Corrective gymnastics, psycho-body approach, somatic education … There are different labels for this large family bringing together sister disciplines: Alexander, Feldenkrais, Ehrenfried … Somatic education would perhaps be the most adequate term:
Education: it is about a work of learning, or more exactly of relearning. Faced with the different tensions (physical and psychological), our body loses its ability to move well. Fortunately, our fabrics are malleable, nothing is final. Through sensorimotor learning, the idea is therefore to recover a good use of our body.
+ Somatic: from the Greek “soma”, which designates what is relative to the body, but perceived from the inside, in the first person. “The person is at the center of this psycho-corporal work, the practitioner is only a help,” explains Vladimir Latocha. It is up to the person to feel what is right or wrong for their body, which requires listening and awareness. “
= Somatic education: it is through experience that the discovery of oneself and the learning of new patterns of movement, perception and relationship with the internal environment and the external environment pass.
Are we all receptive to the different techniques of somatic education?
They are part of a search for well-being, better-being. However, this individual approach is based on an awareness: “That our body is not a machine and that we must take care of it, that it participates in our general balance, that it forms a whole with the mind. », Considers physiotherapist Catherine Casini. For Vladimir Latocha, Feldenkrais practitioner, “you have to be playful, curious, patient” to engage in such psycho-corporal work. Finally, it takes a willingness of mind but also time, because it is a long term work, over 10 to 20 sessions most often.
