or twice a day, you will be more than ready to add another movement to your practice to continue your learning. We’ll do just that in the next instalment.

If you have tried using videos to learn Somatic movements but haven’t quite got the results you were hoping for, or need some extra help, remember you can Learn Somatics online with me from anywhere in the world. Getting some 1-1 guidance will rapidly accelerate your learning, progress and results.

And if you found this blog post useful, maybe you could share it with someone who you think might also find it useful. After all, Somatics is for everybody!

Until next time.

Read Part 2 now…

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Make Stress Management part of your Daily Routine

Stress is recognised as a contributing factor in all diseases. We are all exposed to stress every single day, therefore it is important that we have some simple and effective stress management strategies that we can use daily (or almost daily). The more regularly we manage and relieve our stress the less chance it has to build up in our systems and potentially cause or contribute to illness and disease.

Implementing a daily stress management becomes a total no brainer when you consider the sobering statistics below in regards to stress and disease/illness. (Source: webmd.com)

1. 43% of all adults suffer adverse health effects from stress.
2. 75 to 90% of all doctor’s office visits are for stress-related ailments and complaints.
3. Stress can play a part in problems such as headaches, high blood pressure, heart problems, diabetes, skin conditions, asthma, arthritis, depression, and anxiety.
4. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) declared stress a hazard of the workplace. Stress costs American industry more than $300 billion annually.
5. The lifetime prevalence of an emotional disorder is more than 50%, often due to chronic, untreated stress reactions.

So it would seem that if you can manage your stress you can stack the deck in your favour and potentially avoid, or reduce your chances of experiencing, a lot of health problems. But how? Well, a regular Somatic movement practice would be a great place to start. Stress is expressed in the body as muscular tension, and when practicing Somatic movements you learn how to release this muscular tension quickly and easily.

“You can’t save your stress management for the weekend, its’ gotta be something you do almost daily” Prof. Robert Sapolsky, – SF Being Human Q&A (this quote appears at around the 13:55 mark of this excellent conversation)

Wtih all that in mind, I’ve created another Somatic movement playlist for you that you can use any time to release any accumulated stress at the end of your day, or anytime for that matter. Give it a try and see if you don’t feel less stressed, calmer and more relaxed afterwards? I’d love to hear your feedback too, so don’t hesitate to leave a comment or get in touch via my social media channels. (links in side bar)

De-Stress with this Learn Somatics 6 movement Playlist. Enjoy!

Thanks for reading and see you next time.

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

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Somatic Movement Playlists For You

With Somatic movements it is really helpful to put them together in sequence to address a particular problem area, movement, or complaint. Doing 3, 4 or 5 movements one after the other can really create a profound change in how you feel.

So with that in mind I’ve created some playlists on my YouTube Channel to help you get more from your practice. So if you have been wondering what movements go well together, or how to combine different Somatic movements together, these playlists can give you some ideas. Following along to these playlists is a bit like taking a Somatic movement Class.

Give these a try and let me know how you get on. I’d love to hear your feedback. Enjoy!

This first playlist addresses the Green Light Reflex in 3 movements. It’s all about the back muscles. If you tend to have stiff sore back you’re in for a treat.

The next playlist addresses the Red Light Reflex in 4 movements. It’s all about the muscles on the front of the body.

Next up this playlist addresses the Trauma Reflex in 3 movements. It’s all about the sides of the body.

After a busy day working diligently at your laptop, the following Somatic movement playlist will help you quickly relax your neck and shoulders. Four movements in this one.

And finally here’s Somatic movement playlist you can do just before bed to set you up for a great night’s sleep. Four movements here too. If you find it hard to get to sleep defintely give this a try.

I hope you find these playlists useful and that they inspire you to start a regular Somatic movement practice. And if they help you to feel better why not share with frends and family so they can benefit too. There are also two more playlists you can explore over on my YouTube Channel (don’t forget to subscribe!) and I will be adding more Somatic movement playlists as I add more tutorial videos.

If you’d like some help learning Somatics, remember I offer Online 1-1 lessons so you can learn from anywhere in the world.

As always thanks for reading and watching.

Until next time!

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Freedom & Control

At first glance freedom and control may seem to be somewhat opposing notions. They are however deeply intertwined, in fact they may be the same thing. How so? Let me elaborate…

The most immediate freedom one can attain is the ability to move ones self freely. To be free in ones own body. This is something we experience as children but somehow lose as we move through time/life.

As healthy children we generally have good freedom of movement but we lack real control. So we are loose and relaxed but lack the requisite control to coordinate ourselves skilfully. This puts kids in a great position to learn new movement skills (dance, sport, martial arts, etc) and explains why it is easier for them to do just that. They are already quite free in their movements, all they need to learn is the control aspect.

As adults we succumb to having no freedom of movement and no control. Essentially we become tight and tense and then lack the requisite control to relinquish this tightness. This puts us at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to moving freely and learning new movements. Thomas Hanna described this state, of having a lack of control, as Sensory Motor Amnesia. In this state we have essentially forgotten how to sense and move (motor) our muscles freely.

The net result of that? We lose control of our physical selves. We lose control of our ability to operate our muscles and in turn we lose our ability to move well. Or should I say to move freely. Ah, without control, we can’t be free. We must be able to control our ‘selves’ if we wish to be free. Otherwise we are inevitably subject to our own demise.

This is why it becomes more difficult to learn new movement skills as adults. We must address our ‘Sensory Motor Amnesia’ first. By relearning how to be free in our bodies again. And this requires re-establishing good sensory motor control over our muscles.

So how is our control lost? Everything that happens in our lives is expressed in and through our physical bodies, every grievance, every accident, every injury, every broken relationship, every confrontation, every thought, and every emotion, our entire history. And all these experiences are expressed how? As involuntary muscular tensions. How else could they be expressed?

These involuntary tensions accumulate, contributing to our SMA, and, because they are involuntary, they seem outside of our control, and as they accumulate they interfere with our freedom of movement.

You cannot do the things you want to do unless you have the ability to stop doing the things you don’t want to do.

Do you see where this is going?

You cannot go forwards when you are still stuck moving backwards.

But those involuntary (contr)actions that can entrap us, they can be made voluntary. We can do them of our own volition. And in doing so reestablish our voluntary control over them.

We have more power over them than we realise. In fact we have complete power over them. If we knew how to exert it. Or could learn how to.

“The basic somatic task during our lifetime is to gain greater and greater control over ourselves…”

(Hanna, Somatics p.15)

But what does this mean in practical terms. It means this; if your body is stiff and tight beyond your control, you must make it stiffer and tighter on purpose. Take control of the tightness. In doing so you become the master. Then you are free to choose to relinquish that tightness.

Control, freedom, freedom, control. Freedom and control are two sides of the same coin.

Weird right?

A regular Somatic movement practice will allow you to experience all of this not just as an intellectual idea but as an embodied reality, a somatic process.

Check out my Learn Somatics YouTube channel to start learning Somatics right now. Want some help? Book a 1-1 online session and get tuition from the comfort of your own home.

As always thanks for reading, until next time.

Photo by Nik Shuliahin on Unsplash

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How your Brain sees your Body

The Sensory and Motor Homunculus Men

What is the deal with these weird looking figures? Why are they proportioned the way they are? Why the giant hands? And the oversized mouths? And what does it have to do with our brain? Lets investigate…

These figures are called the Sensory and Motor Homonculus Men. They are proportioned like this to illustrate how much of the sensory cortex and the motor cortex is devoted to sensing and moving the different areas of the body. So the hands and mouth are oversized because large areas of the brain are given over to operating the hands and mouth.

The Sensory Motor Cortex (below) is the part of your brain that deals with sensing (sensory) and moving (motor) your muscles.

The Sensory Motor Cortex

Different areas of the sensory motor cortex are responsible for sensing and moving different parts of your body. The diagram below is called a sensory motor homunculus, it maps out which parts of the sensory motor cortex sense and move which body parts. The sensory homunculus (blue) receives information from the muscles regarding muscle tension/length, joint angles, load etc. The motor homunculus (red) sends motor commands back to the relevant muscles based on the aforementioned sensory information.

Sensory Motor Homunculus Map

The commands from the motor cortex are a signal to the muscles to either increase the level of tension (contract), reduce the level of tension (relax) or maintain the level of tension. This back and forth of information, from the brain to the muscles, creates a sensory motor feedback loop. Sensory input arrives from the muscles into the sensory cortex > motor impluses exits the motor cortex and go back to the muscles > sensory input in > motor impulses out… and round and round it goes.

As you can see from the image above, your hands and face/mouth/tongue take up a huge part of both the sensory cortex and the motor cortex. Physically they may be small but neurologically they are massive. This makes sense when you begin to consider a) the many, many ways which we can use our hands and the very fine control we have over them and b) the fine control of the mouth, tongue and larynx that is required to speak.

Handwriting for example, requires a huge amount of brain processing power to be executed correctly. Perhaps that is why learning to write is such a laborious process. Writing, drawing, painting, playing an instrument, carving, pottery, sculpting all these activites require great skill and sensorimotor control of the hands. So to do any sort of fine work with the hands is to use and stimulate large portions of the sensory motor cortex of the brain. This suggests that the old saying “to be good with your hands” should maybe be understood as “to be good with your brain.” A point that is well illustrated in this interesting article that asks “Why does writing make us smarter?”

Interestingly the advent of computers, smartphones and touch screens has led to a sharp decline in real world hands-on skills being practiced. Now we seem to do everything virtually, on a computer screen. We have begun to use our hands mostly to tap keys and swipe screens, and in doing so we have reduced somewhat, the amount of stimulation that the sensory motor cortex receives. If we are not using our hands to their full potential, then maybe we are not using our brains to their full potential. I wonder what the long term implications of this will be on us and our society? As the old saying goes “Use it or lose it”. Only time will tell.

But for now let’s get back to the sensory motor cortex. As noted previously, another very large portion, approximately one third of the sensory motor cortex, is devoted to the sensing and controlling of the face, mouth, lips, tongue and larynx. Again this makes sense when we consider that as humans we speak. Speech requires a great deal of brain power to orchestrate. The lips, tongue and larnyx have to coordinate with our diaphragm in order to deliver intelligible speech or in a further refinement, to sing.

So with one third of the sensory motor cortex dedicated to the hands and another one third of the sensory motor cortex dedicated to the face/mouth/lips/tongue/larynx, there is only one third left. Just one single third of your sensory motor cortex devoted to the largest parts of the body! Your trunk, spine, hips, shoulders and limbs.

That is comparatively a very small section of the sensory motor cortex that is responsible for sensing and moving a very large area of the body.  Is it any wonder then, that the areas of our bodies that have the least cortical (brain) representation are the same areas that are most susceptible to movement deficits and muscular pain? Back pain, hip pain, shoulder pain anyone?

The trunk, hips, shoulders, and neck are supported by a very small section of the cortex. This means less processing power for a large area of the body. This being the case it would make sense that we might have to spend a little more time maintaining our brains control over these parts of our body, making sure the modest amount of the sensory motor cortex that is apportioned to these areas is stimulated regularly.

Movement of all and any kind provides massive amounts of stimulation and sensory information to the brain. We traditionally think of information as purely intellectual, words, numbers, facts, data etc. But for your sensory motor cortex, MOVEMENT IS INFORMATION. And the more information your brain has about your body, the better you can sense and organise your movement.

So how can we help ourselves in this regard? A Somatic movement practice is a great place to start. Practicing somatic movements slowly and smoothly allows us to re-establish, maintain and refine our sensory awareness and our motor control. By relearning how to move our trunk and spine comfortably through their normal and natural ranges of motion. Then when basic control has been re-established, we can get on with enjoying our favourite acvtivities whatever they may be. (Running, walking, lifting, climbing, dancing, yoga, gardening, tennis, the options are endless).

You can start learning how to do all this right now by checking out the Learn Somatics YouTube Channel. If you’d like some help with a particular movement or muscular pain I offer online 1-1s via Zoom. No matter where you are in the world, it’s never been easier to Learn Somatics. So take advantage today.

As always thanks for reading.

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The Clues in Our Language

Look at the words and phrases below, think about what they describe, what do you notice?

Uptight, high strung, wound up, uneasy, nervy, restless.

All these words imply tightness or tension, and as we know, tension is always muscular tension. There seems to be a subliminal understanding, clearly reflected in our language, that excessive tension is negative, or at least unhelpful.

Now lets look at words/phrases that mean the opposite.

Calm, easy-going, laid-back, unworried, at ease, peaceful.

Again an implicit understanding that an absence of tension is a positive or at least more favorable state.

Which of these sets of words or phrases best describe you?

You can learn how to release muscular tension, resolve muscle pain and relieve stress through the practice of Somatic movements. Check out the Learn Somatics YouTube Channel to start right now. Need help? Take an online 1-1 session with me.

Photo by Clarissa Watson on Unsplash

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