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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What is the difference between Chiropractic and Somatic Education?Chiropractic is a well tried and tested therapy, successfully used for detecting and resolving joint malfunctioning. Practitioners are trained to look at the body from a structural perspective, paying attention to deviations from the skeleton alignment. The various chiropractic techniques employed by a chiropractor are aimed at restoring normal joint function. Hanna Somatic Education (H.S.E) practitioners, in contrast, do not 'treat the body'. They are trained to view the soma, or client's 'living body', as an entity who is capable of self-education and self-regulation. Their techniques are based upon slow, gentle moves aimed at 'reawakening' this self-regulatory process common to all somas. Whereas in chiropractic an adjustment is 'done to you', in Hanna Somatic Education you are assisted to become sensitive to the way you use yourself, so that you may discover new ways of moving and feeling, leading to more comfortable choices. The procedure is truly educative, a learning process where the client is an active participant. topWhat is the qualification of a Hanna Somatic Educator?HSE Practitioners follow a 3-year programme sponsored by the Novato Institute for Somatic Research and Training, California, USA. The course is clinical as well as experiential. The training is based on the techniques as practiced by Dr Thomas Hanna. Part of the syllabus includes anatomy, functional kinesiology and neurophysiology. The emphasis is on practice. Who was Thomas Hanna?Thomas Hanna PhD was a philosopher, radical thinker, author and educator. His method of Somatic Educationis the result of years of inquiry and hands-on experience of how humans function. Hanna's basic ideas first appeared in Bodies in Revolt, which he wrote in 1970. This book sets out the theoretical framework he was to make concrete on the power for human transformation. However, it was not until he studied the work of other pioneers such asF. Mathias Alexander, Elsa Gindler, Gerda Alexander, Moshe Feldenkrais and the endocrinologist Hans Selye MD, that his original premise became truly alive. He organised the first Feldenkrais training in the USA. Inspired by Feldenkrais's genius, Hanna worked as a Feldenkrais practitioner for 16 years before he made his own contribution to the somatic field. His knowledge of neurophysiology led him to coin the expression 'sensory-motor amnesia' to explain bodily dysfunction. Thomas Hanna is the only person to successfully put together a unified diagnostic model for somatic malfunctioning. He was deeply concerned about human conditioning and was aware of the resources that are available within ourselves for change. Hanna Somatic Education is brilliantly expounded in one of his books, Somatics: Reawakening the Mind's Control of Movement, Flexibility and Health (Addison-Wesley, 1988). topWhat is sensory-motor amnesia (SMA)?Thomas Hanna described S.M.A as 'a loss of memory about how certain muscle groups feel, and how to control them.' This is a condition in which the sensory-motor neurons of the voluntary cortex have lost some portion of their ability to control all or some of the muscles of the body.' Lack of sensory awareness triggers automatic responses. Sooner or later, our body becomes conditioned to react to stress and traumas in a habitual manner, with predictable muscular contractions. Just like reflexes, these habitual tensions seem to bypass voluntary control. Muscular patterns set in, creating imbalances between various muscle groups. That is how a chain reaction is established which eventually affects the way we function. What is missing from this mechanism is our latent capacity to uncheck the accumulation of these unconscious responses. |
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