Somatic(bodily)  experience is sensing that you can move deeper parts of your body and probably some organs during your exercise. This is the key to mastering complex movements in Pilates, so you can later use them mechanically to enhance your strength and endurance. Take, for example, riding a bike. Learning how to ride takes incredible focus and mental engagement to lead your muscles through small incremental distances to ride a bike without falling.

But once your muscle memory takes over after successful repetitive practice, engaging your mind becomes unnecessary as your legs and body know precisely what to do. Now you can ride the bike with your mind free from focusing on the movement itself but instead engage in strategies to enhance the workout for the best health benefits.

It’s the same with Pilates. Keeping your mind locked in the particular movement is crucial for that movement to happen with the required technical precision to master specific exercises. For example, to sense the articulation of the spine being synchronized with your breath, your movement has to be painstakingly slow and deliberate. But as soon as you acquire that technical aspect to perfection, you’ve got to move more dynamically to get the ultimate benefits of Pilates exercises such as the “internal shower.” As explained in the book Return to Life, “These exercises induce the heart to pump strong and steadily with the result that the bloodstream is forced to carry and discharge more and more of the accumulated debris created by fatigue,” which cleanses and decompresses the joints. You are now taking the somatic experience for a fast drive. Your body is enjoying all the benefits that come from all the hard work before that.

The answer is visualisation. For example, when you perform the Stomach Massage exercise (on the reformer), what if, instead of just pushing the legs, you visualize that your gut is pulling backward towards your spine as you scoop your abdominal wall in. Your leg muscles (mainly hip flexors) will be more relaxed, your knees will fold deeper into your chest, and your gut will be folded tidily against your lower back. But that won’t happen in the first few classes, heck, it may not happen even in the first year.

That’s not to discourage you but the more you practice Pilates with that idea in your head, the faster your body will mold and fold so that everything is moving with you.

Take another example of a simple exercise like raising your arms and side bending. Not only are you bending your spine, but you’re also moving your kidneys with you; that’s a somatic experience. It takes continuous practice to educate your body to do that. Today’s video focuses on decompressing the thoracic and cervical vertebrae to move the shoulder blades and sense that the shoulder blades are moving on top of the thoracic spine. Think about how many organs are attached to your spine. When you sense your spine articulating, you move, massage your organs and stimulate the blood flow to nourish them. Check out this innervation table, and you will definitely move differently after that.

https://www.medicalwebsite.com.au/blog/chiropractic/take-care-spine-well-connected-internal-organs/

Once you are ready, try the exercise video for today. Even if you love working out like me, know that deep inside, when you create a somatic experience in your body when you move, who knows, you might be helping your body send blood in your eyeballs and heart.

That’s not to discourage you but the more you practice Pilates with that idea in your head, the faster your body will mold and fold so that everything is moving with you. 

Xo 

 Jeanique