Answers…
In the last issue, we posed this question:
You've just done a great session with a new client, your best Lesson 1. The person gets up from the table, walks around a bit, and you ask, "Are you feeling any changes? What are you noticing?"They give you that blank stare and say "Well, maybe I'm feeling a little different, I'm not sure."
What do you do?
We received some great responses and wanted to share a couple with you:
From John Loupos, CHSE, CSE, Cohasset, Mass.
"I can empathize with the inquirer’s question. The occasional “...I’m not sure,” response can seem especially mystifying, not to mention ungratifying, when the changes in the client’s posture or carriage are visually obvious as they stand or walk about following a session.
A point that I made in my book, “The Sustainable You...” is that there is an inverse correlation between the magnitude of sensorimotor amnesia in any client and that client’s ability to self-sense. Clients who are severely burdened by SMA tend to be correspondingly compromised in their ability to feel changes that have occurred in their own bodies. Clients who have been severely compromised (either by blatant SMA or by other “numbing factors,” i.e. the emotional or social equivalent of SMA) have to learn all over again how to sense the body they live in.
This makes for a compelling argument for the ‘E’ in HSE. It is the educational component, versus merely ‘fixing’ our clients, that enables and encourages them to regain deliberate control of their bodies over time through self-sensing. Just as “I’m not sure...” is ungratifying, having clients finally reach a point where they can recognize and acknowledge change can be doubly gratifying.
I would note here as well (as alluded above) that factors other than SMA that can have clients in similar denial. As a trained Homeopath I know, for example, that certain “remedy types” are characterologically predisposed to denying obvious changes in their health circumstance. I know the very same propensity is also common in the context of psychotherapy. Certain patients may be either reluctant to acknowledge or unable to perceive self-improvements as they occur.
Understanding this can be very helpful for us providers to the extent that we not not take such disavowals personally, or necessarily as reflections on the quality of our services and skills. Rather, this underscores Tom Hanna’s assertion that this work of ours - Hanna Somatic Education - is every bit as psychological as it is physiological."
...from Krishna Raven-Johnson, CHSE, Tucson, AZ
When I get this response from a client, a light bulb goes off for me that says: “Maybe this person needs extra support in sensing and developing awareness of their soma.” This is not always the case, it could be that they are more in need of Lesson 2 or 3, and will have a more dramatic experience with them.
But, oftentimes it’s just part of what this client is bringing with them. Often these are folks who tend to hurry, push, and go through life with quite a bit of force. They may have difficulty feeling either the contraction or the relaxation phase of a pandiculation, they hurry through their movements, they tend to overeffort, and they are more challenged in feeling the results of the work.
Remember the things we were taught during our training – tapping an area to provide more sensory input, having the person put their hand on an area to feel movement, using means whereby and kinetic mirroring to heighten sensory awareness. Those are all terrific and useful strategies.
Some other things I’ve also found to be helpful are:
• coach the person to slow way down – keep reminding them. I have tried having people count to 10 or 20, breathe out a really long breath, or ask them to do the movement again, twice as slow.
• have them pause, recontract a muscle group, then relax again, perhaps even repeating this process to feel contraction, release, and help build a sensory base.
• have them try the same self-pandiculation smaller, then smaller again – how small can they do it and still feel it?
• talk to them about awareness and how important it is in helping them help themselves. I like the phrase “taking the time to tease out the strands of the experience”. For example: How does it feel as the leg slowly lengthens? Is there effort somewhere else? Does the feeling of the weight of that leg change as it moves to full length?
• make sure that my own soma maintains a slow rhythm, that I don’t get pulled into hurry or overdoing. Mirror neurons work both ways!
• give this person more time than usual between pandiculations to allow for a full relaxation. Ask them to take a big breath and let it out at the end of the pandiculation.
• decrease the amount of work we do in a session to model that “less can be more”.
I’m sure there are many, many more ways to go about this part of our teaching with clients. One of the things I love most about Hanna Somatic Education is that it encourages our creativity!
...and a third response from Thomas Hanna was suggested by Lawrence Gold, Albequerque, NM
The following audio file is a segment copied from CD #40 of the Thomas Hanna lectures made in Wave 1 training and copy righted in 1990. This segment was copied with permission granted by the owner, Eleanor Criswell Hanna, and is for the limited use of the person given access to the recording on this website and may not be reproduced for distribution. All rights are reserved.
*Students and Certified Hanna Somatic Educators may purchase the complete wave 1 audio through the Novato Institute. Send requests to info@somaticsed.com
