What is Somatic Intelligence?
Soma - from the Greek word for 'body' - has evolved to mean something far more fascinating in our modern understanding. Today, it represents not just the physical body, but our entire sensing and experiencing being.
Here's a profound truth: We don't have somas like we have bodies - we are somas! We are sensing and experiencing human biological organisms. Even our concepts, opinions, and ideas, while giving us the 'sense' that they are rational thoughts, are better understood as somatic phenomena.
Think about it this way: we couldn't understand mathematics without our sensory experience. Whether it's touching a single bead, seeing a mathematical equation, hearing an intonation, or even conceiving the abstract reality of universal gravity through watching an apple fall from a tree - it's all experienced and conceptualised by our somas.
The intelligence of the soma is an innate capacity - it’s what it means to be alive. Everyone experiences! But, just as we all can speak, there are those who practice with intention who are able to sing. Similarly, while we're all experiencing beings, there are practices to sharpen and refine this innate aptitude.
Somatic intelligence is essentially sensorial intelligence, more commonly understood as consciousness. The experience of consciousness is similar to feeling the prick of a needle or smelling a rose - except it's experience of experience itself.
You might wonder: why would anyone be interested in refining the experience of experience? Well, wouldn't you want to know if your bag of coins had a hole in it? Wouldn't you want to know if your car was overheating? Wouldn't you want to know what ingredients make the best cake, or the address of the finest restaurant?
We all want to know these things! We want to solve them so badly that we've invented countless solutions: financial advisors, medical doctors, Google Maps, food blogs. But what about ourselves? How will we help ourselves with that?
Heightened consciousness is often associated with presence - being in the moment, attentive to what's being perceived. But this can sound a lot like anxious alertness too, can't it? This is where somatic intelligence truly shines: it's the aptitude to be conscious of the difference between genuine presence opposed to strained anxiety, and the skill to cultivate and return to the one that serves us better, the one that ‘feels’ better.
Understanding and developing our somatic intelligence isn't just another self-improvement project - it's about becoming more fluent in the language our being has been speaking all along.
