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Evolving digitized thoughts of aspiring author Mark Filippi and other members of the noosphere...

Saturday, May 21, 2005

Seeing Somas

I've taken on some obscure concepts in my career. Here's a short list:

chi'
the assemblege point
subluxation/adjustment
the holographic universe
chaos & complexity
innate intelligence
inherent recuperative power
cotention & ditention
and the I-persona to name a few....

None of them are as obvious as the one I'm working with now: somas -- Long-time clients, relatives who have long since given up understanding what I do, and people IN the field of somatics continue to butcher this most obvious of *things*. I figured the least I could do was use this forum to visually celebrate the variety of somas I spot almost everywhere and attempt to make this word roll of the tongue a little easier. Once you can see how easy it is to spot a soma *in the wild*, it may get a little easier to work within your own. I say maybe!

The moment you 'see a soma' you get an immediate bodily response. We ignore most somas we encounter. The trees, birds, insects, and front lawns just don't offer much in the way of novelty to us after awhile. But if we practice somatic indifference with these milds somas, we tend to overreact to the more turbulent ones like traffic jams, thunderstorms and lines at the bank drive-thru (yes, they're somas too!). This makes the somas in the middle ground that spike and then return to baseline, like a mercury retrograde or a family vacation seem as if they aren't as solid and concrete as the ones at either extreme.
After awhile, you'll realize that a soma of any stripe can be seen and felt and interrelated with you, the universe and everything in between. I promise. So once and for all...--- somas are just self-moving and self-experiencing sensory-motor systems - Rather than debate the endless mind-body-spirit-soul argument, just substitute the word soma for experience and you're there. If you go further and 'see' that experience in the 1st person, you've entered that soma. When you get lost in a novel or a movie or a deep conversation, you've crossed the boundaries of another soma. The emotional ebb you get when you put the book down, leave the theater, or hang up the phone is just you exiting the confines of that soma.
So let's start with the obvious ones for now and raise our collective sensitivity as we drop all the jargon and grasp the concept of somas and their role in your co-creativity...I'll post more pictures as my Blogger learning curve begins to flatten out....
As usual, your comments are welcome and essential. So are my snappy comebacks. ;)

In Tacit Reflection, MRF 05.21