By John Loupos
Langdon Street Press, $16.95, 277 pages

The word somatic, from the Greek, means of the body.  From John Loupos’ book about somatics, readers learn about their body and about the pioneer teachings of health and wellness by the late Thomas Hanna, PhD.

“No other conventional or non-conventional healing method approaches the elimination of pain and the restoration of overall personal health in the manner of somatics.”

Loupos is a certified Hanna somatic educator who explains that somatics practitioners are educators, not therapists.  He expounds on Hanna’s teachings of how to live in your body in the best and most sustainable way by getting the muscles and brain to collaborate optimally.  He quotes Hanna that each of us “…is largely responsible for who and what we become.”

Aging, of itself, does not mean the body and quality of life must decline. Our bodies experience various degrees of “insults” in our lives, the culmination of which is responsible for the body’s decline and pain.  Somatics offers a way to rectify those insults with retraining one’s brain through gradual, consistent specific movements.

This book explains in great detail the general theories of somatic and applied somatics in the first two parts. Loupos shares his thoughts and answers questions in the third part, concluding in part four with somatic movement patterns to bring the practice of somatics for readers.

Reviewed by Angie Mangino