{"id":1070,"date":"2017-06-05T15:09:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-05T22:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/somatics.com\/wordpress\/inside-hanna-somatic-education\/"},"modified":"2017-06-05T15:09:00","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T22:09:00","slug":"inside-hanna-somatic-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somatics.com\/wordpress\/inside-hanna-somatic-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Hanna Somatic Education"},"content":{"rendered":"

F<\/span>orty-two years ago, <\/span><\/b>an educator by the name of Thomas Hanna embarked on a course of exploration that led to a major advance in the treatment of people with chronic, non-malignant pain from injuries and aging. This article will give you an inside look at one of the most potent developments in the last one hundred thirty years, or so, of research and development into the origins and elimination of pain in human beings. This development came from a tradition of movement education and sensory development that has come to be known as, “somatic education”.<\/span>
\n
<\/span>
\nThe key distinction of this tradition is that its methods empower participants to take control of their own physiology, and in so doing, of their physical well-being as they age.<\/span>
\n
<\/span>
\nBACKGROUND<\/b><\/span>
\nIn the late 1960s, during the heyday of the human potential movement, Thomas Hanna held the position of chairman of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Florida at Gainesville.<\/span>
\n <\/b><\/span>
\nIn those days, the complexion of the humanities in academic life was different from what it is, today. Unlike today’s climate, which is bent upon the deconstruction of the primacy of any kind of knowledge, whatsoever, in those days, Dr. Hanna’s philosophical interest was <\/b>about more than mental propositions and positions; he had an earnest desire to understand the human condition in such a way that it would lead to both human freedom and personal competence — not just freedom from all constraints, but improvement in capabilities, the awakening of practical human functions.<\/span>
\n
<\/span>
\nThat desire drew him more than once into conflicts that embroiled students and the university administration during a time when young people were experimenting with both ancient and new methods of mind-expansion (remember, this was the 60s), and their professors were often caught in the middle. Dr. Hanna tended to advocate for the students.<\/span>
\n
<\/span>
\nUltimately, his interests led him to California, where he served as the first director of the Saybrook Institute (now known as the Humanistic Psychology Institute — HPI). It was during that time that he heard of and became acquainted with a man whose own interests had led him to develop methods of improving human functioning and sensory awareness through movement education. His name was Moshe Feldenkrais, a Russian genius whose methods of education have since come to be known as Feldenkrais Somatic Integration.<\/span>
\n
<\/span>
\nFeldenkrais was a man of many abilities and interests — an electrical engineer, a research scientist in high-energy physics, and a black-belt judoka who had founded the first school of Judo in Europe (France). His methods of improving the functioning of the brain and muscular system had grown out of his studies of and training in the methods of F. Matthias Alexander (The Alexander Technique), the methods of Gerda Alexander (Eutony) and judo.<\/span>
\n
<\/span>
\nHanna found Feldenkrais’ methods and views fascinating and, in addition to including a section on Feldenkrais in Hanna’s book, Explorers of Humankind (1979)<\/i>, he invited Feldenkrais to conduct a training in America, a training course that Hanna organized and directed and in which he participated as a student.<\/span>
\n
<\/span>
\nThat training began Hanna’s sixteen-year odyssey of exploration as a practitioner of the methods of Functional Integration, as Feldenkrais’ method was then known. His experiences during those years of private practice and his ongoing, absorbing interest in developments in related fields (as founding editor of Somatics: the Magazine Journal of the Bodily Arts and Sciences), <\/i><\/span>led to the advances in the field of somatic education that led to Hanna Somatic Education, a form of clinical somatic education used to end pain and improve mobility.<\/span>
\n
<\/span>
\nHanna Somatic Education developed from the convergence of ideas and discoveries of many individuals. Its methods rest upon a simple principle brought forward by Feldenkrais, and before him, by F.M. Alexander: that improvements of human functioning rest ultimately upon human attention and intentional application of effective methods of change to oneself, i.e., upon education. Hanna Somatic Education freely applies the principles and methods brought forth by Hanna’s predecessors; however, to those methods, Hanna added something more, something that was his unique contribution to the field and that created a major improvement in the speed and degree of improvement possible with somatic education: a technique now called, “assisted pandiculation” — a strange term with a simple meaning.<\/span>
\n
<\/span>
\nTHE PANDICULAR RESPONSE<\/b><\/span>
\nThe term, pandiculation, comes from the study of animal behavior — ethology. One paper<\/span> in particular, <\/span> <\/span>on pandicular behavior of sheep fetuses in-utero<\/span>, published by researcher A.F. Frazier, piqued Hanna’s interest and led to his developing a new clinical technique.<\/span>
\n
<\/span>
\nThe term, pandiculation, refers to something that you have undoubtedly seen cats and dogs do upon arising from rest. It’s something you often do, yourself, before getting out of bed in the morning or upon standing up from a prolonged period of sitting. It’s also something referred to by an expectant mother as her baby “kicking” inside her womb. It’s a sensuous movement of refreshment and preparation for activity.<\/span>
\n
<\/span>
\n<\/p>\n

\n