Somatic Movement for Improved Exercise & Recovery

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Do you exercise regularly but wish it were easier? Are you an athlete looking to improve your performance? Do you want to improve your ability to prevent injuries? 

Master Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist Donna Brooks will take you on an experiential journey into the benefits of somatic movement for exercisers and athletes. 

Somatic movement connects us to our body's innate capacity for feeling and action through imagery and experiencing our own anatomy. This leads to better coordination, more ease in movement, and a more balanced nervous system. Somatic exercises also contribute to easier recovery and less strain when exerting.

In this class, you will: 

• Develop self-sensing of coordinated muscle movements
• Increase flexibility and range of motion without stretching
• Reduce Muscular Tension through movement
• Support health posture through physical activity and recovery

Helpful blog post and video links for pain relief assistance through somatic movement:

- Somatic Practices for Healthy Posture -
- 8 Somatic Breathing Practices to Do Today -
- Using Somatics for Better Posture -

 
MEET YOUR HOST: DONNA BROOKS, BS, RSMT, C-IAYT

Donna is a certified Yoga Therapist and a Registered Somatic Movement Therapist and Educator with a bachelor's degree from SUNY Stony Brook. She has been teaching yoga since 1981 and somatics since 1993. She is trained in Iyengar yoga and has studied with Somatics pioneers like Thomas Hanna, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, and Emilie Conrad. She's also learned about the geometry and physics of movement and momentum with tennis pro Art Carrington as well as through Contact Improvisation, and she is even trained in the healing groundwork of Judith Blackstone.

In the 1980s, Donna worked with Karin Stephen to teach yoga to AIDS patients. She has also presented her approach to using tensegrity and fascia for Parkinson's patients at Dartmouth—Hitchcock Parkinson's conferences, and offered movement labs at Northfield Mount Hermon School, the University of Massachusetts, Norwich University and Greenfield Community College. She has instructed courses for the Pioneer Valley TBI support group, as well as Cancer Connection, and ran an ongoing pain clinic at Valley Medical Group in Greenfield for 6 years.

Ready to meet Donna? Watch her introduction video here.

To get in touch, you can visit her website at www.originalbodywisdom.com or e-mail donnabrooks@gmail.com