STANLEY KELEMAN

THE SOMATIC EXPERIENCE

FORMATION OF A PERSONAL SELF
 The Somatic Experience introduction

THE LOSS of somatic reality is a common dilemma. Encouraged to “be

yourself,” “grow,” or “be authentic,” many of us have not had a felt
experience of what these phrases mean.

We live through preconceived ideas, trying to transfer mental content to the

rest of our personality or we try to enliven or intensify our life experience
with chemicals, social engagements, retreating into meditation or cultivating
physical fitness.

• When we suffer emotionally, we tend to look for reasons for an

 explanation for our behavior or that of others. Typically, we analyze
conflicts in terms of causality.

• Our emotional history, in effect, is a somatic organization that

requires destructuring and reorganization. By itself, disorganization
can lead to the extremes of the instinctive domain or to social
imitation, and reorganization is insufficient; on the other hand, if it is
based only on the somatic, it is on the psychological idealization of
some authoritative instance.
• THE SOMATIC EXPERIENCE discovers the relationship between
process and form, form and feeling, feeling and function. The process
encourages us to differentiate. The organization of experience relates
the three layers of existence-the animal, the social and the person.
 NATURE OF THE ORGANIZING PROCESS
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• Every activity involves movement and every movement, whether

simple or subtle, contains an organizing process. This organizing
process is based on a biological law: every muscle contraction
followed by stretching.

• All sensations, all emotions, all thoughts are actually organized

patterns of movement. By altering the basic pulsatory rhythms,
emotions are manipulated or physical stress conditions develop.
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 THE ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE
• The organizing drive is a fundamental property that is at the center of
all living things. Life establishes an order at the microcosmic cellular
level and at the individual and social macrocosmic level. The creation
of order is inherent to each cell.