As a yoga teacher do you ever feel like you’re in autopilot? We cue the same poses, teach the same flows, and watch students struggle in the same ways. If you’ve ever found yourself wondering, “Is there a deeper way for students to connect to the body?” — you’re not alone. That’s where somatic yoga comes in.
Somatic yoga gives students the tools to slow down and begin the journey inward. Your body has stories to tell—and somatic yoga helps you listen and understand those stories on a deeper level.
What Is Somatic Yoga?
Somatic yoga blends traditional yogic principles with internal listening. The focus shifts from how a pose looks to how it feels -from the inside out. Movements are often slow, small, and deeply intentional. Instead of stretching muscles, we’re exploring the nervous system and learning how to let go of unnecessary tension.
It’s less about doing and more about sensing.
“In somatics, you use mindfulness to bring awareness and understanding to where and how you store tension, trauma, and joy in your body by learning your physical, mental, and emotional comfort zones” says the Yoga Journal in What You Need to Know About Somatic Yoga.
It’s a Paradigm Shift
Somatic yoga helps rewire deeply held movement patterns by gently re-educating the brain-body connection. Think of it as working with the nervous system instead of trying to override it with willpower or alignment cues.
Why Yoga Teachers Should Take Interest
You already know that pushing through resistance rarely ends well. Somatic yoga offers a toolkit to:
- Help students (and ourselves) unwind chronic holding patterns
- Guide movements that release rather than stretch
- Invite felt sense, interoception, and nervous system regulation into the practice
- Break the cycle of over-efforting in asana
With somatic yoga, teachers become facilitators of awareness. We ask questions like, “What do you notice when you move this way?” instead of giving prescriptive cues. It’s a conversation between student and body, not a monologue from teacher to student.
Is It Still Yoga?
Great question. It’s true, not all somatic yoga may look like “yoga” as we know it. There might be no Down Dog in sight during practice. But it does deeply honor the yogic principles of pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), svadhyaya (self-study), and ahimsa (non-harming).
It’s a chance to slow down, get curious, and re-inhabit the body with compassion. Yoga is about uniting mind, body, and spirit – so the answer is a resounding “YES” – it is still yoga!
How It Works
Through repetitive, conscious movement, lying down or seated—you explore your body’s felt sense. Rather than striving to perfect a pose, you’re encouraged to notice what you feel, where you feel it, and how movement arises from within.
A key principle is pandiculation—a natural process your body uses to reset muscle tone, often seen in cats or babies when they stretch. In somatic yoga, we use guided movements to consciously pandiculate and recalibrate the nervous system.
“Pandiculation is our innate response to the sensations of lack of movement and to tension building up in our muscles—which often go hand in hand.” Somaticmovementcenter.com
How to Bring It Into your Current Classes
You don’t have to ditch your vinyasa flow class to teach somatic yoga. Try layering in some somatic principles:
- Begin with breath and subtle movement explorations
- Invite students to feel rather than fix
- Offer pauses and space between transitions
- Focus on internal cues over external form
- Try a short pandiculation sequence at the beginning or end of class
Experience Somatic Yoga
Experience a beginner friendly somatic yoga class for yourself, taught by professional yoga teacher Brett Larkin:
Final Thoughts
As yoga teachers, we’re guides—but also forever students. Somatic yoga has a lot to teach us about trusting what we feel and the power of presence.
Somatic yoga may seem trendy right now, but it’s also profound. Sometimes, the most radical thing we can offer our students is permission to slow down, soften, and trust what they feel in their bodies.
If you’ve been craving more depth, more nuance, and more nervous-system-friendly practices in your teaching, somatic yoga might just be your next step.
