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Where do words come from? Who decided that a certain combination of sounds makes a syllable that has meaning and combines with other syllables that complexify meaning?

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So let’s think about the word Somatics. Does its meaning reflect our intentions in using it?

Soma, of greek origin means, body or bodily. Thomas Hanna used the term soma meaning the whole body or person as experienced from within, in more than a sense that is only physical. This makes me wonder what the greeks meant by soma as the object body. Part of the reason Somatics is so difficult to define is that there is no language in english for this fundamental concept of the body as a whole, and because there is no vocabulary for it, there is little concept of it. Awareness of the body as a whole in all its physical and mental and emotional processes is too big to conceptualize simultaneously for those who have not had practice understanding the self in this way throughout life. The second origin also intrigues me. Bodily says to me referring to, but not necessarily of the body. If the very root of a word refers to something else can it have its own definition?

ics, rooted in both greek and latin, meaning organized knowledge, or treatment. I think of words like mechanics, academics, aerodynamics, aesthetics, statistics. They are all fields that include a set of systems to address the same knowledge content. Somatics seems to fit under this category given that it comprises many body methods (most having therapeutic origins, possibly falling under the category of treatment.) But something still feels weird about limiting the field to the practices it includes. I feel Somatics is more about a value set those practices endorse rather than the practices themselves.

One other possibility I considered is that Somatics is a study. logy vs ology meaning “the study of.” (Consider biology, logic, archeology, analogy…) Unfortunately the anthropologists have already taken “somatology,” defined as the study or science of the human body, through the lens of anthropology. Somatics has no disciplinal lens. The only lens that is applied is the life experience of each individual, however the value-set of Somatics can be used as a lens over other disciplines. Imagine learning about Chemistry from a Somatics point of view!

One alternative I considered comes from the value of embodiment and experience in Somatics, and bears the point of view that Somatics is a study. I came up with embodiology, the study of embodiment. Whether that is studying how to embody a personal value set or how to sense and perceive the world with real awareness of a person’s embodied participation in it. That seems to get at a few of the problems and propositions above, but again only comes from one aspect of the Somatics value-set. What do you think of my new word?

-Julia