Somatic Literacy – The Importance of Sensing

Somatic literacy, which for most of us remains undeveloped, supports us in detecting and interpreting our body’s many signals.

What is Somatic Literacy?

By Cheryl Pallant

Too often, we wish reality to be other than it is or we remain oblivious to our body’s signals which indicates a low degree of somatic literacy. Somatic literacy, which for most of us remains undeveloped, supports us in detecting and interpreting our body’s many signals. There is great power in acknowledging the present moment with all its messy, fleeting, puzzling, unsettling, painful, contradictory, and astonishing phenomena. Too often, we resist What Is and find respite in excuses, victimization, or a story about reality whose usefulness has passed. It’s important to regularly touch into the active stream of sensation, perceptions, subtle energy, and renewal taking place every moment. This awareness accesses all of who we are and doesn’t lock us into a restrictive narrative.

Ironically, resistance to What Is reinforces that which we’re resisting. It reinforces an argument with the evidence before us. Resistance perpetuates the existence of the very condition we’d rather not experience. “I shouldn’t be feeling this way,” complains many of my clients. Or “It’s not who I am.” None of us are our pain, but pain may be the condition of our body at that moment and we would be wise to listen and attend to its message. Better to give ourselves compassion. Better to connect bodily and acknowledge the sensations involved with What Is which opens the door to relief and growth. Better to acknowledge present details and use them to make informed decisions. Better to investigate the content of our thoughts.

Accepting What Is may seem great if we’re mildly tired and not so great if we’re suffering from the debilitating effects of fibromyalgia or despairing about being unemployed. Acceptance doesn’t mean solidifying the present and its conditions. It’s not a giving up. If anything, it’s an acceptance of changing conditions. The body changes. Circumstances change. Feelings and thoughts change. New information emerges all the time. Change is constant, is indeed the only constant. Accepting What Is contributes to ease and supports changes rooted in an informed, personalized relationship with our body. Our subtle energy flows, every bodily system supported in fulfilling its function to the best of its ability. Listening to and tending deeply to our body allows its wisdom to emerge. It reveals the path to its own betterment and integrative well-being. Acceptance of What Is a necessary step in our recovery. Acceptance of What Is can liberate us from our suffering and is the very path underfoot.

Easy to write about, harder to do. This is why mindful, embodied practices and guidance from a professional help. To differentiate sound from noise, an image from a blur, a clear signal from static. To know what is helpful and what is detrimental. To know when we’re off track and when we’re on. To know what uplifts us and what brings us down. To point out which filters get in the way and which lead the way. To feel the levity of encouragement when discouragement weighs us down.

My health is incomplete without regular movement practice in my home, the dance studio, or a park. Sometimes what is craved is the airing out and centering that accompanies the blood and oxygen rush from repeated forceful movements. Frequently, it’s the slightest motion or deepening of a stretch warming my heart, activating energy centers, and lubricating the connective tissue toward opening awareness. It may appear that my head or torso have tilted, or my hand has lifted – all part of it – but it’s also the energy of my biofield shifting that prompts a deepening of breath and sensory sensitivity. The shift provokes a subtle yet profound alteration to consciousness, my sensory awareness heightened. My previous self loosens its fixity as I press into the floor, expand ribs, and clear bodily channels in a dance with being. The pattern of activity of the previous hour or day is given an opportunity for renewal through expression. Deliberately I engage with flow.

Dance ranks among my most potent of medicines with ample beneficial side effects and allows me to inhabit the full breadth of my body. Writing has a similar effect, especially when it coincides with a somatic and energetic awareness to alchemize body, breath, and matter, taking me into the frontier of new possibility. Somatically and energetically based writing typically ushers in insights, visions, and a vibrant resonance that provides immediate satisfaction, every word on the page essential to a pattern emerging, regardless of the level of craft. Details about who I am rise up, a looking within that coincides with seeing outside me. Every word matters, every breath, every seeing and feeling, and somehow amid the swirl of details, I settle into a peace like the pleasure of walking a wooded path.

This excerpt from Ecosomatics: Embodiment Practices for a World in Search of Healing Wisdom by Cheryl Pallant, Ph.D., has been published with permission from Inner Traditions Bear and Company.

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About the Author

Cheryl Pallant, Ph.D., is an award-winning writer and poet, Reiki and Healing Touch practitioner, somatic coach, dancer, meditator, and teacher. She has published more than 200 articles on dance, writing, healing, somatics, and spirituality and is the author of several books, including Writing and the Body in Motion and Contact Improvisation. She teaches at the University of Richmond and leads workshops in the U.S. and internationally. She lives in Richmond, Virginia.