As this summer research project is coming to a close, I’m wondering where to focus now? Simply Somatic has been launched! This website has lots of good info, lots of options for discovering more about a somatic point of view, and many ways to interact with others who are interested in this “somatic thing” (especially if we include our social network SomaticMe). I seem to have been asking this “what’s next?” question since the beginning of our project back in June. What is next for this year’s research (after our beginning attempts last summer to investigate a somatic perspective in higher education)?

A wider conversation is among my interests. I’d like to know what others are doing to grow this field out of its roots in therapeutic practice, injury prevention, and body awareness. It occurs to me that a somatic point of view has potential to infiltrate any field of inquiry that includes physical engagement of any degree. How does a more intensely physically embodied perspective influence one’s perceptions? Notions of embodiment have been in the conversation across many fields for decades. Has this common vocabulary moved a physically engaged perspective more to the center of the conversation? What’s next? I’d like the circle of inclusion in this somatic realm to reach farther afield, to penetrate perspectives that talk about embodiment yet do not engage the body in meaningful ways. Back to one of our beginning questions last summer–how could such a shift change the way we do education?

-Sheryl Saterstrom