Applications of clinical somatic education include:

The processes of somatic education are comfortable and gentle. For that reason, the improvements commonly surprise clients, who often expect something like the sometimes grueling and lengthy course of treatment experienced in common clinical methods.

Somatic education accelerates the results of physical training and eliminates or reduces dependency on drugs or therapy for many types of physical problems. Surgery can sometimes be avoided and, in many cases, the results of an unsuccessful surgery can be improved, often substantially or even completely.

To see a partial list of conditions that can be corrected through somatic education, click "list".

To end chronic pain without surgery, pain meds, or muscle relaxants:

With decisive improvements after each session, the clinical methods of Hanna Somatic Education end chronic pain from injury, aging, and overuse. Hanna Somatic Education improves muscular control, freedom of movement, grace, strength, and overall health. It is common to regain much of the grace and flexibility typical of people ten to twenty years younger. How does it work?

This website provides explanations, abundant information, images, and access to resources and practitioners who practice this approach. Use the blue navigation bar at the top of the page to explore this website.

Improving Brain Functioning

To use the metaphor of computer hardware and software, the body is the hardware (or "wetware") and what the brain has learned is its software. (Reflexes and certain physiological functions are "hard wired" into the nervous system.) Somatic education upgrades brain and bodily functioning by upgrading the "software" (control faculties acquired by learning) with which your brain controls muscular control and coordination. You "install" such "software" in yourself by a learn-by-doing process (i.e., learning and practicing safe, self-controlled movement patterns). The sensations of the movement patterns enter your memory and serve as the approximate patterns by which you control your movements (adjusted to the needs of the moment). The improvements of body-awareness and control may seem somehow remarkable, and the relief of pain, miraculous, but are really the result of higher integration of your nervous and muscular systems. A series of sessions produces lasting and substantial improvements in physical comfort, flexibility, strength, and mobility.

The human brain is 90% dedicated to two classes of functioning: sensing and moving.

Of that 90%, it is said that people use only 5 - 10%. Somatic education substantially increases brain functioning by improving its degree of integration. These improvements affect multiple levels of the human being: attention and attention span, pattern recognition, exercise of intention, ability to convert ideas into tangible actualities, as well as the functioning of the physical body. These are side-effects of somatic education.

I am one of the thirty-eight people Dr. Hanna trained in 1990 and among between one hundred and two hundred practitioners, worldwide, certified to practice Hanna Somatic Education.