somatic practice is a ceremony.

written on unceded Chiricahua Apache and Ndee ancestral land, near Ichʼįʼ Nahiłtį́į́ (so called Safford) 3-16-2024. i name this because we always start with the land, and land always informs what arises from it, like soil with plants

somatic practice as ceremony.
before there was somatics, there was ceremony.
a ceremony is a ritual container of specified and practiced actions done to invoke and evoke a specific intention.
a ceremony invokes and evokes a state. it has a clear beginning, middle, and end. we set the moment as sacred - light a candle and sing a song. then we move into the opening this creates, move outside of linear time to explore what arises within ceremony time.
then we return to present time and integrate what we have learned.
this is a human and ancient process. "science" has created certain parameters for this to happen in our current context: somatics in the current paradigm has a 3 phase treatment model - resourcing, processing, and integration. this is still a ceremony.

it is really important to know the history of this current somatic ceremony because how we do ceremony shapes what we become. the current somatic ceremony contains many fragments of stolen indigenous and spiritual wisdom - vedic and Buddhist technologies, for one, deeply inform the current somatic ceremonies (Pat Ogden who “started” Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, one of my modalities, says she learned it from practicing yoga). Jewish folks leading up to the Holocaust form another significant piece of the story (Charlotte Selver, Moshe Feldenkrais). Disabled folks studying their own bodies also form a significant piece (Elsa Gindler).

The current ceremony is also trying to forcibly set itself within a paradigm of Reason and Science. this is important because it is trying to determine Who Is Human, and sets forth that those who cannot "be reasonable" are not included within humanity (read La Marr Jurrelle Bruce's book "how to go mad without losing your mind" for more here). It is inherently white supremacist and formulated from Reason as defined by cis white men. If you understand this, it follows very quickly that the current somatic ceremony would utilize language such as Regulation, the "window of tolerance", etc.

the form shapes the language.

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So it is really important to know what ceremony we are practicing and what framework we are using. the framework shapes the ceremonial journey, and the elements utilized shape what arises within ceremonial time, in the middle space between the initiation and the integration. Setting what shapes the ceremony is vital because what arises in us will come from how the ceremony is shaped. if our ceremony is set within the realm of Reason and the carceral white supremacist logic of who can be Human, what we will reproduce with our somatic ceremony, and therefore our body/ies, is more of the same.

that is not to say that some of these ceremonial frames within current somatics are not useful or supportive. of course some of them are; they have also been shaped from longstanding indigenous and spiritual knowing, and wisdom that comes from being with our own bodies.

it takes time, wisdom, and deep listening to pick the ceremonial threads of wisdom and to cut the ones of violence. it also takes responsibility and awareness of one's power and what one holds, and what are not your threads to hold, so that you are not reweaving threads with violence and theft. to know -how- to hold the lineages you hold (because the how also always shapes the ceremony. as one of my teachers says, how we practice is how we practice). naming and knowing what you are holding shapes the container of the ceremony and what arises, remember.

so this is deeply important to know what lineages you are holding and shaping ceremony with, and why, and what effect they will have.

(to fellow white folks: some ceremonial threads are not and will never be ours to hold, and we must know and remember and respect that. partly because we have a bad track record of violence and theft, and partly because we can never understand the proper context for the ceremony. all ceremony happens in context and deep understanding of it; many times we don't have the fucking context for what we're messing with and therefore it’s not ours to hold!)

this kind of somatic ceremony born of deep listening, responsibility to self and power, wisdom, intuition, and connection, is a somatic ceremony that will birth new worlds.