Let’s explore the difference between traditional yoga and somatic yoga. While traditional yoga focuses on alignment, somatic yoga allows you to process and deeply feel your emotions. I will never tell you not to do a traditional yoga class, There is an incredible amount of value there and I have so much love for yogic tradition. But, I would like to encourage you to bring more somatic movement into your practice.
Let’s discuss:
🔹Traditional yoga’s focus on alignment, strength, and breath control, while somatic yoga emphasizes embodiment, emotional processing, and non-habitual movement.
🔹Five common yoga poses that can be made more somatic: Sufi grind, spinal flex, cat-cow, downward dog, and Janu Sirsasana.
🔹How somatic yoga allows individuals to deepen their connection with their bodies and process difficult emotions.
🎁 Get my FREE $67 Somatic Self Healing Workshop => https://www.brettlarkin.com/ffy
💖 Doors are closing for the fall cohort of my Somatic Yoga Life Coaching program. Find more information and book a call here =>https://www.brettlarkin.com/somatic-yoga-training-certification/
FREE Practice: Divine Feminine Yoga for Beginners | TANTRA AND SACRED SEXUALITY
Relevant Blog: Somatic Yoga For Beginners: Best Poses For Relaxation
Relevant to Today’s Episode:
✅ 200-hour Online Yoga Teacher Training
✨Uplifted Membership
💖Somatic Yoga Life Coaching
🎧 Also Listen to:
#318 – What Is Somatic Yoga?
#300 – Unraveling the Mystery of Chronic Pain for Yoga Teachers & Practitioners with Kim Patel
#285 – Is Yoga Enough…? with Dr. Jen Fraboni
Experience 3 Training Videos from Inside My 200-Hour Online YTT 👇
Transcript:
Brett
Hello, my friends. Today, we are going to deep dive a little bit into how five specific yoga poses might look different in a traditional yoga practice compared to a somatic yoga practice. Here’s the thing. I love traditional yoga. I think everyone needs traditional yoga in order to get back into their body, to like remember that they have a body.
Most people when they have that blissful first experience in Shavasana or at the end of a yoga class, it’s because they’re remembering that they’re more than just their brain and their busy, busy thoughts. They’re kind of drawing their energy back into their physical system and remembering that they’re not just a thinking brain, but that they’re an animal. They’re an animal who has this animal body and that…
So much joy and calm and bliss can be accessed when we drop down from our heads and into our hearts and bodies.
The alignment that traditional yoga offers keeps us safe, strengthens our muscles creates more space in the body for our fullest, deepest, richest breath, which in turn calms and soothes our nervous system. And ultimately, traditional yoga is helping us find more length along the pathway of the spine so that energy can move up and down the chakra system, connecting us with universal intelligence and every…
one and everything in what the yogis called samadhi, this ecstasy or enlightenment. So traditional yoga is never going to be something I’m going to tell you not to do. I have spent almost my whole adult life dedicated and devoted to the practice. But at a certain point, I think you get so embodied and so in touch with your own physical system, thanks to traditional yoga, that you begin to want to move.
more intuitively. You begin to want to not just align the body, but actually use the body as a vehicle for liberation, as a vehicle to alchemize and transform difficult emotions. This is the essence of tantra, right? Using the body as a vehicle for enlightenment instead of transcending the body or exiting the body as a vehicle.
for enlightenment. So the more you get to know your body, which again, you can’t do without traditional yoga and traditional meditative practices, so they’re always going to have a place, but the more you might want to add in some somatic movements. And this word somatic is a buzzword right now, but somatic just basic or soma, right, the Greek root just means of the body. So really everything in yoga and all healing modalities in a sense are somatic practices, because most of them are dealing with the body.
But what somatic yoga or somatic therapy or somatic coaching has kind of become known to mean nowadays is that you’re, instead of just talking about feelings or thinking about feelings and then doing yoga as like a separate thing, almost like a physical exercise, you begin to interweave the two in a deeper way where you’re actually using your yoga practice as a time in which you’re processing and deeply
Feeling your emotions and why would you want to do that? Well, because anything that’s fully felt Changes anything that’s fully felt can resolve and begin to shift so the big thesis here that you need to remember is that Most of our pain that we’re experiencing Mentally physically emotionally is because we’re resisting feeling something we have a habitual bracing pattern in which we don’t want to
feel something and when you are avoiding something and clenching in that way, it actually is a huge energy expenditure. And the irony is if we just felt the thing, we would feel extremely uncomfortable and it might be frightening because it’s unfamiliar, but it actually wouldn’t last that long and then it would dissolve, transmute and change because it’s been witnessed or we kind of went into the eye of the storm instead of bracing against it and then whatever is felt fully can dissolve. So how might you turn a couple like key yoga poses that you might be familiar with that are some of my favorites that I always hit in my own personal practice.
into a more somatic experience. And when I think about somatic yoga, and what I teach in my somatic certification is an acronym called REST, where we’re resting the body, we’re emoting, we’re spiraling, we’re touching, we’re slowing everything down.
we’re incorporating shaking, undulation, non -habitual movement is really the number one thing you want to think about because especially if you’ve been doing yoga a long time, which you probably are pretty into yoga if you’re listening to this podcast, you know, you can get in these grooves where you just end up doing a sun salutation or you just end up doing cat cow or you end up doing lunges or warriors and your brain kind of is on autopilot. You’re not really fully feeling and a huge piece of why somatic
practice works is because it’s working with what’s called neuroplasticity in your brain. Basically, that’s your brain’s ability to reform and reshape in new ways. But it only does that if you do something different. So if you’re always doing the same habitual movements, that’s not a very nutrient rich.
movement diet, but it’s also not creating those new neural pathways in the brain because you’re just doing things you’re already familiar with. So let’s talk now about how you might just look and we’re just going to look at five poses, how you might make them more embodied, more somatic, more fully trying to get into your feeling body. And we’ll start with Sufi grind. We’ll start with two Kundalini postures and then we’ll talk about three more Hatha Vinyasa postures.
So Sufi grind is probably one of my favorite poses ever. It’s one of the more feminine form postures that we have in the Kundalini Yoga system. When I look at the Kundalini Yoga lineage and system as a whole, it feels very masculine to me in the sense of having a lot of structure and rules, which can be great. But the Sufi grind is one of those few poses that feels very feminine to me because we’re spiraling.
We’re really closing our eyes. We’re going deep into the body. There’s not, Kundalini is the science of angles and triangles, right? With Sufi grind, it’s like not all of that kind of goes away. You’re just kind of doing your own thing, moving. And for those of you who don’t know what Sufi grind is, you’re basically just sitting cross -legged on the floor and you’re moving your torso in a giant circle. So I always say it’s like your pelvis is a bowl and your torso is trying to like scoop all the sides of the bowl, right?
So you’re shining your heart as if it was a flashlight over your left knee and then forward and then over your right knee. And then you kind of round back on your sits bones, maybe even tucking the pelvis a little bit, dipping the chin into the chest, and then you come forward again. And then of course you can switch directions when you choose to. So in traditional Kundalini yoga, we’re doing Sufi grind with the hands on the thighs or on the knees and moving. But in order to make it more somatic, something that I really love to do, is to kind of isolate, because again, this is where it’s like, where can we do something different? Where can we do something non -habitual? Where can we do something non -linear? I like to kind of start doing Sufi grind just with my rib cage, for example. So instead of moving like my whole torso, I’m just kind of isolating the rib cage. And then maybe I go back to moving the whole torso.
So I play, I play with slowing everything down. So remember, somatic, slow. So I do the Sufi grind maybe much, much, much, much slower, like picture being in a slow motion movie, like almost comically slow. And just see if that allows you to feel more as you play it.
As you play with a more full Sufi grind with the whole torso that’s very, very, very slow and a more subtle Sufi grind, maybe just doing Sufi grind with like think of the lower ribs doing the circles instead of your whole torso. So it’s more subtle. You can slow that down as well. So you’re playing with slowness. You’re playing with subtlety.
The movements don’t have to be big in somatic yoga or fast to have a really profound deep effect. In fact, I think the slower you go and the more subtle you go, like maybe you think of just doing Sufi grind like with your collarbones, right? Or just a little bit with your, you know, chin. And it gets that little, that subtle. And then of course, adding in the element of touch is always going to make something feel more.
Somatic more fully felt because we’re actually taking the hands to the body and our hands your left and right hand If you look at the palms of your hands, this is where you have the most nerve endings in your body There’s a ton of nerve endings here 72 ,000 Notties.
So when you take your hands, the surface of your hands, which are so sensitive, onto your own skin and start to feel, it’s helping you feel more embodied. It’s also helping the brain kind of remap parts of the body that may be frozen or that the body doesn’t have a good kind of cognizant map of. There’s actually been studies on this and we talk about this in my prior podcast episode with Doc Jen Fitt. If you want to really go into the science behind it.
but the brain…
Mmm, that’s not right.
We actually talk about this in my prior podcast episode on chronic pain and using yoga to treat chronic pain. If you want to go more into the science behind it, but the hands as we touch, we’re also helping the brain kind of remap the body and maybe feel a little more fully.
areas that we may have numbed from or been disassociated from or that may be stagnant or places we don’t have a lot of awareness of.
So one thing I love to do in Sufi grind is stroke my thighs, but since you’re circling, it’s not very easy to do that. I think that works better for spinal flex, which we’ll talk about next. But I actually like spiraling and kind of sliding my hands up my rib cage. So I’m doing this now as I talk, but it’s basically like, you can start with one hand on each of your lower ribs and then kind of having the hands crisscross.
And then maybe you want to stroke like the chest or the breast or come into like a butterfly hug. For those of you who don’t know, the butterfly hug is like you’re holding opposite elbows. So your elbows, sorry, you’re holding opposite shoulders. So your elbows are crossed in front of you, kind of like you were giving yourself a hug essentially. But keep things moving, right? Like stroking down the arms in that position, then stroking back up. So your arms are holding your shoulders. So just getting your hands.
on your torso, on your chest, on your breasts, on your arms, and then up into your hair and your face. So you can still kind of spiral the torso while having the hands on the face, and I love hands in the hair. The scalp is also pretty sensitive. It’s just kind of like you’re giving yourself a good lather as if you were doing shampoo, dragging your hands down the face. The lips and the face also are extremely sensitive and have more nerve endings than, let’s say, your thigh.
So anytime I can trace my lips or trace my eyes, right, I’m getting my hands, which have a lot of nerve endings and my lips that have a lot of nerve endings kind of stimulated. All of that is gonna help me get more in my body. So those are a ton of ideas for Sufi grind. Let’s look at spinal flex, another classic Kundalini pose. For those of you who don’t know, often your cross leg, you could be seated on your heels and it’s kind of just like a cat cow sitting down. The hands are traditionally on the knees, you’re inhaling.
rocking forward on the pelvis, opening the chest, exhale, rounding back in a C curve in the low back, pulling the chin into the chest. Different Kundalini teachers teach it different ways. Some have the head kind of stay level and some let you move the head and neck. But it’s very much like inhale forward, exhale back. And what I love to do for spinal flex is similar, slow it down, slow it down, slow it down, slow it down. And beyond slowing it down, adding that element of touch that we just talked about with the thighs. And you’ll see me doing this in like every YouTube video right now when we do spinal flex. I like to sit on the heels, because that gives me really nice access to my thighs in front of me. And I like to stroke down my thighs with my whole palm as I rock forward and exhale as I round back, I drag my hands back up to my hips.
and then slow it down, slow it down so, so, so, so much. And then my other little tip here to make this movement more somatic and embodied is to actually think of it almost, I’ve heard this called dolphin dive. It’s like you’re diving down under a wave. So when you rock back in Sufi grind, it’s like you take your chin to your chest and instead of like just rocking forward on your sits bones and.
thrusting the chest forward the way you would in spinal flex, you kind of do like a curl into yourself. So your low back is super rounded, your chin is into the chest, and it’s almost like you want to dive under something, like you’re diving underwater, and then you come up to open the chest, and then you rock back. So it kind of becomes more of this wave -like motion, almost like an undulation as you’re doing spinal flex.
which leads us right into our next posture, which is cat cow. And cat cow is kind of like spinal flex on all fours. And so you can do this, you can, you know, attempt a little bit of the same thing where instead of just, you know, keeping the hands and knees where they are and inhaling, looking at your navel, exhaling, opening the shoulders and broadening the chest, I would invite you to get the booty moving, like take the…
Take the sits bones back towards your heels. Think of that same dolphin dive, right? And so it’s like your heart gets closer to the floor maybe as you come forward for cow pose. It’s almost like you want to slither your chest along the mat. And then you come up and open for your cow. And then exhale, dive back for your cat. So you’re inviting in this wave like this ripple. And this is another key principle of somatic yoga that I talk about.
In my certification, I don’t know how other how many other people are focused on this particular aspect, but just moving as nature moving in the shapes of nature. So when we think of nature, nature moves in spirals in waves.
And so the thesis here is that your body really intuitively knows how to charge and discharge energy to come back into a state of balance.
just like animals do, right? I’m sure you’ve seen your pet or birds, you know, like shake off energy or, you know, do these big kind of yawns or movements with the body that are just them kind of like readjusting themselves. So I find the more that we can use the shapes of nature, circles, shaking, waves, undulation in nonlinear and non -habitual movements, the more we’re able to turn up the volume on felt sensation.
and kind of bypass the noisy, noisy mind. So I invite you to think of doing your cat -cow in this way where you start taking the chest really close to the floor and rocking, almost like coming into a child’s pose on the exhale. So just allowing a lot more free -form movement. Another thing I like to do is invite in little micro movements with the chin. So maybe when I’m coming into my cow pose,
I allow myself to explore because I’m not in a rush because in a somatic practice, you’re quieting everything down and you’re slowing down profoundly. So we really let go of like the one breath per movement, cat cow, or like we’re always inhaling and coming forward and we’re always exhaling and coming back. I find that that still kind of tends to be the case, but there might be some more breath cycles in the middle. For example,
Maybe I do an additional full breath in a child’s pose -like shape. And then I kind of slither forward with my elbows deeply bent, my chest close to the ground. I come into cow. And then I really saturate and enjoy that cow for maybe two or three or even five breaths. And I open the chest. I micro -bend my elbows, glide my shoulders down and back, and then explore with my chin the space.
around me, maybe I make some figure eights with the chin and just find some very, very gentle, you know, interesting stretches or positions in space with the head and neck that feel soothing but are also, you know, positions that you would never hit in a traditional yoga practice.
So in traditional yoga, your cat -cows very much about a flexion and extension of the spine. And in somatic yoga, it’s more of a slithering and undulation, almost like a writhing in a sense, and moving in those ways that are inspired by the shapes of nature.
and of course moving much, much, much more slowly. And a key principle of the acronym and philosophy I teach around this is the expression piece. So if you can emote or make a sound, because using sound, sound is a great amplifier to make energy move in the body faster.
And it also helps us express kind of like how most of us just do the same types of movement throughout the day and then the same types of movement in our yoga practice. Most of us are also kind of stuck and trapped in just one vocal range. We kind of tend to talk in the same way, at the same cadence, in the same tonality all day long. And so when you can invite in some expression or different sounds, or sighs or yawns, right? Like if you can yawn in any of these spinal flexes or cat -cows, again, that is all very soothing, you know.
Signaling to your nervous system that it’s okay to slow down, that it’s time to rest. So just think about how you can also add in the element of sound to any posture you’re doing, but especially I find spinal flex and the sort of cat cow with the more somatic style is really nice on that exhale to just go like an or mmm. And it’s a great moment, like if you feel frustrated, to let some of that frustration out in the moment. All right, let’s talk for our last two postures about more classic vinyasa postures. Down dog. So it’s interesting. I love down dog, love the dog so much, but I find I don’t do it a lot in a somatic practice because it is so habitual, like my body’s so accustomed to it. And what I do instead that stretches the back of the legs and helps me find length in the spine is a wide legged forward fold.
So my downward dog kind of goes out the window in my somatic practice. And instead, I take like the equivalent of prasarita padottanasana, like just wide legged forward fold facing the long edge of my mat. And I find that from this position, what I like is that my torso is really free to do a lot of different things and explore and move in space. For example, I can kind of hold opposite elbows in gorilla swing and micro bend the knees. I can, you know, have my torso over my left leg, my right leg.
I can open my chest to the sidewall on each side. But then favorite, I can kind of move up and down and even do some full body spinal undulations and wave -like motions. Obviously bending the knees as well, placing the hands on the thighs for support. But instead of down dog, I kind of use that wide legged forward fold as like my home base position. Just because I find there’s so many more things that you can do with the torso. And I did want to include one.
seated posture to talk about. So I wanted to talk about Janus or Shasana, which is just for those of you who don’t know.
sitting on the floor with one foot into the groin and one leg extended. So you’re kind of in a half butterfly shape with one leg and then the other leg is straight and you’re folding over that straight leg. I think this is often called, you know, head to knee pose or something like that, but I don’t care about you getting your head to your knee, so I really don’t like that translation of it.
So in traditional yoga, right, would find length in the spine or even according to like uplifted yoga alignment, those of you who’ve done the 200 training with me, you’d find the length in the spine and then actually use your core strength to fold forward with as much length as possible until you gently round the upper body and relax here. And of course, we’re not reaching for the foot, we’re drawing the shoulders down and back. But in somatic yoga, I find you can even add an undulation here.
So instead of this pose becoming a static stretch that you do on the floor, you actually use the floor and press your palms into the floor to come back up, maybe open the chest. So it’s almost like you’re combining that dolphin dive, spinal flex movement that we explored in Janusha Shasana. So you push away from the floor, maybe look into yourself, kind of round up. And then I like to like open, like I’m presenting my heart to the ceiling.
and exhale, fold over that extended leg and just making some beautiful wave like motions kind of over the leg. And so instead of it just being a stretch, again, it’s becoming more of vessel where I’m doing a moving prayer and expressing, you know, the truth of my heart in this moment, whether that’s anger or love or sadness. And that doesn’t mean you can’t eventually fold and find stillness, but
You’re really using the support of the floor. And again, if you want to actually touch your own thigh or massage your own leg up and down as you move, you absolutely can do that. And then you’re getting some, you know, nice touch and sort of remapping the leg with your own sensory awareness.
So while in traditional yoga, you would just fold forward and hold, and it would just be a hamstring stretch. In somatic yoga, you’re adding this undulation of the spine, this touch of the leg, or this kind of like caressing of the floor. As you do this, you know, intense spinal motion, this dolphin dive up and down, getting the head, the neck, the chin also involved, as you almost like worship your own leg, undulating up above it.
So if you were curious about how you could maybe take the traditional yoga that you’re doing and just give it that more somatic flair in your home practice, I hope that this podcast has given you some ideas.
I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback. You can always shoot me a DM. I am @LarkinYogaTV on Instagram. I always link up a lot of really interesting notes, blog posts related to what I’m talking about in the show notes. So always make sure to expand the show notes as well as yoga classes that actually show everything I’m talking about. So check out the show notes. I’ll definitely put a class here that does everything that we just talked about, which is going to be insanely juicy that you might want to practice later today.
As always, thank you so much for being here and listening all the way to the very end. I’m sending you so much love. Namaste.
© 2024 Uplifted Yoga | BrettLarkin.com
