What is Eric Cooper Somatics?
Eric Cooper Somatics is a revolutionary advancement in Somatic Education, designed to address the real ways people are stuck in patterns of chronic pain, tension, and stress.
It’s Inspired because it gives you a new understanding of your body’s hidden tension patterns, which are linked to subtle breathing constrictions that are mostly outside of your awareness. This new method allows you to see, to reveal to your awareness, the root holdings that had gone unnoticed.
It’s more Somatic. It’s designed that way. It guides you to look for the edges of the missing places, searching for where we can’t fully sense ourselves. This allows you to reconstruct and clarify the eroded connections between mind and body. This new Somatics clarifies and illuminates the dynamic nature of your inner space. It helps you discover and fill in the gaps so you can free yourself from the disconnection. This is the frontier that Eric Cooper Somatics explores.
It’s focused Education because you actively teach your nervous system how to let go of deeply ingrained, automatic tension habits. In this practice, you are both the teacher and the student. Through gentle, safe movements, you teach your nervous system to recalibrate your body’s tension feedback system. It learns to recognize and release the hidden holding patterns that have kept you stuck. This restores control over your muscles and movements.
How is Eric Cooper Somatics Different from Hanna Somatics and Clinical Somatics?
Eric Cooper Somatics grew out of the foundational work of Thomas Hanna, the developer of Hanna Somatics and Clinical Somatic Education. Hanna identified three simple tension patterns—“Green-Light Reflex”, “Red-Light Reflex”, and “Trauma Reflex”—which he used to explain how our bodies respond to stress and injury. These patterns are the basis of Traditional Somatic Education and its understanding of habitual tension in the body.
“Clinical Somatics/Hanna Somatics was not enough to solve my own problem.
After three years of devoted practice, I still had my pain.
So I made a better way.” -Eric Cooper
A New Somatics That Fits Everyone
While Hanna’s insights were revolutionary, Eric Cooper Somatics addresses the limitations of only focusing on these three patterns and confining protocols. People’s tension patterns are more complex, and not everyone fits neatly into the original framework. Eric Cooper Somatics expands the method to work with at least 10 distinct tension strategies, allowing for a more flexible and adaptable approach to meet individual needs. Eric Cooper’s breathing assessment system makes these patterns easier to understand, providing clarity and insight into how the body holds tension.
“You stand on the shoulders of Thomas Hanna.” -a client
Better Movements for Every Pattern
In addition to more effective self-assessment, Eric Cooper Somatics includes both powerful and gentle movement sets, allowing each person to address their specific tension patterns at their own pace. Whether you need movements to target deeply ingrained tension or softer, more gradual releases, the method adapts to what works best for your body. These specialized movements provide a more complete, refined solution to help you unwind every pattern and restore ease.
“Clinical Somatics/Hanna Somatics was not enough to solve my own problem.
After three years of devoted practice, I still had my pain.
So I made a better way.”
-Eric Cooper
A Deeper View
Eric Cooper Somatics looks deeper into the inner experience of movement, guiding you to connect with the hidden un-knowings that lie beneath the surface. This method explores the subtlety of your body’s inner space, revealing places that have been overlooked and teaching you how to sense and release deeply held tension. It’s not just about movement—it’s about discovering the inner workings of your body, where you are truly stuck. By looking deeper, you gain greater clarity and awareness, allowing for profound, lasting change.”
Pandiculation: The Key to Releasing Tension
The core technique of Eric Cooper Somatics is pandiculation, a natural type of movement that you’ve experienced when yawning or making big postural stretches with your entire body. Cats pandiculate about 40 times a day. That is how they stay supple. You did this a lot as a child. Pandiculation resets your nervous system’s tension control; it restores your suppleness.
When focused in the improved movements that Eric Cooper has developed, it allows you to release deeply ingrained tension. Unlike stretching, pandiculation more actively engages your nervous system to restore control over your muscles.
In this completely revised version of Somatics, advanced pandiculation strategies are used to help you reclaim parts of your body that feel stuck or “missing.” These movements recalibrate your tension feedback system, allowing your nervous system to let go of persistent tension patterns.
A More Comprehensive Approach to Healing
Eric Cooper Somatics not only addresses physical tension but also recognizes the deep connection between emotions and tension patterns. Emotional trauma and stress can create lasting tension habits in the body, and this method is designed to unwind both the emotional and physical echoes of your past. By gently exploring these connections, you can free yourself from long-standing tension patterns and find a greater sense of ease and balance in both the physical body and the mind.
Set yourself free.
Find ease in your body, your movement, and your mind.
How is Eric Cooper Somatics Different from Hanna Somatics and Clinical Somatics?
1) Eric Cooper Somatics addresses at least 10 real tension strategies, not just 3.
2) It is designed to be more adaptable to each person’s limitations and needs.
3) Eric Cooper Somatics focuses entirely on Sensory-Motor Amnesia (SMA), the disconnection between movement and the perception of movement. It focuses entirely on filling in what is missing.
4) It allows you to explore the dynamic nature of your inner space, teaching your nervous system more effectively.
5) This method helps you clearly understand and find your hidden holding patterns, offering a more efficient way to learn your way out of them.
6) It allows you to recognize the gaps in your body’s internal map, showing you the places that are stuck and missing.
7) Eric Cooper Somatics helps you address the echoes of a lifetime of emotional responses, as emotion and tension are deeply interlinked.
8) It offers more effective methods for overcoming SMA.
Eric Cooper Somatics grew out of the work of Thomas Hanna, PhD.
“Often, people come to this practice seeking a solution to pain and the achy stiffness associated with age. The cause of the achy stiffness has little to do with age itself. You feel achy and stiff because reactions to stress, injury, repetitive motion, and trauma have become habits. These habits become outside your voluntary control. This is the easy way to regain control.”
-Dr. Thomas Hanna, the original developer of Hanna Somatics/Clinical Somatic Education
“The object of this exploration is to loosen your body from constricted muscles. It is neuromuscular re-education. Done correctly, these exercises restore sensory-motor awareness and control to the brain and muscular system.”
-Dr. Thomas Hanna
Thomas Hanna coalesced many influences into three crucial concepts:
Hanna’s Three Stress Reflex Patterns of Clinical Somatics:
- “Green-Light Reflex” – the Landau Reaction, tightening and arching the back, the reflex of forward action. This pattern is activated when we jump into action under stress.
- “Red-Light Reflex” – a full-body withdrawal response, tightening the front. This pattern hunches us over, rounding the shoulders, often creating a posture of depression.
- “Trauma Reflex” – a contraction resulting from traumatic injury, usually leading to asymmetry and often a twisting posture. It can also be created through repetitive motion, leading to asymmetrical patterns of activation.
Sensory-Motor Amnesia (SMA)
It’s an odd term, but it is apt. Thomas Hanna called it Sensory Motor Amnesia. Habituated tension is like a forgetting, a dis-calibration. It occurs as cumulative stress and injury diminish the sensory feedback of movement. Over time, we lose the ability to control our muscles. SMA manifests as persistently tight muscles and un-smoothness in slow movement.
Pandiculation: The Natural Reset for Tension
Pandiculation is the natural reset for high levels of tension. Yawning is a natural form of pandiculation. Cats pandiculate about 40 times a day. That is how they stay supple. This process restores your suppleness. Somatic pandiculation is the optimal way to clear stress tension patterns, and it’s a primary technique in Eric Cooper Somatics.
As you learn to pandiculate, you reclaim the parts of your body that feel stuck or missing, recalibrating your nervous system and regaining control over muscle tension. Eric Cooper Somatics focuses entirely on advanced pandiculation strategies to overcome Sensory-Motor Amnesia.