Somatic coaching comes from the word ‘soma,’ Greek for all our intelligences. We have multiple intelligences as well as our beautiful brains. We have our emotions, we have our intellect, we have a spiritual intelligence, and we have an internal sensing as well. 

Somatic coaching is about using the body as a way in to be able to gain nuance and differentiation so that you can integrate those different parts of yourself. So, it's a practical approach and an understanding of mind and body; how we can bring them together and create ways to grow and heal.

Caroline Quaife has a program called The SandBox starting in September. Her program is 360 pounds, and for people on the podcast, she will be offering it for 199. Listen to the episode to get the code and use it at coah.quaifeassociates.com

Our bodies aren't just like a way of carrying around our beautiful brains.

Our body is always in a rhythm. When you breathe in, your heartbeat goes up; when you breathe out, your heartbeat goes down. There's always that rhythm of in and out of faster and slower. If we can understand that rather than being fixated on ‘I have got to do this, I’ve got my to-do list, I have got this meeting’ always on this forward-looking path, then, actually, we're not in that rhythm, and that can be at our expense. And also, at the cost of society because we have many people now who are very strong out and in their heads and are struggling with their lives and not enjoying them.

So, there are three components:

1. There's somatic awareness. So, you have to be aware of what's happening in your body, but that's not sufficient. 

2. You then have to practice, 

3. And then there is that sense of that opening into a different shape, and with the shape comes another way of being. So, I experience the world differently now.

David Trevelyan says, “The body changes with a yes.” So, there's a sense of that in somatic coaching, we're not fighting things, we're not pushing something away, we're saying yes to what is in a very gentle, compassionate way because we, as human beings, we're wired for stability and so what we bring is our ability. We've tried to become as stable as possible in our environment, so the body will resist anything that changes that stability if there's a sense of it not keeping us safe. And so, we always need to work to ensure that we feel safe at a very deep level. 

There is this theory that Jennifer Garvey Berger studied with Bob Keagan at Harvard, and so there is this evidence that as adults, we can develop, and our brains can rewire. And that development is around our ability to deal with more complexity, which we need in the world now. 

What fascinates me is humanity, human beings, and us as part of something bigger. So, I do have that sense that comes from the body. I do have that sense of a broader consciousness that we are part of and that we kind of get so caught up in being material beings, and actually, that is part of us, but it's not all of us, and so for me, that connection to the spiritual is so fundamental; especially with all of the things that we are doing as human beings to each other in this world that enables me to have a sense of my place in humanity in the world, in the universe.

So, the amygdala can shrink and what we can do is we can work together to be able to rewire the brains and to be able to bring the body back into that balance that it had before.