This is my second article on what we are going to get up to on out Yoga Retreat: Feel to Heal 21/3 – 23/3/25. So much of this retreat was inspired by the Somatic Yoga approach I use in my Trauma Informed Yoga Classes with private clients. And the greatest learning for me, working with clients who have various forms of trauma, is to slow down and listen. Not just listening in the conventional, deep listening way through hearing the story, but listening with the intent to FEEL the story. It’s like we have to park the prefrontal cortex of our brains (thinking, rationalising, the why, the solutions etc) and turn on our reptilian brains (your brainstem, the part of your brain that controls breathing, heartbeat, balance), and tune into what is really going on.
So listening and feeling with our whole body allows us to access this space: the polarity between the side of us that shines out into the world, the part we want the world to see, the part of us always thinking, judging and classifying; and that other place, where we stop and allow the world to enter us and act upon us. And if we can let that happen, that stillness, that allowing, then we can be changed in ways that are not subject to verbalisation. This is Somatic Centred Yoga.
Think of early morning birdsong. The Conscious in us will describe it as beautiful, melodic and we might try to look for the bird in the trees. The Unconscious in us would pause, allow the song to enter us and in doing so we might allow that song to touch something deep in our souls. It’s a profound inner awareness, like a superpower, and all of us can do it.
So, as we go about the weekend we will be confronted with feelings, sensations and emotions we might want to “fix” or “get rid of”. Things that we feel hold us back, keep us in pain, limit us and negatively affects our lives. The Somatic Centred approach however, encourages you to stop, and instead of acting on those emotions or pain, just feel into them. And then make space for them. Making room in your body and your world for all the bits of you. That space, where the yang of the body meets the yin of the body is freedom in its truest, purest form. It is the birthplace of peace and the origin of the real you.
It was Viktor Frankl who said: Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. It’s going to be a fabulous weekend! Love and namaste Margot