Somatics for Dancers
Injury Prevention & Rehabilitation
Increasing Coordination, Strength & Flexibility

Somatics for Dancers

As a dancer, recreational or professional, you spend many hours of your life working with your own body. Practicing many hours per week can be very hard on your system. Dancing requires not only strength and flexibility, but also impeccable timing of your coordinated movements. Many dancers look for methods that will improve their performance, while others might be looking for an answer to the question why they are so prone to injuries. Somatics and Somatic Rehabilitation can become the turning point for you and your activity level, upgrading your potential and increasing coordination, strength & flexibility.

‘Movement’ is the key to successful human functioning. When your system embodies more control (physical and mental/emotional), easier and more successful movements will occur. To reach this level of performance it is fundamental to be able to sense and understand movement patterns within your own system. For many dancers, incorporating the somatic concepts changed their experience of dancing. ‘To become more aware’ will instantly lead to a higher level of agility and limberness, taking you as a dancer to a higher level of performance. The chance to develop injuries will significantly decrease as well.

Somatics can contribute to your performance by incorporating and learning concepts and training methods as:

• the difference between a ‘pandiculation’ and a ‘stretch’.
  Almost all dancers understand the importance of a proper ‘warm-up’ and a proper ‘cool-down’. A very important component of the warming-up and the cooling-down is ‘stretching’. Stretching is a great concept that increases length, strength and flexibility within your muscles.

Knowing that muscles don’t just tighten up individually but always in total body patterns, it is fundamental to develop a body with the lowest possible muscular tension (read: most efficient tension) at rest. It is the ‘Pandiculation’, the somatic technique to increase muscular control, that will do this for you. The tension within a muscle or within a movement pattern will decrease instantly within only a few movements, creating a higher level of conscious and subconscious control over your movement patterns. This process of increasing your own awareness will give you the skill to connect better with the muscles within your own body. When you will become able to sense your own body, your movement patterns will become easier and more effortless.

After you will be able to fully control, isolate and balance your own muscles and movements, ‘Core Strengthening Programs’, ‘Pilates’ or ‘Yoga’- programs can be integrated as well. Unfortunately these programs are often used too early and inappropriately. Somatic movement patterns are fundamental for human movement. They represent the core understanding for activities like dancing, running or jumping. Embodying these concepts is essential for serious dancers who would like to prevent injuries and want to move forwards to the next level.

‘Somatics for Dancers’ – Workshops can be organized in your area. Please contact The Somatic Health Center for further information.

Injury Prevention & Rehabilitation

Incorporating the somatic concepts within your process of rehabilitation will not only give you the skill and understanding how to recuperate and regain your maximum potential, but it will also give you the tools to prevent injury in the future. When you have become injured traumatically, your body will have reacted with a reflex of withdrawal. This pattern of tightness, which is not fully recognized within the existing world of rehabilitation, is often the cause of a slow and sometimes not satisfactory recovery. This tightness is a subconscious process meaning that you are not able to sense this yourself either. It will not be until you will regain control over your organic movement patterns that your process of rehabilitation can truly begin. Somatic Rehabilitation recognizes these patterns of tightness immediately and reverses its damaging effects within only a few sessions.

Somatic Rehabilitation has significantly reduced the ‘estimated time for rehabilitation’ for many dancers. Not only did the injury heal better and faster, but dancing became more satisfying and more effortless. After their process of rehabilitation, many dancers actually perform at a higher level than before injury, due to the increased awareness of their own movements and potential. A continuation of the Somatics program ‘post-rehabilitation’ will significantly reduce the risk for future injury: back pain, muscle tears, ankle- or knee sprains, tendinitis etc. might become obsolete in your dancing career.

‘Injury Prevention’ - Workshops or ‘Somatic Rehabilitation’ - Workshops can be organized in your area. Injury prevention is very important in dancing. Workshops for your Rehabilitation Department or workshops for dancers and their teachers can be specifically focussed on your personal interest in dance. Rehabilitation sessions or programs for individual dancers can be organized as well. Please contact The Somatic Health Center for further information.

Increasing Coordination, Strength & Flexibility

By developing the skill within your system to be able to consciously sense & experience your own muscles, you will instantly regain more control over the neurological feedback-loop between your brain and your muscles. Based on sound neuro-physiological principles, this is instantly translated in a higher level of muscular control. When this is done not just locally around a joint but in total body movement patterns, your whole system will be upgraded to a higher potential. Your back will be more flexible, your breathing more efficient, your shoulders and legs will move with more ease etc.. Because of the increase in neurological control of your muscles, they will be able to relax better when you don’t need them and your muscles will be stronger when you do need them. What this means as well is that your body will recuperate better and faster after strenuous work-outs, giving you the ability to increase your own potential with more ease.

‘To understand movement’ becomes essential when performing at a high level. To be in balance with your own movement and to be in balance with the movements of your fellow dancers is difficult. Even though you as a dancer or your teacher will think that you are at your peak, it is not until you will have experienced a somatic retraining program that you will truly achieve your maximum potential. Understanding and embodying the core fundamental movement patterns for human existence will create ease within your system that until now has been unknown to you. For you, Somatics can easily become the difference between dancing and dancing with grace & ease…

‘Dancers – The Next Generation’ – Workshops can be organized in your area for you and your dancers. Individual sessions or programs for dancers on a one-on-one basis can be organized as well. Please contact The Somatic Health Center for further details.