When You Forget Your Muscles

As the years go by I become busier and have many more responsibilities than I ever imagined I would. Groceries, bills, chores, relationships, health, nutrition, sleep, work, and making sure that all the while I’m managing my time. So from time to time I misplace something important like my car keys. I usually figure this out when its time to unlock my car and I’m running late for something. Now imagine if you were headed out for the day and on your way out the door you realize that you forgot your muscles. You know they are there someplace but your conscious brain just cant find them. In the Hanna Somatic tradition this chronic muscular misplacement is called "sensory-motor amnesia".

Sensory-motor amnesia (SMA) is a “habituated sate of forgetfulness. It is a memory loss of how certain muscle groups feel and how to control them. and because it happens in our central nervous system, we are not aware of it, yet it affects us at our very core. Our image of who we are, what we can experience, and what we do is profoundly diminished by sensory- motor amnesia. And it is primarily this event, and its secondary effects, that we falsely think of as “growing older.’” Somatics, Hanna (xiii)

Our bodies are usually very good at juggling and keeping track of many things all at once. But during the course of a lifetime there are many stresses, traumas, and inhuman situations that we endure day in and day out. The brain begins to pass off some of its extra work load to the parts of the central nervous system that act involuntarily. This means that some of the parts of your body that you used to control are not readily available to you anymore. When the part of you that is out of touch is a chronically tight muscle that just wont relax you begin to pay attention. Pain and suffering are very potent motivators. The most common way of coping with a tight muscle is to have someone else fix it for you. Well what if I told you that you will learn how to get back control of your muscles that are currently in "sensory-motor amnesia".

"Hanna Somatic Education ®" is an empowering way for you to find the muscles that have been misplaced and are just out of your control. Through regular individual somatic sessions and the daily cat stretch exercises the re-education of your sensory-motor system is well within your reach. Once you have located these over worked muscles you now have a way to release the tension that they are holding on a regular basis. The phrase “Use it or loose it” speaks directly to keeping SMA at bay. With conscious daily practice these new somatic awareness’s reinforce the bodies natural internal healing mechanism and possibilities begin to reappear. Somatics is a tool just like your car keys when you have them in hand and are aware of how to use them the freedom of the open road makes itself available to you.

Ryan Moschell HSE, LMT

2 – 9 - 2011