SOMATICS: Somatic reprogramming

The Strozzi Institute proposes a new place for the transformation of emotions, beliefs and conditioned tendencies: The body. A place from which to declare our purpose and experience our dignity, upholding the dignity of others.

The distinction that this methodology provides compared to others that use the body to transform emotions, beliefs and conditioned tendencies, when it comes to developing inspiring and capable leaders, is that it does not aspire to transform them from the body, but to transform the body as a place that supports and manifests them, reprogramming the implicit memory of it.

Our body tells our story, to others and to ourselves. The place where we are in our “life process” is the result of an emotional and experiential background that not only manifests our own life experience but also incorporates the learning, traumas or solutions of the generations that have preceded us.

All that history is represented in our physical position, in the way we hold our heads, in how we tilt them when talking to others… From where we observe when doing so may indicate distrust or condescension, for example. If our axis when we stand in front of others is tilted forward or backward, it is related to the embodied idea we have of ourselves; if we prefer to go unnoticed or if we need to occupy a more apparent place. Our voice is also physical presence and so are the silences or imperceptible movements of our eyebrows.

Our presence is telling a story, our story, and that story influences the way we are perceived by others and the way we perceive ourselves, the actions we feel capable of performing and the way we undertake them. Our conditioned tendency or form of spontaneous reaction to a stimulus or challenge is also the result of an embodied process that begins in the early stages of life as an adaptive specialization for our survival.

None of this is new, of course, kinesiology studies the relationships between emotion and position or movement and the physical manifestation of attitude in human beings. What is different in this methodology and is the cornerstone of this work is the idea that it is precisely in the body, modifying the implicit memory of the body, where transformation is possible and not through intellectual learning.

We start from the conviction that the conditioned tendency, our way of reacting under pressure, whether it is fight, flight, dissociation or submission, are adaptive mechanisms engraved in our implicit memory in vital stages of non-intellectual learning and that therefore they are not transformable through an intellectual process. Trauma and shame also support a belief based on implicit memory and are difficult to transform through a conscious cognitive process.

Somatic reprogramming, the body that “I am” versus the “Cartesian” idea of the body that “I possess” (I think, therefore I am) leads us to face the reality of our existence and our purpose from an absolutely pragmatic vision. Thus, in the same way that I do not “possess” a body, but “am” a body, neither do I “have a commitment”, but “I am the commitment”.

The pragmatic reality that supports the embodiment of our vital process, of our purpose, avoids the procrastination that involves having to convince our body, from the brain we think we are, of the new actions that need to be carried out, of the different level of response that we are needing at this moment in our lives.

Action is our way of communicating with the universe. Of course, words are also action, just as silence or non-action can be, at a given moment. We therefore consider action the exercise of our will, but not thought. “Knowledge is just a rumor until it becomes muscle.”

Thought can also be a place of procrastination, a waiting period between impulse and transformative action. In this sense, a personal decision would be understood as action when it is embodied and mobilizes us.

It is also through action, therefore, that we will transform our body and with it, the vital process it supports.

We work on “centering” to configure our place of coherence and power; we will learn to “face” circumstances from our dignity as opposed to the dignity of the other; we “extend” in a connected way, feeling the presence of what surrounds us; we “introduce” ourselves in an accurate and genuine way into the reality of the other or our project and we “combine” with others, in projects and ideas, without mixing or rushing, maintaining our individuality and criteria, our center, without diluting or opposing ourselves, sustaining and convincing. Learning the value of that big Yes that is behind everything we have learned to say No to.

We use the body to change the body and we do this by using physical exercises and movements from Aikido. Performing new actions or transforming our conditioned tendency, exercising the body, is a literal metaphor that the Strozzi Institute maintains as a process of change.

As a non-aggressive martial art, developed in the first half of the twentieth century by teachers from various Eastern schools and philosophies, Aikido develops the ability to oppose an effective defense through the use of the opponent’s strength, exercising enveloping movements, feints, falls and harmonic combinations, performed from our center, to strengthen our center. Thus, we integrate and “assimilate” the opposite. Thus, the opponent’s energy, his strength or his aggressiveness, become the best ally of our purpose.

The transfer of this external opponent or enemy to the figure of the internal opponent, which is our shame, limiting belief, conditioned tendency or trauma, allows us to use the reactive force of that part of our vital process that is not contributing to our purpose and to assimilate it again. To do this, we use the space or the partners with whom we practice the keys or katas.

The success of this process of embodiment or assimilation of conflict will therefore depend, not on a conscious intellectual process, but on a physical practice that must be maintained through numerous repetitions of tastings, statements and centering exercises. We speak of 300 repetitions so that the body learns and the new action is available and 3000 repetitions so that this new action is already the only possible one and the previous one has ceased to exist in our body or implicit memory.

Learn more about somatic programming.