Somatic Practice in Yoga Therapy

As the founding director of Spanda® Yoga Movement Therapy’s accredited yoga therapist and teacher trainings, Jaime Stover Schmitt EdD, CMA, SME, IDME, E-RYT500, C-IAYT is devoted to the education and mentoring of yoga therapists and teachers in somatic practice. She believes safe embodiment to be the ground for insight and positive change. Dr. Schmitt holds certifications in a variety of hands-on and somatic practices. She began the practice of yoga at age five accompanying her mother to class—this well-suited her introspective nature. Discovering dance to be “traveling yoga poses” she earned her doctorate in Dance at Temple University in Philadelphia—a hotbed of somatic investigation at that time. This confluence inspired her to develop her own approach to the therapeutic use of yoga, movement, and hands-on technique. Throughout her thirty years of private practice, she refined her perspective recognizing Rudolph Ballentine, M.D., Joan Shivarpita Harrigan, Psy.D., H.H. Sri Swami Rama, and H.H. Sri Swami Chandrasekharanand Saraswati, along with Aileen Crow and Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen as her mentors in this endeavor. Dr. Schmitt serves on the International Association of Yoga Therapists Accreditation Committee having also been a past board of director member of Yoga Alliance. A contributor to Yoga Journal, Yoga International, and A Moving Journal, she is the past editor-in-chief of The Journal of Authentic Movement and Somatic Inquiry. She’s also written Yoga for Pregnancy (HI Press), Yogini’s Kitchen: A Recipe Book of Healthy Vegetarian Cuisine, and Every Woman’s Yoga (Prima/Random House), which has been translated into several languages.

Introduction



Section I: Somatic Practices for an Embodied Understanding of the Body



Introduction to The Purpose of This Section and How to Use These Practices



Chapter 1: Somatic Practices for Understanding the Body’s “Geography”: Experiencing Anatomy and Anatomical Concepts



Chapter 2: Somatic Practices for Experientially Exploring and Illustrating Physiological



Processes



 



Section II: Somatic Practices for Improving Movement Efficiency



Introduction on the Purpose of This Section and How to Use These Practices



Chapter 3: Embodying Static and Dynamic Alignment



Chapter 4: Embodying the Use of Space



Chapter 5: Embodying Body Organization



Chapter 6: Embodying Movement Quality



 



Section III: Somatic Practices for Self-Inquiry and Reflection



Introduction on the Purpose of This Section and How to Use These Practices



Chapter 7: Dreaming in Movement



Chapter 8: Spanda® Myofascial ActivationTM



Chapter 9: Spanda® Somatic Accessing TechniqueTM



 



Section IV: Somatic Practices for Union: Yoga



Introduction on the Purpose of This Section and How to Use These Practices



Chapter 10: Classical Yoga Practices as Somatic Systems of Self-Realization