The Art of Somatic Coaching with Richard Strozzi-Heckler

We recently caught up with Richard Strozzi-Heckler during his Master Class on The Art of Somatic Coaching. Here’s what he had to say about developing one’s skills as a somatic coach.

Establishing Foundations in Somatics: Find a Coach, Learn With a Community, and Practice

Throughout my journey in the bodily arts, I learned exactly how important it is to have a seasoned coach who can help guide you through the learning and healing processes. 

Having someone who can say you're going too fast, too slow, you need to speed up, consider this perspective, etc., is essential to growth and development. 

I’ve also learned the importance of being in a community of people who learn and train together. When we train together, it lifts up the entire group. We’re all learning from the faculty, from each other, and from ourselves, which is a powerful combination that you don’t always experience in 1:1 training. 

The third point I’d like to emphasize is the importance of practice. It is just as important as having an excellent coach and a community to learn with. We are always changing, modifying, transforming, and healing ourselves through practice. 

In somatics, what we really need to look at is this: are the practices we're doing now going to take us to the future that we declare, commit to, or long for?

Learn How to Center Around Presence, Patience, and Perspective, and a New World Will Open Up to You

The right coach can teach you practices for getting in touch with the body in a way that you will not only apply to yourself but, one day, share with others. It starts with learning how to center yourself, and a good coach will teach you this.

Centering keeps you open to possibilities. When you’re centered, you’re not subject to the constriction of narrow thought. Before centering, you might find yourself looking down a narrow pathway and perceiving the world through a strained point of view, but with the right coach guiding you through the centering practice, you can suddenly open your peripheral vision, your breath, your reach, your energetic body, to include the possibilities that lie in the world that you may not yet be aware of.

Engage With the Wisdom of the Body Through Guided Practice

A coach can remind you to be patient and kind to yourself as you practice. They can help you work through each sensation in all parts of the body, all incredibly vital to engaging with the wisdom of the body and tapping into the innate capacities that exist at your heart center. This includes your capacity for compassion, empathy, and love. Your capacity for grounded compassion at your eye center and your capacity for pragmatic wisdom, all of which you can apply somatically in practice.

If you do these practices every day, multiple times a day, you will start to become embodied. You, and the people you work with, will realize that you’re not just in your head, not just in the past, and not just planning the future. You’re not fixated on your anxiety around negative thoughts. You’ll be present, open, and connected. 

Developing Somatic Listening

A good coach will guide you in how to listen with compassion, how to connect, and how to interpret subtleties in the healing process. 

For example, if you’re able to acknowledge that someone has developed a coping mechanism by moving away from sensations that help manage pain, witnessing that coping mechanism can be very powerful. 

Keep in mind that energy follows attention, and choice follows awareness, so if we start to build acknowledgment around their experiences through somatic self-awareness, we can better determine what works and what doesn’t work for that person and possibly uncover some hidden areas vital to the individual’s healing journey along the way. This is something you can gain an embodied comprehension of through observation and structured guidance.

Asking the Question: What Does It Mean to Be in the Human Body?

There is a line in a short story called the Dubliners by James Joyce, where he references an individual named Mr. Duffy, and he says Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body. This excerpt shows what happens in a post-industrialized, Western world where people became increasingly fragmented, distanced from deep relationships, and lacking in meaningful connection with others and the land they’re from. It sets the stage for the importance of somatics because we are, essentially, headed in that direction right now. 

I think that one of the reasons why so much conflict these days so quickly escalates into violence is that we're out of touch with our Feeling Self - that part of our nervous system or spirit, if you will, that is in touch with this capacity to be with other living forms with kindness, graciousness, respect, and generosity. I believe this is because we are out of touch with our bodies. 

The more that we are in touch with our bodies, the more that we are actively listening to these 3 billion years of intelligence, skillful action, empathy, and compassion, the more we will move towards a fulfilled, whole life.

Learn more about how you can become a certified Mind-Body Coach and harness the power of somatics to help others transform their lives, actualize their goals, and live a life of authenticity, freedom and wellbeing with our 120-hr Mind-Body Coaching Certificate.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THIS UNIQUE AND TRANSFORMATIVE PROGRAM!

Join us live and online for our upcoming FREE Information session on April 2nd. Meet our faculty, have your questions answered and discover if this program is right for you! The sessions will be recorded so if you can’t make the live event, register anyway and we’ll send you the recording.