A Somatic Approach to Insight Meditation

Somatic practice offers another way of approaching insight meditation. Somatics is the emerging field that works with the body through movement, meditation and embodied psychology. Soma comes from the Greek word for one’s own body—the body only you can feel and move.

While stillness remains the ground for deep insight practice—its conditions allowing for a deep and subtle investigation of phenomena—I find that somatics allows me to work with a different dimension of my being. The wisdom of the body moving.

The modern approach to Vipassanā meditation tends to be quite top-heavy. Quite cortical and conceptual, especially in the beginning of practice and through the framework it is presented and taught.

Sometimes the way Vipassanā is taught and practised can leave us relating to the body as something to transcend. Somatics goes deep into embodying the flesh and the primal nature of us. It offers an approach to spirituality through embodiment and a return to the wild nature of the body. Somatics looks to learn from nature, from babies and animals—which are already deeply embodied. I like this definition of embodiment by Susan Aposhyan.

Embodiment is the continuous, complete, and free flow of cognition, emotion, and behaviour through our bodies.

We have two sides of our nervous system—the sensory, which is about sensation, and the motor side, which is about action and movement. In my experience, Vipassanā emphasises working with freeing up the flow of the sensory side and then inviting that extension into more active moments of our lives to integrate the motor side. Somatics approaches it from the other end, working with freeing up the flow of the motor side while approaching the deeper layers of sensation.

Stillness sometimes can seem like something we impose on our bodies—from the top down. The “strait-jacket” of stillness. It can have a quality of muteness or submissiveness. The true stillness pointed to by the Buddha is dynamic and flowing, alive and breathing. In my own practice I have found that when I allow organic movement of the body to arrive in its own time to stillness, that stillness is often much deeper and brimming with vitality. Movement therefore becomes another entry to stillness just as stillness opens up the perception of movement.

Working with students I have also noticed that subtle movement offers another pathway to awareness. Students gain access quickly and deeply to parts of their bodies and selves if they allow themselves to feel those parts through micro-movement rather than just attending to them, which is often a disembodied attention in the first place. By micro-moving, sensations become unfrozen and layers of numb or suppressed sensation emerge. This is approaching mindfulness of the body and feeling from the bottom up.

At a deeper level, Somatics can offer a different perspective on impermanence, non-self and dis-ease. If we allow movement to get subtler and subtler—playing with the threshold at which it is perceivable—we quickly discover that everything is already moving.

Thoughts are movement. Intentions are movement.Perception is movement. Imagination is movement. Attention is movement. The Self is movement.

Even before it becomes an action, every mental activity creates a subtle shift in the body. These can be perceived as subtle energetic changes that happen outside of our control. Freezing, ignoring or solidifying these sensations creates tension, dis-ease and reduces embodied awakeness. Somatics offers a doorway to the three characteristics and emptiness through activity rather than passivity. To me, somatics is Samatha-Vipassanā practice in different conditions. Somatics also offers other, equally ubiquitous meditation objects to stabilise the mind with—gravity, axis and proprioception.

Movement is not something our body does. Movement is what we are.

The embodied wisdom and non-dual presence of somatic adepts I have met parallels that of meditation teachers and tends to be accompanied by a deep, heartfelt warmth. Somatics provides a life-affirming space for experiential research and insight.

I don’t see Somatics as replacing meditation. I would rather open an avenue for dialogue and experimentation between these two approaches, which I believe have much to learn from one another. They have certainly become deeply complementary in my own practice.

Upcoming Somatic Insight Training starting October 4