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Hanna Somatic Education (HSE), also known as Hanna Somatics, is a natural, gentle, and safe way to end chronic muscular pain, increase flexibility, coordination and balance, and relieve stress. It is a system of neuromuscular education (mind-body training) which helps you enjoy freedom from pain and more comfortable movement for the rest of your life.
We all respond to the stresses of life, mentally, emotionally and physically. Our muscles contract in response to the stress of our environment, whether we’re working long hours at our computer, hunching our shoulders while driving in rush hour traffic, participating in a favorite sport, or compensating due to an injury. If the muscles don’t get a message from the brain to release and relax, they literally forget how to relax. This can compromise the function of our muscles, thus affecting the structure of our bodies, resulting in poor posture, tight joints and compromised movement. Thomas Hanna, the creator of Hanna Somatic Education, called this condition Sensory Motor Amnesia (SMA). Chronically contracted muscles become painful and sore, lose their flexibility and elasticity, and are often responsible for postural imbalances, stiffness, and chronic fatigue. Those aches and pains, often attributed to aging, are in most cases the result of sensory motor amnesia. Once we lose our ability to sense and feel, we also lose our ability to move freely.
The problem doesn’t lie in the muscles, it lies in the brain. Just as the brain can learn positive things like riding a bike or learning to ski, so can it learn negative things, like holding oneself stiff and out of balance. Because it is the brain that controls the muscles, the brain must be engaged in changing the state of the muscles. Hanna Somatics teaches you, using gentle, easy and specific movements, to actively change the contraction level of your muscles by using the sensory motor cortex of the brain to override the “contract” messages being sent to the muscles.
In his work with clients, Thomas Hanna noticed that Sensory Motor Amnesia and its attendant postural distortions manifested within three broad patterns of reflexive contractions. He called these reflexes: the green light reflex, red light reflex, and trauma reflex.
Hanna Somatics is particularly helpful in relieving the chronic aches and disability commonly associated with such complaints as headaches, painful joints and muscles, neck, shoulder and back pain, sciatica, poor posture, breathing problems, accident traumas and whiplash, fibromyalgia, frozen shoulder syndrome, and repetitive use injuries.
THREE WAYS TO COMBAT SENSORY MOTOR AMNESIA:
1. Private Sessions: This method yields faster results, as the sessions are tailored to your needs. Most conditions resolve within three to six session.
2. Group Classes: In group classes, you learn a variety of fun, easy and gentle movements designed to help you create a deeper sense of awareness as to the places where you hold tension in your body.
3. On Your Own: Read Somatics: Reawakening the Mind’s Control of Movement, Flexibility, and Health, by Thomas Hanna. Do the exercises outlined in the back of the book and progress at your own pace.
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