Essential Somatics

Essential Somatics Essential Somatics is a revolutionary approach to eliminating muscle pain. It's safe, easy, and common sense. Learn to move without pain!

It goes to the root of most chronic muscular pain: the brain and its control of muscles and movement. Since 2010, Essential Somatics® has grown from a small solo practice to a team of highly skilled and devoted Clinical Somatic Educators who teach multi-day introductory courses, clinical certification trainings, and embodied movement for corporate leadership. The trainings we provide are offered i

n the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Europe. The teachings of Somatic Education have helped thousands of people worldwide to return to a more vibrant life of movement, self-agency, and awareness.

06/04/2026

Most of us move on autopilot. Walking without thinking about walking, reaching without noticing how we reach.

Our bodies keep score.

They remember every time we braced, collapsed, and tightened. We don’t even know what we’re doing anymore.

Mindful movement is different. It’s paying attention to what your body is actually doing right now.

What does your shoulder blade feel like when you lift your arm? Which muscles engage when you turn your head? Where exactly does your heel touch the ground when you walk?

It seems simple until you try it.

Most of us have lost the ability to feel what we’re actually doing because we’ve been moving unconsciously for so long. That’s how habits are formed – through repetition.

When you slow down enough to actually sense your body, something shifts. You can change an unhelpful habits into more efficiency and ease.

Clinical Somatic Education is built on this principle.

When you remember how to move with awareness, everything changes, because you’re finally present in your own body again.

06/02/2026

Where did the idea for Essential Somatics come from? Here’s more about how we started this company and what inspires us to continue spreading the work of Thomas Hanna worldwide.

If you could ask us one question about Clinical Somatic Education, what would it be?We get questions constantly. Some we...
05/27/2026

If you could ask us one question about Clinical Somatic Education, what would it be?

We get questions constantly. Some we’ve answered a hundred times. Some make us think differently about how we explain this work.

What are you curious about? What’s confusing? What sounds too good to be true? What’s stopping you from trying it?

Drop your question in the comments. We’ll answer as many as we can. The ones that come up most often might become their own posts.

What do you want to know?

You’ve been thinking about this for months. Scrolling past retreat photos. Reading testimonials. Wondering if this is th...
05/25/2026

You’ve been thinking about this for months. Scrolling past retreat photos. Reading testimonials. Wondering if this is the year you finally prioritize yourself.

But then the questions start. Which location? What if you pick wrong?

Here’s the truth: there’s no wrong choice. Each retreat offers the same depth of Clinical Somatic Education teaching with Martha Peterson. The differences are setting and timing.

Trust what calls to you. Your body already knows what it needs.

CANADA: Hollyhock, Cortes Island, BC - August 26-31, 2026

Six days with Martha Peterson. Our longest-running retreat location. Island setting off the BC coast with full resort amenities.

Best for: people based in North America, those who want an established retreat center close to home.

$900 CAD plus lodging. Save 10% on accommodation when you book before May 27.

PORTUGAL: Vale de Moses, October 19-24, 2026

Six days in the mountains of central Portugal with Martha Peterson. Mountain retreat at 500 meters elevation. Forested hillsides. River swimming. The kind of quiet your nervous system rarely gets.

Best for: people drawn to mountains and nature, anyone seeking quiet alongside the physical work.

All-inclusive: $1,350-$1,900 USD depending on accommodation.

MEXICO: Mar de Jade, January 16-23, 2027

Eight days on Mexico’s Pacific coast with Martha Peterson. Beachfront setting. Warmth that lets chronically tight muscles actually soften.

Best for: escaping winter, people who want extended time, those drawn to ocean and beach settings.

$850 USD plus lodging booked separately.

HOW TO CHOOSE

The year will pass either way. You’ll either look back in December having finally understood your chronic tension, or you’ll still be wondering when the right time will come.

Island summer. Mountain autumn. Beach winter. Choose the setting where your nervous system will feel most supported.

Most people come alone. Community forms quickly.

Links in bio.

05/21/2026

What your morning stiffness is actually telling you

You wake up stiff. Your back hurts. Your neck is tight. It takes ten minutes of moving around before you feel even remotely normal.

You blame your mattress, or your pillow, or the way you slept.

But here’s what’s actually happening: your nervous system doesn’t stop holding tension just because you’re asleep.

There are patterns your brain learned during your waking hours that don’t turn off at night. Your brain holds the same tension patterns during sleep that it holds during the day.

So you sleep in those patterns. Your muscles stay contracted, your shoulders stay up by your ears, your back stays braced.

And you wake up feeling like you’ve been clenched in the same position for eight hours.

Because you have been.

Morning stiffness isn’t about your mattress or your sleeping position. It’s your nervous system showing you what it’s been holding all along. You just didn’t notice during the day because you were moving, distracted, busy pushing through.

The good news is this: when you address those patterns through Clinical Somatic Education and Somatic Movement, when you teach your nervous system to actually let go, you don’t just move better during the day.

You sleep better at night, and wake up feeling like your body actually rested.

Colm and Martha just finished an exciting weekend teaching in Ljubljana, Slovenia.Participants came from varied backgrou...
05/12/2026

Colm and Martha just finished an exciting weekend teaching in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Participants came from varied backgrounds including professional sports and massage therapy.

The group spent two days learning Clinical Somatic Education, understanding the three stress reflex patterns, and discovering how to address chronic tension at the nervous system level.

This is what happens at PRTM workshops. People arrive carrying tension they’ve held for years, often skeptical that anything will actually help. They leave with understanding of why their body holds what it holds and practical skills they can use immediately.

The hands-on feedback makes the difference. When you can feel what you couldn’t feel before, when someone helps you sense the exact moment a muscle releases, that’s when the work clicks in a way videos and descriptions can’t replicate.

The Full Portugal Retreat Breakdown☀️October 19-24, 2026. Vale de Moses, central Portugal. Martha Peterson. Six days.Wha...
05/07/2026

The Full Portugal Retreat Breakdown☀️

October 19-24, 2026. Vale de Moses, central Portugal. Martha Peterson. Six days.

What you’ll do: Mornings are movement sessions where we teach you why you have tension and pain and how to release it so you can feel more at ease in your body. Afternoons are guided walks that integrate what you learned on the floor into walking, plus time to rest, swim in the nearby river, or explore.
Evenings include gentle practice to settle before sleep. You’ll receive hands-on feedback throughout the week.

Where you’ll be: Vale de Moses is a mountain retreat center sitting 500 meters above sea level in central Portugal. The yoga shala is built of wood and glass with views of forested hillsides. Walking paths wind through the property. The Rio Zêzere flows a few miles away for swimming. The setting offers the kind of quiet your nervous system rarely gets.

What’s included: All movement sessions over six days, five nights lodging, and all vegetarian/vegan meals prepared with seasonal Portuguese produce. Movement props, workbook, and digital resources are all provided.

The investment: Shared cottage: €1,050 early bird / €1,150 regular Twin room: €1,250 early bird / €1,350 regular Single room: €1,500 early bird / €1,600 regular

Who it’s for: This retreat is for people ready to understand their chronic tension instead of just managing it. For people who’ve tried other approaches without lasting results. All levels are welcome, and most people come alone.

What you leave with: Missing link information that teaches you why you have tension and pain and how to release it using gentle Somatic Movements.

This is six days focused on understanding your pain at its source: your brain and nervous system and the way it responds to stress. Learn how to move the way you did before the pain set in.

Our early bird pricing ends June 8, so if you’d love to join us comment RETREAT and we’ll send through the booking info!

When you were seven, maybe younger, something happened. A fall, a fright, a moment of bracing against something painful ...
05/05/2026

When you were seven, maybe younger, something happened.
A fall, a fright, a moment of bracing against something painful or unpredictable. Your nervous system did exactly what it was designed to do. It contracted, it protected, it held.

And when the moment passed, it held on a little longer, just in case.

That is not a flaw. That is survival.

But the nervous system and muscles do not automatically release what they have learned to hold, and if the holding pattern was reinforced often enough, through stress, through injury, through years of sitting or moving in ways that asked certain muscles to work harder than others, it eventually stopped feeling like tension at all. It started feeling like you.

By the time most people reach their forties, they are not just carrying their current stress in their bodies.

They are carrying the accumulated tension of decades, movement habits formed in childhood, bracing patterns laid down in moments they can barely remember, postural adaptations made so long ago that they have come to feel completely natural.

The stiffness that greets you in the morning, the ache that returns no matter what you try, the sense that your body is somehow working against you. These are not signs of ageing.
They are signs of a nervous system that learned something a very long time ago and was never shown how to let it go.

This is what Clinical Somatic Education addresses.

Not the symptoms, but the source. The slow, involuntary muscle contractions that live below the threshold of conscious awareness, and the gentle, precise process of teaching your nervous system that it is safe to release them.

The pattern you learned at seven does not have to be the pattern you carry at forty-seven. It can be unlearned, and that changes more than just the way you move.

If you have ever been told that sitting too much is the reason your back hurts, you are not alone. It is one of the most...
05/03/2026

If you have ever been told that sitting too much is the reason your back hurts, you are not alone.

It is one of the most repeated pieces of advice in wellness spaces, and it sounds reasonable enough. But it misses something important.

Sitting does not cause back pain. What causes back pain is the way your nervous system has learned to hold you while you sit, a pattern of chronic muscle contraction that your brain has reinforced so many times it no longer registers it as tension. It simply feels like you.

This is what Thomas Hanna called Sensory Motor Amnesia. Over time, the muscles caught in these habitual patterns lose their ability to fully release, not because anything is structurally wrong, but because your brain has forgotten how to let them go.

Telling someone in that state to sit less, or sit differently, or strengthen their core, does not address what is actually happening. It adds more effort on top of a system that is already working too hard.

Clinical Somatic Education works at the level of the brain and the nervous system, using slow, gentle movements called pandiculations to restore your brain’s ability to sense and release those deep holding patterns and muscular tension. The change does not come from pushing harder. It comes from learning to feel what you have stopped noticing.

This October, Martha Peterson is leading a five-day retreat at Vale de Moses in Portugal, where that process of relearning becomes the entire focus of your time. If your back has been speaking to you for a while and nothing has quite answered it, this might be worth a closer look.

Comment RETREAT below to find out more👇

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Manitou Springs, CO
80829

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

Website

https://www.unionsquareandco.com/9781454953173/the-mindful-motion-deck-by-martha-peterson

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