In this episode, we're exploring how Hannah's somatics can revolutionize the way massage therapists address chronic pain both in themselves and their clients. Welcome to the Conscious Practitioner, the podcast helping massage therapists and wellness practitioners align with purpose, create deeper client relationships. transformation and evolve your practice, even if you feel stuck. I'm your host, Dr. Jess, and each week we address your biggest practice challenges from boundaries to burnout and everything in between. And together we uncover the inner blind spots behind these outer struggles that when mastered transform you from a skilled practitioner to a truly impactful one. Today I am chatting with Nikki, a Hannah somatics educator and a former dance instructor whose personal journey through severe chronic pain led her to discover this transformative practice. In today's episode you will learn How Hannah's Somatics works to release chronic muscle tension and improve mobility. Why massage therapists are very uniquely positioned to incorporate this method into their practice for better client outcomes. And practical steps to integrate Hannah's Somatics into your self care routines to prevent burnout and rediscover your passion for bodywork. A bold statement, I know. But stay tuned as we dig into Nikki's wealth of experience and her personal healing story, and it will inspire you and maybe even equip you to re imagine the way you approach pain management for yourselves and your clients. So with that, let's dive in to our conversation with Nikki.

Well, Nicky, can you tell me about pendiculation, which is genuinely my favorite word in the English language. And I say it all the time. Every time I teach a workshop, I'm like, hey, let me tell you my favorite word. And when I was reading up on your website, you have that word in there, and I was so excited. So can you tell me all about pendiculation?

I can. I can tell you as much as I know about pendiculation. So two types of pendiculation, involuntary and voluntary. Although I always like to say with the involuntary like we see all vertebrate animals do pendiculation, which we commonly think of as a stretch, but it's very different than a stretch. And I think it's interesting that we say that the animals are doing it involuntary, but we don't actually know because no one's been able to ask them if they are thinking about it or not. So in Thomas Hanna's work, though, with pendiculation, we're asking our clients to do a pendiculation, which is a two part process. First part is contraction of muscles, muscle groups, and the second part is the slow, controlled release. So pretty, pretty simple concept actually, but super, super effective. an interesting thing that Eleanor Criswell Hanna said in our, in our training that when animals are sick, they don't pendiculate. So if you have a, a pet at home, a cat or a dog or a horse even and they wake up from their nap and they don't do that, what we think of as that stretch, that sort of downward dog looking stretch they're probably not feeling good because most of the time when they wake up, they're going to pendiculate.

Okay, that is super fascinating. I mean, the pet thing, but your definition of it in particular. Whenever I talk about pendiculation, I always say to somebody, just get weird about it. Like, just go into bed. And make sure the door's closed and nobody's there. And then just do, do the thing, you know, like make noises and let your body go. And you feel that naturally you're going to like tense up. And then eventually there's going to be this release afterwards. And it's like euphoric. So to hear that you've got these two different. I suppose methodologies behind pediculation is super cool, but I do want to loop back to something very important. Because during that definition, you mentioned a number of things, like panosomatics and where you got your training. So let's, let's veer into that territory, because pendiculation being something we naturally do, great, but I'm quite curious not to, like, revolve our conversation around this, but as a really nice segue into what exactly it is you do and why something like this is part of your practice.

Okay, well, where to start? So I am a dance teacher by trade. I started dancing when I was about five years old. Mostly tap and jazz a little bit of ballet, but mostly tap and jazz. And I started, Teaching dance, student teaching dance. When I was in junior high moved into running a studio, which at first I didn't know I was doing. I was just teaching classes after school. The lady that had been teaching dance in our town had moved away and I just started teaching. And 20 years later, I was like, I think I'm running a dance school. So I ran a, Quite a competitive dance school for 24 years in Alberta. And I suffered a hip injury. In 2013, I believe it was unfortunately it was due to over stretching and had I not had the injury, I would have never found Hanasomatix. Had I known Hanasomatix, in my low abdomen on my right side and just kept trying to stretch it and stretch it continuously. I was doing a lot of yoga doing a pigeon pose. I don't know if you're familiar with pigeon pose, but. With the right leg behind me I was flat in that pose but still had this tight feeling in my low abdomen so I would just be and lifting my torso and to stretch the distance between my ribcage and my hips finally I ended up tearing the cartilage in my hip joint. I didn't know that's what happened at first. I didn't feel it in the moment, but later that night after that yoga class, I was like, Ooh, something, something doesn't feel right. I think I might've pulled a muscle. And from there I ended up a couple of weeks later thinking, I better go in and get this checked out. It doesn't seem to be getting any better. And that began my journey first of trying to figure out what was actually going on. The doctor sent me immediately to the sports clinic in Edmonton. they were pretty sure it was a labral tear, but of course, you know, how our, how our medical system works. I had to wait for my MRI after waiting for the MRI, we got the confirmation that it was indeed a labral tear. I was. I was preparing myself for the worst case scenario, which at that time I thought was going to be that I would have to wait for the surgery. Instead, when I finally got in to see the surgeon, of my hip joint was quite bad. There was a lot of arthritis in my joint, which by the way, this happened three months before I turned 40. So by the time I got into the surgeon, I was already 40. But hearing that I had arthritis in my hip joint, first of all, was just like, what are you talking about? I'm only 40 years old. Why would I have This is crazy. and then he told me that the chances of the repair surgery working were, were pretty terrible. And I don't remember the exact numbers, but it was something like, there's. A 20 percent chance that this is going to stay the same. There's a 60 percent chance it could be worse. There's. you know, whatever percentage left that it's, it could work. It was a very, very low, low percentage that it could work. So he recommended not to have the surgery which at that time, like I said, I had only prepared myself for waiting for the surgery. So I was I was pretty shocked to hear that he wasn't going to repair it and I really wasn't sure, that meant for me, what, like what would come next. for that either. So

the,

sent to the chronic pain clinic. They sent me to physiotherapy, of course, which at that time really did not help physiotherapy, like we're talking like this was about 10 years ago now. That time, they spent a lot or seemed to me that they were spending a lot of time focusing on strengthening, and I was in great shape at that time. I really, I didn't need strengthening but on top of the fact that they wanted to try to give me more strengthening exercises, I had to drive an hour to get to physiotherapy because I lived in a I live in a small town west of Edmonton, where at that time we didn't have a physiotherapist. So even just driving to physio would aggravate my hip. It's my right hip. So driving would cause me pain. I'd go to physio. They would ask me things like can you squat? Can you crouch down to the floor? And I would be like, well, I, yeah, I can. But I, I feel like I shouldn't cause that's going to cause me pain. Of course. And sure enough, you know, the next day I would be in agony from doing a couple squats or crouching down to the floor. I quit going to physio continued with the chronic pain clinic. And in the meantime, I joined a bunch of Facebook groups hip impingement hip replacement groups, different things like that. And in one of those groups. Somebody had mentioned that the only thing that they were able to do to help with their pain was Hannah somatics I was like Somatics, what is this? I've never heard of this before. I'd never even heard the word somatics before so I Start googling and researching. What is this somatics? And I was very intrigued just from that little bit that I started to read To read, and I bought Thomas's book, Somatics. This book right here, as you can see, it's a well loved book now. But the first one I bought actually digitally, because I wanted to read it immediately. And of course, in the little town I live in, you can't get a book unless you're going to buy it digitally. I read the entire book the first night. And was just mind blown by this whole idea of pendiculating and of going into a contraction, rather than stretching it. And I right away started thinking, wow, if, if this is really true, I, I've been doing things so backwards. and it, like I said, it just blew my mind. So then I started finding, looking for somebody to do the work with me. Could I find somebody that could do a session? Is there anybody teaching these classes? And there was nobody in the area. I believe at that time, so we're talking about 2014. The closest person to me that did Hannah somatics was in BC on the island. So a little, a little too far for me to travel for a session. So then I thought maybe, maybe I should look into this training. And

is available

do the training. There was Martha Peterson who you may have heard of does essential somatics.

see

doing a training in Calgary. When I researched her background and saw that she was a certified Hannah somatic educator, I was curious, well, where, where did she do her training? What, what does, what is all out there? What, where can I do this? And I found the Novato Institute for somatic research and training in Novato, California. And started comparing the price of how much it would cost to go to California versus to go to Calgary. The price really wasn't that much different other than paying for a flight. So I chose to go to California, offense to Calgary, but I've been there before. off I went to California, 2015 in June of 2015 was when I first started the training. Interesting part about that is that I didn't try any of the exercises. I didn't have a session. I found no offense to Thomas, but I did find. The exercises in his book to be quite confusing. he was a philosopher and I don't know if that's why, but the way the exercises are written in the back, they're like lesson one, and none of them are named and he calls all of the exercises, the cat stretch. And so of course, if you've done yoga, there's, there's one cat stretch, but this man, All of the exercises were called the cat stretch, and then they all had these numbers and letters. And my dancer brain just couldn't compute it. So I read the book, but didn't try it. Went to Novato quite blind, really. I just felt inside myself that this was something I needed to do. And the very first day, as soon as I met the dancers, the people in the training and heard their stories and how this work had worked for them. I knew I was at the right place. And so like, I like to tell people real, if, if I had known hannasomatics before I would have been able to use it as a tool to self diagnose and realize that the pain that I was feeling wasn't. It wasn't muscular pain. I was feeling this tightness because of this hernia that I actually had which they ended up finding throughout the time of finding the labral tear with the MRI and other ultrasounds, they were like, Oh, you also have this femoral hernia, which that I did have repaired by the way. They did repair the femoral hernia. They did not repair the labral tear. So yeah, that's, that's how I found out about it. That's what led me to the work. I traveled to California twice a year for three years complete my training. And I actually continued to travel to California as part of the teaching team afterwards until COVID came then they moved the work online. So I have continued to teach with them online. Yeah, that's how I found out. About semantics and nobody, knew what it was, or at least anyone I talked to at that time, even when I graduated in 2018 I felt like there was just a real lack of knowledge in what semantics was, and especially Hannah semantics.

I want to dig more into the specifics as to what exactly HANA semantics is in a moment, but there are a few points to your story that I feel are certainly worth dwelling on. And the first one is how overstretching causes injuries. I mean, I, I see it. all the time in my clinical practice. I work with a lot of other practitioners and I work with a lot yogis, people who practice yoga all the time. I'm reluctant to call them yogis, but what better word do we have? I mean, that's, that's the shtick, right? You go into yoga class and by and large, it's stretch, stretch, stretch. Maybe you do a athletic type class where you do a bit of contraction, but not necessarily the case. And yet when, when I teach orthopedic assessment, Which, of course, is all about understanding not how joints move, but what prevents joints from moving and causing pain during movement. One of the things I say is, when a joint becomes unstable, all of the muscles surrounding the joint become hypertonic in order to stabilize the joint. Like, that's just pure physiology. It's what happens when a joint gets injured. And quite frankly, joints get injured a heck of a lot more than muscles. And when muscles get injured, eh, they're fine. They're fine. They'll be

Yeah.

Joints, largely vascular, nevertheless. As practitioners, be it a yoga teacher, or a massage therapist, or acupuncturist, or a physio, it doesn't matter. As practitioners, we end up working a lot with people who come in and they're like, Yeah, I got some tight hips, I got a tight shoulder, I got a tight neck, I got a tight fill in the blank. And by and large, we go at it. We're just working on the tissues, working on the fascia. I love fascial work, don't get me wrong, and Lord knows I love a good massage. But when we actually talk about the underlying issues, which in your case, a labrum tear, And a femoral hernia, this is a joint issue, and the muscles become tight for a very specific reason, right, like to stabilize it. So it's really cool, and I want to dwell on this fact that the system that you're talking about, which again I want to dig into, is really about recognizing the fact that muscles are tight for a reason, it's not just arbitrary, and when we understand what the reason, and we work with the physiology's natural inclinations, from what I'm hearing you say, pretty amazing things happen. Thanks a lot. Silence. Silence.

First of all, I do want to say. that somatics didn't cure my hip. I still have a labral tear. I could tell everybody it's not like it cured it. I still have this labral tear happening, but I've learned how to live with the condition. And I do want to mention there was a couple of things that helped there. Hannah somatics was the first thing that helped because of course, like you're saying, the muscles around my hip became so, you know, Engaged all the time, trying to protect this site of injury that my walk was off and it was causing me low back pain. It was causing me more hip pain. So I did begin to be able to relieve some of that pain with the exercises, which right away gave me power back in my own body. Because as a dancer, I felt like I had. Full control of my body until this injury happened, and then I felt like I had no control. So being able to take some of that control back for myself was really, really powerful for me. But then I actually did have a stem cell injection done. I had that done a month before Canada stopped all stem cell injections. I count myself as lucky because it, it really did help with that inflammation in the joint. It took about three months after I had it done. So for three months I was in a horrible flare up. But after that, the amount of my daily pain I would say had improved by I'd say a good 70 percent better after that stem cell injection.

And Going

I, I also want to just point out that

the, the, the, the,

feel like it was a recipe of things that I've had to find that helped me to live with the condition, just like it was a recipe of things that took me into that,

so,

to, to having the injury, you know, it wasn't just because I was overstretching. That was the majority of it. But I also had wear and tear in my hip joint from years and years of dance. I have hypermobility in my hips. So that would have led to a little more wear and tear in my hips. so I, I really like to talk about the recipe because I really do feel like anyone in chronic pain, they're not, most people aren't going to find one thing that helps them. Being able to find a recipe of things to help with that pain is really what people need. I've really noticed with the massage therapist I'm teaching, how great they are at other things to people. They've got these toolboxes with all these courses that they take. They have so many different tools that they can help people suggesting different things they can try, which is just so great. What was the actual question now? Sorry, I got off topic and I'm, I lost it.

just, we're just rolling with it, just discussing that, that when, when we talk about. treating a condition, we need to work with the body's physiology. And

Oh, yeah.

I think, I think it's really important to consider that recipe because chronic pain is, it is, it's so challenging. It is so unbelievably challenging. And as, as an instructor myself, and I know that you also teach one of the things I find with a certain percentage of continuing education courses and taking workshops like this is My way's the only way, you know, you go into a workshop and it's like, I got this system and it doesn't matter if somebody's been in pain for two weeks or 20 years. We got this. But the reality is, and in my opinion, this is like a pretty hard reality. Chronic pain requires a lot of different things coming in. So I'm really grateful that you, you spoke about the fact that you did do regeneration therapy, which I am a massive fan of, be it stem cell or prolotherapy. And I'm sure there were many other modalities that were involved. And yet there was this one that for you seemed to be like, okay, We got all these other things, but this is, this is the thing that really tipped the scale for you personally was moving more into this somatic form of body awareness and body work and how you use your body. Does that, does that sound right?

Yep. And HANA sabbatic education is really about teaching our clients to be their own educator. We're not doing the work for them. We're doing the work with them. We are teaching them how to. Do the work themselves. And that's what really gave me the power back in my body was knowing that I didn't have to rely on waiting to go in for a massage or acupuncture or any of those other things that if I was feeling some pain, I could tackle some of it myself. And I'll just come back to the muscles surrounding that, that joint and holding those contractions. The reason that the stretching is so dangerous and somewhat ineffective is that if you don't change the message from your brain to the muscles, The muscles will stay contracted. And if you try to stretch them, you just cause the stretch reflex. And those muscles are going to just contract back again. For the first, that full three years of, of my training in Novato, as at the time, I still owned my dance studio. And they really encouraged us to not use the word stretch to stop thinking about stretching. And I was like, I can't go back to my studio and tell the kids, guess what? We're not going to stretch anymore. Like, this is ridiculous. were two other dancers in the training with me and all three of us would be like, how, are we going to tackle this stretching problem? Like, what are we going to do? And we finally, and it took us years to finally come to this sort of a piece with it, where I'm like, you are, first of all, what is the intention? Why are you stretching if you're stretching because you're a dancer and you need to do a beautiful jetty on the stage? I understand that if you're stretching to try to get into splits or some weird position, because. next to you can do it to me. That just doesn't seem like the intention is, is really worth it. And the next thing is, are you stretching from a relaxed muscle? you are stretching a muscle that is being held tight by your brain. you're going to cause a stretch reflex, or worse, you're going to injure yourself because you're pulling and pulling on these muscles that your brain is like, why are you pull? Well, stop it, stop stretching, and you end up tearing things and ripping things because you continuously stretching these muscles that are in this knot. So have the intention. What why are you stretching? is the purpose? And to make sure that we're stretching from a relaxed, relaxed muscle. So with most of my dancers being that they were mostly children, most of them hadn't had a lot of injuries or, surgeries. They, most of them hadn't, you know, lived terribly traumatic lives where they have chronic contraction in their bodies from things they've been through. And I did have a couple of them. I had one dancer who did have a lot of surgeries. And when I started studying kind of somatics, I was able to actually help her to be able to gain some flexibility. By resetting the resting level of those muscles first before stretching. So one of the things I do stress with my dancers is that Make sure you're stretching from a relaxed muscle that we're not stretching muscles that are being held tight, especially if you've had an injury, you need to be very gentle. You need to reset the resting level before you can stretch.

Huh.

So, I came up with sort of a little rhyme for the dancers. I tell them, 5, before you stretch, pendiculate.

I love it. I love it. That's great.

It's really important.

think that should be a run for everybody.

Yeah. Yeah. And for afterwards as well, like if you think of people out, like let's say with lifting weights for their biceps and they're continuously doing these reps and they're building their biceps really big, but they're not taking them back to that resting level, which doesn't mean you're going to lose all the strength that you've just created, but you're going to take it back to that resting level by adding a pendiculation at the end. So when you finish lifting your weights. Pendiculate. Before you stretch, pendiculate. And it's so easy to do once you know how to do it.

So I'm curious if we can dig into, I guess, some of the specifics here. And there's a few curiosities that I have surrounding somatic exercise and movement and somatics in general, and it has to do with the terminology to start with. So I want to move into the modalities and the techniques perhaps, but the reason I'm curious about the word when we talk about somatics or somatic exercise. Is because that, that word's got a lot of different meanings, but largely in the body work world, somatic is used for any type of body work or embodiment work that has to do with helping people process a history of trauma or some sort of psychomotional or cognitive things that happened in their life that has resulted in chronic pain, chronic stiffness, whatever it might be. So it's kind of like this interesting mind body thing where it's. a little bit of talk, a little bit of touch, but mostly dealing with big T and little t trauma. So that being the understanding of a lot of body workers, what the word somatic means, how does, how does the form of semantics that you teach and provide mesh with that or go in a different direction? What's that like?

So somatic experiencing is more what you're talking about with the emotional releasing so I, I like to tell people that with Hannah somatics, we definitely do see emotional releases happening but it's not something we're specifically Trying to pull out of somebody. I like to say it's a beautiful side effect of our work. Because our work is focused on the movement and releasing contract chronic contraction in the muscles. But what happens and I'm sure that you've already seen this is that emotions do definitely get stuck or trapped in, in some of those muscles. When I first found the work. I was actually really drawn to the fact that it wasn't about the emotional stuff. When I first hurt my hip, a lot of people would say things to me like have you read Louise Hayes book? You, you probably have some childhood trauma or, and I would be like, okay, shut up with this emotional stuff. You guys, I actually have torn cartilage in my hip. Like, I'm sure I do have emotional stuff inside. Cause I think everyone probably does. But that's not why I hurt myself. Like I hurt myself because I didn't understand about muscle contraction. I didn't understand that it was a, it was a,

Present.

that it wasn't actually muscular pain that I shouldn't have continued to stretch. So I was, I was more drawn to the fact that it was. It's very, to me, it seems very scientific. Your brain is holding this muscle and contraction. We've got to change the message from your brain to that muscle. Okay. That seems pretty simple and that makes sense to me. but over time, especially as I started teaching the somatic exercise teacher training program. And as I, so I started with module one, I now have three modules that take us right through Thomas's book, through all of the lessons in his book. The more that I started to teach module one, two and three together, and people were moving through their whole body, more and more emotional releases I started to see. was like, well, I definitely have to address this. It's something that is for sure happening. But like I said, we're not, we're not. Drawing it out. We're not talking about it. I am not a talk therapist. I am not a counselor I do not have any training to do something like that What I can do is take your body to rested place And as we do this, it can help to release some of the physical emotional trauma that people feel So Thomas talks about three different postures in his book. There's the well actually four There's the red light posture the green light posture the trauma Reflex and the dark vice when people hear trauma reflex, they instantly think, Oh, that's the one that must be where we're talking about this emotional trauma. But in Thomas's book, the trauma reflex is actually referring to physical trauma. So the trauma reflex is either something off balance in the shoulders or the hips. So one shoulders may be higher than the other. One hip is higher or forward or back some sort of a twisted lifted unevenness in the body.

the agenda.

emotional trauma is more typically going to be seen in what we call the red light reflex, which is contraction of the flexor muscles in the front of the body.

I

chest is tight. The stomach

you

muscles are tight.

were able

arms and legs would be internally rotated. So everything is in this. Red light posture, or what we consider that stop posture. The green light reflex is opposite. So over contraction of the extensor muscles of the back. So swayed back, chest forward arms and legs. In external rotation, typically most people are going to have pieces of each of these postures. So like the most common that I see now would be red light on the top of the body because we're all of course on our computers and our phones and we're driving cars. And so there's that roundedness of the, of the shoulders. The head can be quite forward. Okay. And then typically in the, in the low back, we'll see the green light reflex where they've got a little bit of a suede back. And then of course, if they've had some sort of physical trauma, then you might see one hip higher than the other or whatever, but the emotional trauma usually is going to be seen in that red light reflex, which makes sense, right? If you're sad or you're scared, you, you curl inwards, you contract in the front of your body. So different, but but similar. So yes, somatics itself is sort of an umbrella term for these mind body modalities. And Hannah somatics is very specific to being a physical modality. And again, I'll just say the emotional releases definitely happen more and more of them over this last year that I've been teaching. Now that I've added the module 3 into my training I have seen it happen a lot and. There's a really good video actually on my YouTube channel of one of my students, her name is Amber and she shares her experience and it's about a 14 minute video on my YouTube channel where she talks about how she's, she's done all of the therapy for years and years, she's done

he's

trauma, until she found Hannah somatics, it was like there was this little piece missing where she was still very disassociated from her body. She didn't feel like she was actually connecting to her physical body. after moving Thomas's book, she was able to release that sort of that last bit of trauma that her body was holding on to. And it really changed things for her.

Yeah, I think one of the things that I appreciate is going back to this idea of, of recipe, right? Or we could even go into specific ingredients because when it comes to, in my experience, the process of healing, be it like a physical trauma, like a sprained ankle or a hip or something like that, or, or otherwise is, They tend to be multifactorial, right? Like I, I absolutely demolished my right ankle in a climbing accident years ago. it was, it was genuinely traumatic because it was a traumatic injury, but it was also psychologically, like a lot of things happened at that time. You know, like I got into my van and there was a bear in there. And, you know, I broke up with my girlfriend at the time and I was living, like, there was a lot of, you know, Like physical trauma and a lot of psychological emotional trauma. So during the healing process is there were times where it's like, no, no, listen, I've got scar tissue built up and it's causing me pain. This is a, a physical thing that has to do with the mechanism that my ankle exists. that needs to be worked on. And in addition to that, there's also all this other stuff, right? So what I'm hearing you saying, it's like, yeah, you know, you're not ignoring it. And if it comes up great, but also understand that during the healing process, person likely will need, depending on the severity and the type of injury, will likely need to go to a massage therapist and a hanosomatic practitioner and a somatic experiencing practitioner. And the combination of all of these different ingredients in the recipe of healing is ultimately what really leads to the overall benefit. And ideally, these ingredients work synergistically. somebody who practices cranial sacral therapy and has done the, I can't remember what the level they call it, but they do a lot of somatic experiencing type work. Go to a massage therapist, do this, that. And then you go to and maybe a yoga teacher who is certified in HANA somatics or a massage therapist certified in HANA somatics. And you go to your SE practitioner. They're like, perfect ingredients to make a beautiful cake, but you wouldn't throw, I don't know, like rutabaga in a cake. It's a good ingredient if you're making, you're making like a turkey dinner, but it's not good for a cake. So I think there's a synergy of the ingredients that one needs to be mindful of too. And I believe part of our responsibility as practitioners is to know which ingredients really go well together for specific injuries and conditions. Okay.

Yeah, I love that. Yeah, the recipe is so important. And I think too many of us that are I'm actually not in chronic pain anymore. But up until about two years ago, I was, so it was a long process. Eight years of, of being in daily chronic pain. And for the first few years I was looking for a fix, you know, that one thing that could fix me and any type of pain I had after that, I would immediately blame it on my hip too. Like if my low back was killing me, I was like, my hip, I must have finally just give out and now my back is messed up too, like, I don't know, but it's got to be the hip, but it wasn't and it's, it's interesting how, I feel like the, in the body work world, people are getting better and better at sharing, rather than feeling like. Like you were saying earlier, like my way is the only way and you should, you should just do this one thing. I feel like they're getting better at being like, you know, it's probably not just one thing. Let's, let's look at what other things might work for you. Have you tried, have you tried this? Have you tried somatics? Have you tried going into the pain clinic and seeing what they can offer there? The pain clinic doctor I had in Spruce Grove was fantastic. Dr. Bowen. he was. So great at bringing in other ideas. As soon as I started my training, he would tell people that were coming to the clinic about Hannah somatics. If you want to know more, here's Nikki's card rather than being like, Oh no, that's, I don't, I don't know anything about somatics. We're not going to talk about that. Right. He was really open to it. And he was the one that sent me to was the preclinic and Lacombe is where I had that stem cell injection done. yeah, really knowing, That it is going to be a recipe. And I think once people realize that they appreciate it, they appreciate that their massage therapist or their physiotherapist is able to say, Hey, I can help you with with some of this, but let's try a couple other things that that might also work. I think with massage, because I have had a few of my colleagues say to me, well, you're teaching all these massage therapists. to do somatics or to teach their, their clients how to do somatics. Aren't you worried that they're not going to want a massage? And I'm like, who doesn't want a massage? Massages feel fantastic,

Okay.

go for a massage just because you want to do it? To feel amazing and not because you're constantly feeling tension in your neck and shoulders. Like, wouldn't it be nice if you could get rid of some of that pain yourself and just go in for a full body massage and not have to constantly be like, yeah, it's my neck and shoulders. Just rub my neck and shoulders, neck and shoulders, neck and shoulders. Instead, you could get your whole body massaged because it just feels fantastic. Yeah.

of one of the big issues that I'm passionate about discussing and working on it. work largely with massage therapists, but also acupuncturists and yoga teachers, osteopaths And one of the things that I come across increasingly often is practitioners who are like, you know, I still enjoy massaging or I enjoy doing my osteo work or whatever it is, enjoy it, but I'm kind of sick and tired of just fixing quote, you know, like people come in and they just, they just want, they want the weekly fix. And a lot of these practitioners are saying, like, I'm getting to this age and stage in life where I can't be leaning my elbows into somebody all day because my shoulders are starting to wear out. And we get to this point in the career of being a body worker where it's like, know, I know there is something more that I can be doing, not to discount the value, the tremendous value of bodywork, but there's, there's other avenues. There's other ways in which we can help people in other modalities, such as bringing on something like Hannah somatics, where you can start to dig a little deeper. Where you're not necessarily being like, let's talk about your childhood, right? But you're working with the deeper underlying nervous system patterns that, quite frankly, a lot of manual medicine can't resolve. Because as you said earlier in this conversation, these are the things that you're doing at home. Now, I've always said, ultimately, treatment is 25 percent what happens on the table, 75 percent what happens at home. that, that's 75 percent what happens at home. It sounds like Hanusomatics is one of these modalities that we can really amplify the experience that people come when they go for a massage. Then it's like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna beat your neck up. Don't worry. You're going to lie down and you're going to feel amazing. And you're going to get off the table with that G, JML, the just massage look, where your eyes are a little further apart, you know, like your hair. And then you're going to go home having felt amazing without any nervous system activation because I didn't lean into you and I didn't trigger any protection mechanisms. And then you're going to go home and do this exercise. And then whatever benefits you got from your nervous system being turned down, you can now amplify the results by doing your own stuff. So let's talk a little bit about that stuff, right? Like, comes in, they've got, let's, let's use the hip, right? Let's use the hip. They come in and they've got hip problems. Maybe it's auditory labor. Maybe it's just a tight hip. For, I don't even care the reason. They got a tight hip. I tied him.

Yeah,

therapist does their thing, right, and they say, okay, go home, do these panosomatic exercises. does it work? Like, how does it actually make a difference? Transcripts

therapist is I think it's a great idea to actually give a somatic exercise before the massage because people be lazy. People don't like to do homework. I mean, wouldn't it be nice if you could go to a massage therapist and they could just fix everything for you. That would be amazing, it's so unrealistic. It doesn't happen. Right. So I do encourage my massage therapist to give least one exercise at the beginning of the massage, just so they can feel the effects themselves. And one of our jobs is to really make sure that we're helping our clients dive into their own body, to dive into their Soma, right? Your Soma is your body is perceived from within. So what are you feeling? Where are you feeling pain and tension? So let's do what we call a Soma scan or a body scan. We do that at the beginning of every class. And I encourage my massage therapist to do this with their clients when they first get them on the table, just check in with your client, have them tell you what, what are they feeling? Where is their pain? from there we can start to get an idea of like what movements we might need to do with them. I do want to say there are, there are two different types of panosomatic. Teaching as well, right? So there's learning to teach the exercises and then there's the hands on clinical work. So to learn the hands on clinical work, you need to do the three year professional training with either essential semantics or Hannah or sorry, the Novato Institute. There's a few other places I don't know the names of, you can also learn the exercises to teach the exercises. which is the program that I am currently teaching with my hip injury. I couldn't wait to learn the hip and leg exercises. I thought, Oh yeah, those are going to be the great, those are going to be so good for my hip. actually the worst ones for my hip at first, because I had so much inflammation happening in that joint at that time. The rotation of my leg in that joint would just cause me more pain. It would, it would throw me into a flare up. actually couldn't do hip and leg exercises. Probably for the first four years that I was doing these exercises I was able to do all the other ones around the hip joint, but it was that rotating of the leg that would just I tell people having a labral tear is almost like having a hangnail

or

your hip joint. And so if the leg was rotating too much, It would sort of flick that little hangnail and you don't feel it when it's happening. It would be the next day where I'd be like, Oh, now I'm in a flare up. And what did I do?

and take All

understanding

you

own body and staying in comfort is one of the most important things in HANA somatics. We never push into discomfort. We're not trying to achieve any specific poses or positions. one of the things that you'll notice is that Hannah somatic exercises, when they're being taught are led by our instruction and by our voice, you're not actually watching somebody to do the movements. And one of the things I love about that is it, it puts people at ease right away. If you're somebody who's had an injury and you're revisiting coming back to a group class to, to regain mobility, or if you're somebody who. Maybe has never gone to a workout class and you are someone that's getting older and you're interested in, in regaining mobility. You go to a yoga class, a lot of these people will feel really intimidated because they see other people doing these crazy poses and pulling their leg up and, you know, doing things that they're like, Oh, my God, I can't, I don't think I can do that. Or even the idea of going down to the floor and standing up and down and up can be really intimidating. With Hannah somatic exercises, pretty much on the floor the entire time. So once you're down to the floor, you're staying down on the floor. other thing is, is that because we're so internally focused, everyone's eyes are closed. So right away, you're not looking at other people. moving from within your own body to what feels comfortable for you. And we always, we tell people it's better to do too little than to risk doing too much. We'll even encourage people to do the exercises in their imagination if they're feeling any discomfort at all. So I'm going to circle back to those hip exercises that I couldn't do for the first three years. I did them in my imagination only. Because I knew it would cause me pain to do them physically. I am happy to report I can do them now. Which is pretty exciting. So staying in comfort is so important. And I feel like that, that lesson starts to translate. Once you are able to do that in your own body, it translates to everything. You know, like, am I comfortable in this situation? Am I comfortable in this space? Am I comfortable with these people? Am I comf And you, you just become much more aware of what makes you feel comfortable. I feel like it's our job as hannasomatic educators to really help our students and clients to recognize what they're feeling themselves. So when I take them into that body scan or that soma scan, I'm going to be asking things like, What are you noticing with your breath in your body? Does it feel comfortable to you? How does your head feel on the floor today? Does it feel heavy? Are you feeling any pain or tension? And I'm going to take them through their whole body. I tell my, my, students now to teach it like they are teaching their clients how to become their own detective, their own inner detective. Where is this pain coming from? What are you actually feeling when we're doing this scan? How do you feel laying here quietly? And then we do a comparison at the end of class. We do another soma scan where we can come back and revisit. How does your head feel on the floor now? Does it feel any lighter? Is that pain that you were feeling earlier? Is it gone? Do you feel more balanced? Do you feel a sense of more relaxed now? And if you don't take the time

gonna

to sense what's happening in their body, and this happens throughout the class. So when we do, we have this one exercise called armpit to hip to release the the muscles in the waist.

I'm

of the body. We roll onto our backs. We make sure we take time to sense. Can you feel a difference now from side to side when you inhale? Can you feel more breath coming into that side that we've released? Do you feel longer on that side of your body? And it's amazing how, if you don't take the time to do that, People actually won't,

a

sense it because they're just not used to doing that. The more somatically aware you become, the easier it is to sense those things.

I'm

to make sure that we, we do take the time to sense it, especially for people that are new to it. And after you've done that sensing, you roll them to the other side, you repeat the exercise, you come back onto the back again, and you're like, okay, how do you feel now? Do you feel more even, can you feel your breath moving more evenly through your body? Do your legs feel longer? I'm sure most of you in the body world have had that, you know, that client that comes in and says, I have one leg that's longer than the other.

it's,

probably that leg isn't actually physically longer than the other leg. They're contracted on one side of their waist.

You

will blow their mind. They will be like, Oh my God. Some people feel the difference So quickly after just three exercises, three gentle, small exercises that they will be thinking that it's magic. Some people will call it so magic instead of somatics, which I really love, but Thomas is very clear in his book that we should not think of it as magic. Because we are doing the work ourselves, and that we should be giving ourselves the credit and not believing it was somehow magical that it happened. We all have the power to change what's happening with those muscles in our body. and the reason that we do. Pendiculation slowly. So you seem to know a lot about pendiculation, but do you, do you know why we do that, that slow release coming out of that contraction?

Oh, Come on. It's

do it slowly is that we are moving out of our cerebellum and into the motor cortex. So when we move quickly, we're moving out of that cerebellum, right? That's where we keep our sequences, like how I'm moving my hands around right now. I'm not actually thinking, your hand here, move your hand there. I'm just doing it. the motor cortex, and the motor cortex is the only part of our brain that can actually make new neural pathways in the motor system. So it's really, really important to move slowly. And I'm talking so slow. So when I first started somatics, that was very difficult for me moving slowly as slowly as, We should be, was just something I never done. I quite often will refer to myself before the hip injury. I'll say old Nikki a little bit psychotic with the way that I used to work out. So when I say that I love working out and yoga I loved Bikram yoga. Like I was a diehard Bikram yoga fan. Like I loved it. I loved the intensity. I loved how hard I was pushing my body. And looking back at it now, I'm like, that was insane. Like, what was I thinking?

with

I was pushing my body way beyond what I should have been.

of

how to do the hannasomatic exercises and to move slowly, you know, You, you hear over and over again when you're first learning it the slower you go, the more you will perceive and it's so true,

of,

and slower and smaller and smaller because the smaller and slower you go, the more you can perceive what's happening in your body. And if you don't move slowly. You're still just moving out of that cerebellum and you're not going to change anything in your motor system. That's why when we do, say, that involuntary, pendiculation, like that big stretch that we used to do as kids every morning when you'd wake up, we think of it as a stretch, but really what's happening is contraction in the back of the body, which for sure is lengthening in the front of the body, but it's that contraction in the back and the slow release of that contraction that resets the resting level of your muscles.

Okay, this makes sense. This makes sense. What I, what I now appreciate after this conversation is, it seems as though the process of hanosomatics is learning the language of the nervous system. And my understanding is if we can, if we can learn the language of the nervous system, if we learn how to talk to the nervous system, particularly, you know, if you're into the vagal, like the social engagement part or the parasympathetic, whatever, if we can learn to speak the language of The healing mechanisms within the nervous system, we just talked to it in its language, just like, you know, the five love languages. we can speak to it in its language, then it is more than happy to acquiesce and move into what the body innately does for us. unbelievably well, which is heal. nothing to do with something happen, and lord knows it's not us as the healer, deadly opposed to calling ourselves healers, it's all just learning how to talk to the nervous system. Whether it's through something like pendiculation and understanding that the language of the nervous system is different when we relax fast versus slow. These, these have different meanings or asking somebody to pay attention to their breath. Speaking that language is what really helps the individual move more into that natural healing mechanism. that sound about right?

It does. It does. One of the other things I should mention too, so the two things that Thomas Hanna brought to the work of some, so first of all, he's the one that coined the term somatics as far as body and movement goes. But he also was the one that brought in pendiculation. And then one other important thing that we call sensory motor amnesia or SMA. Have you heard of this?

Mm hmm.

So with sensory motor amnesia it's really easy to recognize it in your body once you understand what it is. So as you're coming out of a contraction, so just for an example, let's say if we were to lift one shoulder and to slowly begin to release that shoulder down, if you, if you feel like as you're bringing that shoulder down, it feels a bit clunky, like it's sort of bump.

Mm hmm.

Or if you feel like you're trying to do it super slow, but you're actually dropping it down. are all signs of what Thomas called sensory motor amnesia, which is just what it sounds like. Your muscles are amnesic. Your brain has forgotten how to sense and move those muscles. So after a couple of repetitions, and we'll ask our students, when you feel that SMA happening, as you're bringing that shoulder down, if you feel that bump, take a moment to pause. Recontract over the bump, slowly begin to release again, after two or three repetitions, you will already feel it beginning to smooth out. You'll be able to feel that you have more control of that muscle or of the movement, and that can be quite difficult. Really powerful for people to, or, or like a good selling feature or whatever of somatics is that they're like, Oh yeah, that was really hard. The first two times I, I couldn't do it. I felt like it was someone else's shoulder. I felt like I had no control of it. And after two or three repetitions, I was able to do it much smoother. I felt the control coming back. exactly what it is. motor amnesia, another important, technique that we talk about or, or, or. Our work and something else that if you are taking a somatic exercise class that is in the tradition of HANA Somatics, you will hear that throughout. So you will hear to stay in comfort. You'll hear to be moving with awareness. hear to pay attention to what you're feeling in your body. Can you feel any of that SMA or the SMAS as some of us call it? Do you feel the SMAS happening? if you do. Take the time to pause, recontract, smooth it out.

You know, I'm, I'm, I'm feeling fairly confident that we could continue to, to dig into different aspects of. Not only this particular modality, but the entire process of recovery and healing for another couple of hours. However, we approach the hour mark I'd like to kind of start to wrap a little bow on our conversation. And this tradition that we have where one of the previous guests, previous guest, leaves a question. And it's something that they're dealing with within their life, their practice, whatever it is they're doing. And then I pick a question at random from a previous guest, and I ask the next guest. And we call it the Anonymous Exchange. idea is to just, like, one, help each other out, but also, we're a new listener out there. Like, we're teachers, we're practitioners, we've got 20 years of experience, but we're still dealing with the same types of problems, no matter if it's six months or whatever. So, if it's okay with you, I'd like to ask you a question that comes from a former guest on the podcast.

Yeah.

Now, the funny thing is, as I said, I picked these questions at complete random, and it is so strange how the questions seem to fit absolutely perfectly. the question that I have is, I've been practicing my modality as a massage therapist now for around 20 years, I'm really happy, but considering switching into other modalities, do I do this in a way that keeps my client base happy? So I think the, the idea is switching from just massage therapy to maybe including some other modalities in there, but not wanting to lose the current client base. What do you to that? Okay.

that's a really great question. And I feel like it's a really big question. I actually do get that question. There's quite a few massage therapists who feel like you, you were already saying earlier, sort of or whatever with Like some of those clients keep coming back and they are feeling like, God, I'm not helping this person because they keep coming back with the same issue. Or.

learned

in their own body are starting to feel the effects of years and years of, of doing massage, which, which really is physically hard on their own bodies. Convincing your clients to switch from massage to Hannah somatics is just not going to happen. I mean, not everyone is going to want to do it because. They have to do the work themselves. So Hannah somatics can be a bit of a hard sell because people again are lazy, right? They want someone else to be able to do the work for them. when they come to me for a personal hands on session, they have to stay awake. They can't. fall asleep. They have to be doing, they have to be actively moving for this work to actually work reminding them that we're teaching them how to become their own educator so that they can do this work for themselves. But blending it in with a massage is, fantastic. And not only are you going to be able to teach your clients how to Do the work themselves, but you're going to begin to learn how to keep your own body and comfort during that massage. So making sure that you're not standing in a position that's got you uncomfortable, right? You're, if you're massaging someone and you're feeling like your back is hurting, like taking a moment to change your position so that you do feel more comfortable. I do think that you can start to blend muscle from within yourself so that the massage doesn't have to be so deep. And so, so physically hard on both the practitioner and the client. I think that there will be some people who will want to switch to having just a somatic session, but there's always going to be people who want to massage. It's just feels too great. So I'm switching out of it completely probably isn't going to happen, but blending it together and not just with semantics, but like you were saying with the craniosacral work with the other one I hear lots of lately rapid. The Neuro

You

but that's another one that I've been hearing really lots of great things about that people are blending in with their massages. Do hope that somatic exercise classes will be as accessible and as easy to find as yoga classes at some point. And I don't think we're going to convince people to stop doing yoga. I mean, why would we want to? Some people absolutely love yoga, but I think that they will get more out of their yoga practice. People will get more out of their running. They'll get more out of any physical thing they're doing in life. If they add a somatic practice into it, they'll just move with more ease and they'll move with less pain. I'm not sure if that really answered the question.

I think it's helpful. Thank you. And it has been an absolutely lovely and very informative conversation. So I'm very grateful. I'm going to put all of your, your contact information so people can get ahold of you, look into Hannah's somatics in the show notes, but is there any final message you'd like to leave the audience with before we say goodbye?

I guess my final message would be definitely to check out Hannah semantics start doing the work. There's lots of great YouTube videos with classes. If you are feeling any kind of tension or pain in your body If you're a massage therapist and you need continuing education credits, come see me. I've got lots of courses coming up in 2025. have a retreat coming up in Costa Rica in January. It's not a training. It's just a somatic healing and reset retreat. At the end of January that I'm really excited about. So if anyone is looking to learn more about somatics, come and join me in Costa Rica. I can't think of a better place to learn somatic movement. I haven't been there yet, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be amazing.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Nikki. It was awesome chatting with you.

Thank you, Jess. It was nice to talk to you too.

Well, thank you so much for spending your time with us today. Before you go, here are three actionable steps that you can take away from my conversation with Nikki. Pain is more than physical. Chronic pain often stems from patterns in the nervous system. Also, rethink your toolbox. When adding new techniques or modalities, consider some modalities like Hannah's semantics that really complement your practice while requiring much less physical strain, you. Which of course helps prevent burnout and sustain your career and empower yourself and your clients. Semantic practices offer a way to not only support your client's healing, but also to reconnect with your own passion and alignment in your work. And a special thank you to Nikki for sharing her wisdom and experiences with us today. You can find all of Nikki's details in the show notes if you want to get in touch. And if these insights resonated with you, be sure to follow or subscribe to The Conscious Practitioner wherever you get your podcasts. You're going to be getting weekly guidance on bridging the gap between traditional bodywork and transformational healing. Thank you again for listening to The Conscious Practitioner. Until next time, be well my friend.