Scope of Practice

International Somatic Movement Education & Therapy Association:
Scope of Practice

The professional field of somatic movement education and therapy spans holistic and complimentary medicine. This field contains distinct disciplines each with its own educational and/or therapeutic emphasis, principles, methods and techniques.

Practices of somatic movement education and therapy encompass postural and movement evaluation, communication and guidance through touch and words, experiential anatomy and imagery, and movement repatterning. These practices are applied to everyday and specialized activities for persons of all stages of health and development.

The purpose of somatic movement education and therapy is to enhance human processes of psychophysical awareness and functioning through movement learning. Practices provide the learning conditions to:

• Focus on the body both as an objective physical process and as a subjective process of lived consciousness.
• Refine perceptual, kinesthetic, proprioceptive and interoceptive sensitivity that supports homeostasis and self-regulation.
• Recognize habitual patterns of perceptual, postural and movement interaction with one's environment.
• Improve movement coordination that supports structural, functional and expressive integration.
• Experience an embodied sense of vitality and extended capacities for living.

Unique Abilities of Global Somatics™ Practitioners

• The ability to research the nature of the physical body and energy field with the Global Somatics™ process.
• The embodiment of all of the body's systems, developmental movement patterns and the vibrational field.
• Consciousness, confidence and self-love with respect to one’s own style of learning/ practice and connection to community and to the planet.
• The ability to practice somatic movement education and therapy in private sessions using a combination of skilled touch, movement repatterning and verbal guidance in accordance with the requirements of ISMETA's Scope of Practice (see description above).
• The ability to contribute to the open system of Global Somatics™ and the somatic field through personal research in a specific discipline of application: including the arts, yoga, bodywork, energy medicine, and developmental education.
• The ability to bring embodiment into the culture.