Bodywise: Hello Padmadarshini, you currently offer Somatic Movement Workshops and have offered Somatic Yoga courses. Can you describe what Somatic Movement is and how it informs your approach to yoga?
Padmadarshini: Soma means something like ‘conscious living body’ and it is really a word quite new in our common vocabulary. So everyone wonders what it means! To give an idea – notice now the sensations you feel of your feet on the ground or the sensations of you hand touching or holding something. This is your somatic experience. In other words, it is the inner subjective experience we each have of our own body. No one else can feel the sensations of your feet on the ground, your hands touching something. No one else can feel your body from the inside, only you, and that is your somatic experience. Another word I like is embodied… soma is our embodied experience… being very intimate with the felt sense of our bodies.
So in a somatic yoga practice, I look to stay very close to my own body sensations as I practice, listening and feeling and being guided from the inside. Practicing in this way is deeply nourishing and yoga becomes a practice of mindful movement meditation. And when I teach yoga, this is how I like to approach the practice – taking time to pause, feel, notice, be curious and present with our selves – body, heart and mind.
BW: What led you to train in Integrative Bodywork and Somatic Movement Therapy?
PD: A few years ago, after many years focussing on yoga and yoga trainings, I completed a diploma in Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy which has really deepened and supported my work. An aspect of this was exploring and embodying all the infant movement patterns, i.e. the process we all move through as babies who can’t move themselves through space at all to becoming toddlers running around everywhere. These movement patterns underlie all our movements and how we in interact with the world around us.
Another aspect was being introduced to a practice called ‘authentic movement’ in which we close our eyes and listen to and are guided from inner impulses to movement. We enter the movement with no idea of what will happen and no plan and just see what emerges. I love this practice – it is so refreshing and liberating and in a way different to everything I had done before.
Recently I have also started offering somatic movement workshops at Bodywise and on retreats. In these workshops, rather than teach a structure of the yoga poses, I work in a more open way, finding ways to let our bodies find their own shapes and forms and ways of moving. For example, we might bring awareness to our bones and let this awareness direct how we move. For many people, this way of entering the body is really liberating, enjoyable and connects deeply to their emotional and creative selves.
BW: Who benefits from your Somatic Movement workshops?
PD: My somatic movement workshop are open to anyone and everyone – no prior experience of bodywork or movement in any form is needed – anyone who feels drawn to exploring connection to themselves, others, and the world through the body.
My next one, “Finding Home in our Bodies”, is on Saturday 23 February – a day long workshop.
BW: What can I expect from the workshops?
PD: I will offer some guided meditation and movement explorations – suggestions and ways into feeling and connecting with our bodies. There will be some music, some resting on the ground sensing ourselves, perhaps some very simple hands on touch with a partner, likely some dancing and I hope fun and a sense of play and ease. There is no pressure to do or be anything – I create a space to allow ourselves to give ourselves what we need. On this next workshop, I am going to introduce a taste of the authentic movement practice.
BW: What do you love about the somatic approach?
PD: I love that our bodies – when and if we really listen – hold so much information for us. Our body – our soma – is a living, creative, intelligent life force within each of us and often knows so much more than our thinking mind realizes!
BW: Tell us something about yourself
PD: I love being outdoors, by water especially the sea and I am a budding bird watcher and gardener!
BW: What’s one of your Desert Island Discs?
PD: Oh that’s hard… okay the song Whispers on the fairground from the album Perfect by Eddie Reader. She has an amazing voice on this album.
To book on Padmadarshini’s workshops, please check our booking information page.