I LIVED my first three years of life in Tegucigalpa, Honduras with my maternal grandmother. She raised my sister and I while my parents lived in another city raising my other three siblings. Parenting of grandchildren is one of the many situations older adults face. It demands multiple skills and staying on top of their physical and mental health. Access to community resources and support is more needed than ever, and some seniors are lucky to find that at On Lok 30th Street Senior Center. I am also lucky to work there because I get to lead movement and somatic classes for older adults from underserved communities. The center was cre- ated 43 years ago by a group of Nicaraguan seniors in the Mission District (225 30th Street) in San Francisco. In 1995 30th Street became part of On Lok, a full-service healthcare program. The center serves around 7000 older adults, and offers meals, informational resources, activities, and movement classes to a vibrant, racially and culturally diverse community. Incorporating somatics into the senior center On Lok 30th Street Senior Center offers a variety of movement programs: • A multi-component exercise drop-in class from Monday to Friday, 10:00- 11:00 am. This class has been offered since 2007 at multiple sites in San Francisco, and it is focused on cardio-respiratory endurance, muscle strengthening, balance, and flexibility. • A 12-week fall prevention program, to help reduce fall risk among older adults. • A 10-week tai chi for arthritis program that we started offering last year. The program is based on tai chi Sun style. It is an evidence-based program cre- ated by the Tai Chi for Health Institute. • And a new 10-week somatic movement for spine mobility and posture pro- gram that I designed and I am teaching and evaluating at this time. In March 2020, we moved our programs to an online format to comply with the mandated shelter-in-place. We were happily surprised by how our partic- ipants continued attending the movement classes and programs in the new online format. During the last two years we have expanded the movement offerings by add- ing approaches to movement that emphasize breathing, alignment, and sensory awareness. As a registered somatic movement educator with a certification in developmental movement from The School of Body-Mind Centering ® , I noticed that some participants were putting a lot of emphasis on developing leg and arm strength and mobility, but very low attention to the alignment, posture, and movement of their torso. I wanted to fill that gap by offering the somatic move- ment program with emphasis on the movement of the spine and posture. I was motivated to launch this program in order to bring somatic education to older adults who have not been exposed to it and/or face barriers to access it.
Why somatics matter Research shows that we lose
Soma was defined by Thomas Hanna in the 1960s as the living body that perceives from within by first-person perception, and regulates itself in relationship with the phys- ical and social environment. 3 There are many somatic education meth- ods that have been developed in the nineteenth and twentieth century. One of them is Body-Mind Center- ing ® (BMC). BMC uses guided imagery based on anatomical and physiological prop- erties of the body systems: skeleton, ligaments, muscles, fascia, fat, skin, organs, endocrine glands, nerves, and fluids 4 . The information is delivered by different channels including
a) visual images such as drawings, anatomical software, and models, b) auditory information through guided journeys, sounds and music, and c) self-touch or touch by another person using hands or props such as balls, bands, fabrics. 5 The informa- tion is processed and/or expressed by the participant in stillness, movement, breath patterns, vocal sounds, and self- touch or touch to other participants. Some practitioners include other types of processing and expression such as writing or drawing. Filling the somatics gap There are some exercise programs for seniors that specifically target spine mobility delivered by physical thera- pists in clinics and hospitals. But there 5 Caetano, P. D. L. (2015). For an Aesthetics of Sen- sations: intense body of Bartenieff Fundamentals and Body-Mind Centering. Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Presença, 5, 206-232.
are no group programs offered in San Francisco at the commu- nity level that target spine mobility and posture for seniors based on somatic techniques. I started offering the somatic movement program during the sum- mer of 2020 when we transitioned all our programs to an online for- mat. I had already designed the cur- riculum to offer in person. At the beginning I was hesitant to offer the program online. I thought it would be too difficult to foster body awareness and repatterning while you are watching a screen or listen- ing to the words of an instructor who is not in the same room. On the other hand, the pandemic provided an opportunity for us movement facilitators to reach out to older adults who have transpor- tation or other logistical barriers to come to the center. Plus, I was eager
spine mobility as we age, and this impacts activities of daily living such as sitting to standing, get- ting in and out of the car, climbing stairs, lifting objects and driving, among others 1 . Also, the lack of spine, shoulder, and hip flexibil- ity impairs posture and balance, increasing risk of falling. 2 Although the aging process reduces mobility, somatic education brings aware- ness of posture and maladaptive movement patterns and therefore leads to a more functional and expressive body. 1 Araújo, C. G. S. D. (2008). Flexibility assessment: normative values for flexitest from 5 to 91 years of age. Arquivos brasileiros de cardiologia, 90, 280-287. 2 Bergström, G., Aniansson, A., Bjelle, A., Grimby, G., Lundgren-Lindquist, B., & Svanborg, A. (1985). Functional consequences of joint impairment at age 79. Scandinavian journal of rehabilitation medicine .
3 Hanna, T. (1986). What is somatics? Somatics: Magazine-journal of the bodily arts and sciences, 5(4), 4-8. 4 Cohen, B. B., Nelson, L., & Smith, N. S. (1993). Sensing, feeling, and action: The experiential anato- my of Body-Mind Centering®. Contact Editions.
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