The Evidence Based Practices of Somatic Yoga for Pain Reduction
Chronic pain often leaves individuals feeling helpless, but the evidence based practices of somatic yoga for pain reduction offers a path to transforming suffering by changing how we relate to it. Somatic yoga bridges traditional movement with modern neuroscience and provides tools to retrain the brain and nervous system, offering relief beyond traditional medical approaches. Techniques like meditation, breathing practices, and mindful movement help to rewire neural pathways, reduce stress, and address underlying emotional causes of pain. Studies show yoga increases gray matter in the brain, improving pain tolerance and emotional regulation (Villemure, 2014).
Who Somatic Yoga Helps
Somatic yoga supports diverse populations in pain that may not be at the health capacity or capability to take a traditional yoga class. Somatic yoga promotes self-care and ultimately allows people to practice autonomy and take control over their own pain with improved body awareness. Many people in pain, can become hyper-focused on their pain sensation because of a heightened nervous system response due to pain that has lasted longer than 3 months. This scientifically-supported evolution of yoga honors ancient wisdom while integrating contemporary understanding, making somatic yoga increasingly valuable to those in pain. By empowering individuals to understand and manage their pain through self-awareness and mind-body connection, somatic yoga offers a holistic approach to healing, fostering resilience and improved quality of life.
How Somatic Yoga Helps People in Pain
Somatic yoga’s therapeutic benefits, backed by scientific research; address chronic pain, stress, and movement efficiency by focusing on the level of the nervous system, muscular patterns, and conscious awareness. Incorporating somatic yoga into daily lifestyle uses a technique called pandiculation that address sensorimotor amnesia, which we will discuss more in this article.
How Somatic Yoga Differs from Traditional Yoga
Somatic yoga differentiates itself from traditional yoga by shifting the focus from external postures and shapes to internal experience. While standard yoga classes often emphasize achieving specific alignment in some form of flow, somatic yoga prioritizes mindful exploration and heightened sensory awareness. It intentionally slows down the practice, allowing practitioners to deeply connect with their body’s subtle signals, fostering a gentle, inquisitive, and respectful relationship with their internal landscape. It goes beyond the usual human response of pushing through the pain, ignoring the pain, or the heightened alert response that every sensation is perceived as dangerous.
By addressing the interplay between movement, breath, attention, and nervous system regulation, a somatic yoga therapist can unlock yoga’s full transformative potential to facilitate profound mind-body connection.
What is Somatic Yoga?
Somatic yoga understands not all bodies are the same and pain can change perception of movement, fear of movement can be heightened, and a person’s mind-body experiences in the past can affect how one chooses to move, or not move, in the present (Van der Kolk, B. A. (2016). The Body Keeps the Score.) Rooted in the Greek concept of “soma,” meaning the whole living body, this practice acknowledges that physical symptoms, emotions, and thoughts are intrinsically linked. Our pain is never solely a physical problem. It always has a mental and emotional component. Unlike approaches that separate mind and body, somatic yoga recognizes that our physical structure holds our life experiences and habitual patterns of tension.
Modern somatic yoga practices, influenced by pioneers like Moshe Feldenkrais, Thomas Hanna and Eleanor Criswell, focus on enhancing body awareness and addressing chronic muscle tension. Feldenkrais’s method utilizes gentle movements to improve physical function and expand self-concept, while Hanna introduced the concept of sensorimotor amnesia and the technique of pandiculation to reset muscle patterns. Neurologically, somatic yoga engages sensory-motor feedback loops, ultimately rewiring neural pathways and creating new, healthier movement possibilities (Hanna, 1988). Somatic Yoga also enhances proprioception and interoception. Proprioception is the sense of where a person’s limbs are as they move through space outside of the body and interoception is body’s ability to perceive and understand what is happening inside the body (Meehan, 2021).
What is Sensorimotor Amnesia
Sensorimotor amnesia, a concept coined by Thomas Hanna, author of Somatics, describes the gradual loss of awareness and control over muscle groups due to stress, trauma, or habitual movements. Sensorimotor amnesia is when the brain “forgets” how to sense and control certain muscles, leading to chronic tension, pain, and restricted movement. This isn’t a muscle problem, but a neurological one: the brain’s sensorimotor cortex loses its ability to accurately perceive and manage these muscle patterns. Thomas Hanna explains this as muscles being stuck in a “red light” (fight-or-flight) or “green light” (startle) response, long after the triggering event has passed (Hanna, 1988). This loss of connection means we often don’t even realize we’re holding tension, making traditional stretching done in yoga class or posture correction or alignment-based yoga, ineffective in the long-term.
Our brains can change over time to increase a heightened sensitivity in pain, but the good thing is we can change our brains towards less pain too! Thanks to Thomas Hanna’s work in somatics, this sensorimotor amnesia is reversible through somatic techniques like pandiculation, which help re-educate the brain and restore voluntary muscle control.
Pandiculation Versus Traditional Yoga Stretching
Pandiculation is an instinctive stretch-and-yawn we see in animals and is the core somatic technique for releasing tension and restoring healthy muscle function. Unlike passive stretching, it’s an active, conscious process involving three phases: conscious muscle contraction, slow controlled release, and then complete conscious relaxation. This process resets the gamma motor neuron system, which regulates muscle tone that is often disrupted by sensorimotor amnesia.
Scientific Research Favors Somatic Yoga for Pain
Somatic yoga is now increasingly supported by scientific research, validating its effectiveness for various conditions. Many studies have confirmed that somatics are effective in regulating the nervous system, reducing stress and activating the parasympathetic nervous system to get students out of the stress response (fight or flight). Studies also show strong support that somatics reduces chronic pain and improves body awareness and control over pain levels (Huang, 2022). Research shows that teaching individuals how to practice independently gives them agency over their own bodies having dramatic effects on their psychological well-being. Evidence of somatics to reduce PTSD symptoms by focusing on bodily sensations, a gentle approach easily adapted for people in pain (Brom, 2017).
The late Eleanor Criswell Hanna, a leading educator on Thomas Hanna’s work in Somatics, combined her education and experience in Psychotherapy and Yoga Therapy into a wonderful program that I was lucky to be a part of before her passing. The work of these amazing front runners in somatic education, have now proven the effectiveness of somatics in reducing stress and anxiety, and demonstrating the accessibility and efficacy of somatic techniques even in virtual settings.
The science behind somatics continues to validate the credibility behind this mindfulness-based approach, especially as an accessible approach for people in chronic pain or those skeptical of yoga as an approach that is out of their current body capability.
The Evidence Shows My Clients Have Benefited
In my own somatic yoga therapy practice, I have helped hundreds of my clients decrease, control, and overcome pain with these techniques. While somatics is often more effective done on a regular basis to retrain the brain from the level of the nervous system, my clients notice considerable change after just one session of somatic yoga. Many of my clients notice significant differences in their energy levels, moods, and mental state. A good majority of my clients that practice somatic yoga before bedtime, sleep better than they have in years. My clients have also found that if they have been on prescription medications for pain, they have finally been able to work with their doctors in decreasing their medications and some have been able to get off of their pain medications all together, because they have regained agency over their own health and pain using the tools of somatic yoga.
If you are curious about the somatic approach you can reach out for a 15 minute phone consultation for private yoga therapy via tele-health here. You can also try some of my on-demand somatic classes for common pain ailments. View the library here. Another option is to attend my Mindful Monday’s at 6-7:00pm CST. In this class, we virtually work on somatic movement based practices, as well as breathing practices, and mindfulness and stress reduction techniques. You can register to join virtually here. You can also try a free somatic movement meditation on Insight Timer Meditation app here.
Brom, 2017. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5518443/
Hanna, 1988. Somatics.
Huang, 2022. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36247048/
Meehan, 2021. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7868595/
Van der Kolk, B. A. (2016). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. New York, NY: Penguin Books.
Villemure, 2014. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23696275/
