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Monday 9am - 5pm Tuesday 9am - 5pm Wednesday 9am - 5pm Thursday 9am - 5pm Friday 9am - 5pm

Essential Somatics

It goes to the root of most chronic muscular pain: the brain and its control of muscles and movement. Since 2010, Essential Somatics® has grown from a small solo practice to a team of highly skilled and devoted Clinical Somatic Educators who teach multi-day introductory courses, clinical certification trainings, and embodied movement for corporate leadership. The trainings we provide are offered i

06/10/2026

You’ve tried approaches that helped temporarily, then stopped working. You’ve done exercises that never stuck. You’ve wondered if this is just how your body is now.

Here’s what changes at a retreat:

“I’ve tried everything and nothing lasts” - Those approaches treat the symptom without addressing the source. Our retreats teach you to address the nervous system pattern.

“I don’t have time for a long program” - A week of concentrated practice does what months of sporadic practice can’t. Your nervous system needs focused time to actually rewire.

“I don’t understand why I’m in pain” - You’ll learn about Sensory Motor Amnesia, stress reflexes, how your nervous system creates tension.

“I’m skeptical this will work” - Clinical Somatic Education isn’t a quick fix or miracle cure. Skeptics often become the most convinced because they see the results themselves.

“I’m worried about going alone” - Most people come alone. Community forms quickly when everyone’s there for the same reason.

The retreats work because they address what’s actually happening, not just what you feel.

06/02/2026

Where did the idea for Essential Somatics come from? Here’s more about how we started this company and what inspires us to continue spreading the work of Thomas Hanna worldwide.

05/27/2026

If you could ask us one question about Clinical Somatic Education, what would it be?

We get questions constantly. Some we’ve answered a hundred times. Some make us think differently about how we explain this work.

What are you curious about? What’s confusing? What sounds too good to be true? What’s stopping you from trying it?

Drop your question in the comments. We’ll answer as many as we can. The ones that come up most often might become their own posts.

What do you want to know?

05/21/2026

What your morning stiffness is actually telling you

You wake up stiff. Your back hurts. Your neck is tight. It takes ten minutes of moving around before you feel even remotely normal.

You blame your mattress, or your pillow, or the way you slept.

But here’s what’s actually happening: your nervous system doesn’t stop holding tension just because you’re asleep.

There are patterns your brain learned during your waking hours that don’t turn off at night. Your brain holds the same tension patterns during sleep that it holds during the day.

So you sleep in those patterns. Your muscles stay contracted, your shoulders stay up by your ears, your back stays braced.

And you wake up feeling like you’ve been clenched in the same position for eight hours.

Because you have been.

Morning stiffness isn’t about your mattress or your sleeping position. It’s your nervous system showing you what it’s been holding all along. You just didn’t notice during the day because you were moving, distracted, busy pushing through.

The good news is this: when you address those patterns through Clinical Somatic Education and Somatic Movement, when you teach your nervous system to actually let go, you don’t just move better during the day.

You sleep better at night, and wake up feeling like your body actually rested.