Understanding our habitual patterns of movement

Through somatic education, we learn to be aware of our habitual patterns. And through awareness we can work with these patterns to move and live better.

What are these patterns?

Reflexes are actions that are patterned. In response to a stimuli, a sequence of activity takes place.

Our somatic nervous system causes muscles to contract.

This response often takes place below the level of our awareness. Our normal physiological state is disrupted. We are being prepared for what might happen next.

Reflexes exist at a neuromuscular level. In other words, they exist in our brains and our muscles.

Are reflexes good or bad?

I’m often asked if a reflex pattern is bad or good.

Reflexes are neither bad nor good — they are neutral.

Reflex patterns come pre-installed in all humans. They help us when we need them and they are essential to our survival.

However, when we get stuck in a reflex pattern, our normal movements become restricted. The result is tightness, discomfort, pain and even changes to our structure from muscles pulling our bones out of alignment.

The contraction becomes habitual and involuntary. Once consigned to the involuntary part of our brain, we might lack awareness that the movement pattern is there at all.

Where are the reflex patterns located?

All movement begins at the centre of the body. Therefore, our capacity to move freely and efficiently is enabled by freedom in the centre of the body. While our reflexes affect musculature throughout our body, they act primarily on the centre of the body.

The centre includes the musculature that connects the rib cage to the pelvis, forming our gravitational centre and the point of connection between the upper and lower body. Stress response causes the body to draw inward from periphery to centre, making us smaller and contracted. By freeing the centre and creating sensory awareness of the connection between the periphery and centre, we can learn to move efficiently, with greater freedom and with the ability to access powerful movement as required. As a result, we stand taller, deepening into the space we occupy and bringing confidence and ease to our life.

Somatic education addresses the relationship between the nervous system and voluntary control of muscles and movement. It is only by addressing habitual movement patterns at the level of the nervous system that we can make permanent changes in muscular patterns.