Introduction

    Hanna Somatic Education is a systematic method of sensory-awareness and muscular training used most commonly for pain management and movement rehabilitation. The method is distinguished by the speed, magnitude and durability of improvements over those of conventional manipulative and pharmacological treatments for functional muscular disorders, including breakthrough pain (BTP).

   This "cousin" of biofeedback uses the brain's capacity for sensory-motor learning to end chronic muscular contractions that commonly result from injuries and long-term stress. It gets its results without need for electrical devices, mechanical or drug interventions, by teaching clients to activate, in themselves, an innate, brain-level, neuromuscular refreshment response similar to yawning. Participants typically get rapid and lasting improvements of movement and physical comfort over the course of one or a few forty-minute sessions.

The Means of Improvement

    Hanna Somatic Education is an active-"teacher-student", rather than a passive-"surgeon-patient" approach. By learning and doing certain selected movement patterns relevant to the client's location of pain, postural distortion, or tension, participants produce sensations in themselves that define the location and relative state of tension of specific muscles or muscle groups. They develop a more vivid bodily awareness and a better ability to control their own movements and muscular tension. They learn how to end painful muscle spasms and to restore comfort and enhanced freedom of movement. Sessions are followed by calmer equilibrium and often, a sense of euphoria.

    Physiologically speaking, the way movements are done in Hanna Somatic Education activates and mutually integrates the sensory and motor areas of the cerebral cortex involved in movement and sensation. Activation of the cerebral cortex in this way causes development of a more complete, better-defined, "higher resolution" body image (with more sensory reference points along the range of motion). With this better-defined body image comes smoother muscular control (precision, speed and grace). The tendency of muscles to contract in cramps or spasm is decreased, moving the neuromuscular system more toward the natural resting state.

Differentiating Functional Disorders from Organic Lesions

    Barring a central nervous system lesion (damage), the most common cause of muscular dysfunction is a kind of habituation of muscular tension. The term "potentiation" applies: muscles have a tendency to contract, which increases as the individual approaches heightened states of arousal; people get "keyed up", "uptight", "guarded", etc. This increase of the tendency to contract is called "potentiation." With injury or long-term stress, heightened potentiation may become chronic; the involved muscles may never fully return to their natural resting state without a deliberate act to end the habituation -- something that generally cannot easily be done by a mere act of will, by visualization, or by manipulative techniques. The sign of such heightened potentiation is spasticity, tendency to cramp, inability to relax, and, at its lower levels, ticklishness. (No one is ticklish when relaxed.)

    Potentiated muscles exist at a heightened level of tonus and may feel fatigued and weak or sore, cause compression of joints (including intervertebral discs), and result in nerve entrapment, tingling, numbness and nerve pain.

    Better mind-body integration is the key to ending habituated potentiation. An explanation that shows the simplicity of it all follows.

Recognizing Sensory-Motor Amnesia

   Thomas Hanna coined a term to refer to this state of potentiation: "sensory-motor amnesia" (SMA). SMA may form after injury (as persistent guarding-reaction behavior) or after long-term stress ("nervous tension"). The term "amnesia" is used because the person is usually unaware of the event to which they are still responding (long after it is past -- a past injury or stressful situation); in fact, they are usually unaware that they are responding to anything at all. They are usually aware only that they hurt or that their movements are restricted -- often, they think, by tissue damage or adhesions. Even if they have some recollection of the precipitating event or condition, their recollection is mental; their recollection of how the event (and their reaction to it) felt is cloaked behind the amnesia. They have never fully recovered from it.

    The stage is set for SMA when the person fails to end their self-guarding behaviors after the injured area has healed or the stressful situation has passed. As the self-guarding reaction persists, it becomes so familiar to the person that they cease to notice it. The associated tensions become automatic. In a state of un-awareness and automatic guarding, they use muscles inappropriate to a movement to help the affected muscles, whose job it ordinarily is to do the movement. This kind of movement behavior sacrifices coordination and grace and instead adds undue effort to movement -- a feeling something like trying to understand a poorly expressed idea or working with buggy software.

    SMA is, therefore, a functional disorder that causes pain and distorts or restricts movement without any organic lesion being present.

    People who have never developed much bodily feeling or coordination are particularly susceptible to SMA, as are people with complicated and resistant personality structures (who hold much nervous tension).

The Experience of Sensory-Motor Amnesia

   The words are "contracted", "painful", "dimmed awareness", "chronic" and "restricted" are relevant.

   The pain associated with sensory-motor amnesia is part of a distorted body image; parts of the body have too much sensation (pain) and parts have too little sensation. Some muscles are potentiated and some are inhibited. Muscles are strong in some parts of the range of motion and weak in others.

    Clients of Hanna somatic educators typically discover (to their surprise) that their muscles twitch or tighten involuntarily when body parts are moved by someone else (e.g., their somatics practitioner); that they move jerkily or lose strength in certain positions; that they inadvertently apply excessive force to some movements and too little in others; and/or that they experience a restricted range of motion.

Recovering from Sensory-Motor Amnesia

    Simple in principle, the techniques of Hanna Somatic Education have the client assume positions and perform movements slowly enough and with enough attention to feel the movements continuously. Constant sensing and control, in combination with the hands-on techniques of the process, shifts the resting set-point of muscle tonus from highly contracted to relaxed.

   A typical maneuver begins with an act of muscular contraction, mindful of the sensations, regulating the amount of effort so as to remain within ones comfort zone; continues with slow relaxation, still mindful of the sensations; and ends at complete relaxation. The client typically relaxes to a deeper level than when the movement began.

    The clinical somatic educator helps to guide the client into position. For example, to involve the muscles of the front of the neck, the client may be guided into position lying on the back. In that position, lifting the head activates the muscles of the front of the neck. More precise, hands-on guidance into position, incorporation of related movements (in this case, an example might be to lift the hips), and coaching such as, "Slowly lift your head and constrict your throat as if you were swallowing," enable the client to locate and activate the muscles effectively in coordinated patterns. Instructions such as the following, used in alleviating TMJ syndrome (habituated clenching of the jaws) might be used: "Now, keep your throat constricted and slowly lower your head. When your head is down, relax your throat," might end such a maneuver. Position, movement, attention to the sensations of the movement, and pacing of the movement produce the result.

   Different movement functions involve different positions and instructions for movement.

    With practice (usually within minutes), participants in Hanna Somatic Education enjoy a significant, lasting, and cumulative improvement of muscular control, coordination, and range of motion. They relax excessive muscular involvement, recover their physical comfort, and move more gracefully. Moreover, they spontaneously detect and relax excessive muscular tensions ordinarily present through habit.

   The typical sensations upon recovery from SMA are that the person feels longer, straighter, more comfortable, more secure, and more movable(a result of relaxation), yet easier to move. Sometimes, people report more "energy moving through the involved areas" -- a sign of greater sensory-awareness.

Contact the author, Lawrence Gold, by e-mail:

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