Yoga is widely known as a way to move the body, stretch, and build strength. But yoga can be much more than just poses. It can be a path to truly reconnect with your body, your emotions, and your breath.
Combining somatic movement with yoga offers a powerful way to become more present both physically and mentally while cultivating body awareness.
The Body as a Communication Tool
Eighty percent of the nerve fibers send information from the body to the brain, and only twenty percent from the brain to the body. This means our body communicates with our brain far more often than the other way around.
If you have ever tried to understand with your mind why you should feel or act differently and it didn’t work, that is completely normal. Our bodies need more than words to feel safe, relaxed, and present. When your body experiences insecurity or tension, simply thinking “I need to calm down” is not effective enough. The parts of the nervous system that control these responses: such as fight, flight, or freeze, do not respond to logic or language but to sensations, breath, and movement. Healing, therefore, works primarily through the body itself.
Understanding Your Autonomic Nervous System
Our autonomic nervous system constantly regulates whether we feel safe or are in a state of activation, such as anxiety, stress, or freeze. When we shift into a state of safety, the ventral vagal state, our entire experience changes. We feel more connected, present, calm, and open. The ventral vagal state is part of the parasympathetic nervous system and represents the nervous system’s natural rest mode. In this state, your body feels at ease: your breath is steady, your heart rate is stable, and your muscles are relaxed. You feel calm, present, and connected to yourself and others.
Through movement, breath, and mindful awareness, you can help your body receive signals of safety and regulate your nervous system.
Regulation Tools
Healing through the body means using resources that support and calm the nervous system. Examples include:
- Connecting with others
- Mindfulness and meditation
- Gentle breathing exercises
- Yoga, Qigong, or dance
- Spending time in nature
- Gentle touch or self-massage
- Music, art, or creative expression
- Journaling
- Play, humor, and co-regulation with others
Somatic movement is also a powerful regulation tool. Through subtle movements, breath, and body awareness, you can release tension and calm your nervous system. It helps you enter a safe state, allowing you to feel more present, connected, and relaxed.
What Is Somatic Movement?
The word somatic comes from the Greek soma, meaning body, but in the sense of the felt, living body.
Somatic movement focuses on the experience from within: how the body moves, how tension and relaxation alternate, and how awareness arises through attention. It is not about performing a movement perfectly but about consciously sensing what is happening. You are invited to listen to your body without judgment or labelling an experience as right or wrong, moving in a way that feels natural.
Combining Somatic Movement with Yoga
When we integrate somatic principles into yoga, a multi-layered practice emerges:
- Awareness: Developing sensitivity to subtle signals in your body, such as tension, breath, and emotions.
- Resilience and flexibility: Both physically and mentally, noticing how flexible you are in your posture, reactions, and thinking.
- Restoration and relaxation: Mindful movement supports recovery and relieves chronic tension.
- Integration: Poses, breath, and meditation form a unified experience. You move not for performance but from presence.
Yoga and somatic movement overlap, but each has a slightly different focus. Yoga uses poses, breath, and movement to strengthen, relax, and balance body and mind, while somatic movement emphasises consciously experiencing sensations in the body, including tension and nervous system responses.
In my classes, I combine both approaches. We practice yoga poses and flows, always with attention to how your body feels and responds. This creates a practice where movement and experience come together, allowing you to feel safe and present in your body.
Who Can Benefit from Somatic Yoga?
Anyone can benefit from this way of moving, but it is especially valuable for people who:
- Experience chronic tension or stress: Somatic yoga helps you recognise and release tension through the body.
- Feel physical discomfort or stiffness: Conscious movement can loosen patterns and improve coordination for back, neck, or shoulder issues.
- Feel disconnected from their body: Somatic yoga helps you return to your body, creating space for calm and clarity.
- Want to process emotional or mental tension: The body remembers what the mind may forget. Somatic yoga allows safe emotional release through movement and breath.
- Want movement as self-care, not performance: Instead of going deeper into a pose, you learn to listen to your body’s needs, moving a form of mindful self-care.
On Curaçao, the island’s rhythm invites slowing down, but life can still be intense. Yoga and somatic practices help you find balance between action and rest, effort and surrender. In my classes, we combine somatic awareness with yoga, so you move mindfully and are fully present. Whether you are a beginner or experienced yogi, there is space to explore, feel, and grow at your own pace.
Ready to Feel Instead of Perform?
Discover how somatic movement and yoga can help you release tension, regain energy, and connect more deeply with yourself. You are warmly invited to join a class, whether yin, flow, or a one-on-one session.