Hanna Somatic Education

Hanna Somatic Education®, also known as Hanna Somatics, is a somatic practice created by Thomas Hanna, Ph.D. (1928-1990).

Forgetting How to Move

Just as the brain can forget information we do not use, it can also forget bodily movements we do not use. This bodily memory loss is what Thomas Hanna called sensory-motor amnesia, and he considered it a malfunction of the nervous system.

The central nervous system, which consists of the brain and spinal cord, receives information from sensory nerves and sends out information on motor nerves. In other words, sensory nerves tell your central nervous system what is happening, then the central nervous system uses the motor nerves to tell your body what to do.

This sensory-motor feedback loop continually responds to daily stresses and traumas with specific muscular reflexes. When reflexes recur repeatedly, they create habitual muscle contractions that become so deeply ingrained and unconscious, we eventually no longer remember how to move fully. We become unable to voluntarily relax. The result of this sensory-motor amnesia is stiffness, soreness, and limited range of motion.

Sensory-motor amnesia affects the entire body because the entire body compensates for a problem in any specific location. Sensory-motor amnesia is an adaptive response of the central nervous system, and this response can be unlearned using neurologically based exercises.

Aging and Sensory-Motor Amnesia

Hanna adamantly believed that many of the physical problems attributed to age are actually functional problems of disuse. Use it or lose it.

Or in Hanna’s words, "If our muscles are not regularly used in challenging and skilled activities, they become weaker and less responsive. If our brain cells are not systematically involved in a wide variety of voluntary activities, they deteriorate...Those who believe that they should take it easy as they become older are deluded; they are persons who are surrendering their life functions bit by bit." (Somatics: Reawakening the Mind's Control of Movement, Flexibility, and Health by Thomas Hanna.)

Stress and Bodily Reflexes

Stress is how your body responds to the demands placed on it. Hanna observed that our neuromuscular system has two basic responses to stress. He called these responses the Red Light reflex and Green Light reflex.

The Red Light reflex, also known as the withdrawal or startle response, is the neuromuscular adaptation to sustained negative stress. This reflex is a primitive survival reflex that lies deep outside our conscious control. If we feel frightened or threatened, our body draws inward in a protective response: we contract our jaw, narrow our eyes, raise our shoulders and push our head forward, bend our elbows, tighten our abdominal muscles causing us to lean forward, tighten our crotch, bend our knees, and lift our toes.

In contrast to the Red Light reflex, which contracts the muscles in the front of our body, the Green Light reflex contracts the muscles in the back. The Green Light reflex is the action response.

These two reflexes are total somatic responses that contract muscles head to toe in either negative withdrawal or positive action. Many repetitions of either response can cause a gradual buildup of chronically opposing muscle contractions. The muscles of one response begin to interfere with the muscles of the other response, which leads to stiff and limited movement, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, chronic shallow breathing, negative self-image, and chronic high blood pressure.

How to Use It

How do you get the benefits of Hanna Somatic Education? You can see a Hanna Somatic Educator who will work hands-on with you one-on-one or you can do Somatic Exercises.

The Association for Hanna Somatic Education maintains a database of Certified Hanna Somatic Education practitioners.

Somatic Exercises are designed to change your muscular system by changing your central nervous system. You can find many somatic exercises in Hanna’s book, Somatics: Reawakening the Mind's Control of Movement, Flexibility, and Health.

I credit the exercises in this book with being a major factor (along with massage and other bodywork) in helping me get rid of 20+ years of off-and-on chronic lower back pain.

Hanna also wrote Bodies in Revolt: A Primer in Somatic Thinking and The Body of Life: Creating New Pathways for Sensory Awareness and Fluid Movement.

Online Resources for Hanna Somatic Education:

Somatics Educational Resources
Somatics on the Web
Somatics (in both English and German)