Introduction
The sensing-perceiving-acting cycle (SPA cycle) provides a map with which to understand the learning process. As movement educators, we often teach others how to move in new and different ways. We may focus on education for performance and recreation, guide techniques to develop expression and creativity or use movement as medicine for healing and repair. Whatever intention movement serves, often times the first steps require disentangling holding patterns and changing habits before refining and adding new movement skills.
As movement teachers, we access the autonomic nervous system, fascial matrix and neuromuscular system to create change. These systems are targeted through specific movements and by paying attention to particular sensory channels. Importantly, the movement practice invites curiosity and inquiry about our landscapes of experience. In other words, somatic movement is our doorway to promoting meaningful and sustainable change. And the SPA cycle is a useful map in the process.
Somatic Movement
Somatic movement involves tuning into the experience of movement while moving. Somatic movement focuses our mind’s attention on our body’s voice. Our body’s voice is heard through the language of sensations and vibrations and forces and charges. The qualities we sense through our tissues become our feelings and thoughts and inform our movement choices. Movement is one primary way we commune with life. Through moving, sensations provide feedback to our brain and help organize our next movement action. The SPA cycle is an ongoing conversation of learning and adapting.
In somatic movement practice, instead of focusing on making the right shapes, or hitting the ideal rep range, or pushing for a goal, attention is on the moment unfolding. The somatic viewpoint is the first person perspective of our body; our lived experience; the personal consciousness of the body itself. Somatic awareness turns up the volume on tracking sensation as a self-research tool. Perception is the combined information from our internal senses + the environment + our unique associations to the sensations. Our action plan, our movement, is organized based on how we perceive the incoming information that our central nervous system receives. Somatic movement is powerful way to access the sensing-perceiving-acting cycle to create change.
Movement Re-patterning
Chances are, if you are a movement teacher, you have instructed a student or client to fix or change something. Perhaps you asked them to position their knees, or to shift their weight over their hips, or to breath in a certain tempo, or to activate a certain muscle group in an exercise. Whatever the cue, the person heard what you said and then attempted the correction, only to “lose form” or fall back into habit. You try giving the cue a second time, and maybe a third, but the “fix” remains temporary. Movement re-patterning requires not only external feedback, in the form of coaching or instruction, but also internal feedback, based on our body’s experience of itself.
Even if the cue is clear, and your client understands what is instructed cognitively, that is not always enough to change the holding pattern. Learning is ingrained over time and movement is a perfect example. Imagine if we had to think through the steps for bending over every time we needed to pick something up, or tie our shoes, or smell the flowers. To promote survival, our neurobiology has become genius at organizing the symphony to play millions of sonatas without needing our conscious attention. Brilliant! . . . until we need to replace the violin section or tune the trumpets. How to update the pattern?
Like a symphony of instruments and musicians and conductors and sheet music housed in a theatre to play for an audience . . . a holding pattern is complex. A holding pattern is a habitual movement behavior that limits someone’s ability to participate in life to their desired capacity. They can have any combination of emotional, psychological, social, ancestral and/ or structural influences.
Sound impossible to work with using movement? Well, what I have found is that with the SPA cycle as map along with the principles of Somatic Groundwork, holding patterns can be identified and replaced through a process of discovery and application.
Sensing-perceiving-acting Cycle
The sensing-perceiving-acting cycle helps us understand, in a simple and basic way, how we learn. At birth, we are gifted with a starter kit in the form of reflexes. A reflex is a motor response, a movement, that automatically happens when a particular stimulus occurs (think sensation). Stimuli come through many channels, including how we are touched and how we touch/ make contact with our environment, caregivers and our own bodies. All of this sets the tone for how we yield into the world. These early reflexes ensure that we survive by providing our neuromyofascial web a quick start guide on how to eat and how to get there. Along the way, we receive a lot of new feedback as we move and sense new things by coming into relationships.
The forces of our environment, experienced through our body’s architecture, are constantly at play and are at the core of our development. These forces are the signals of our earliest sensory experiences. These patterns of vibration and mechanical stress determine our tissue shape and the composition of our fascial matrix which gives rise to the organization of our structure as a whole (read more about fascia and tensegrity here). Another view into the dance between form and function.
The SPA cycle is a looping of sensations, perceptions, and actions that inform one another in constant and rapid succession. These feedback loops are intrinsic to the continuous learning and adapting process. When we are tasked to climb the stairs, most of the time, unless we have pain or injury, we just do it without any thought at all, the task is reflexive. Under the hood, there is a relay of information processing happening between the inner and outer landscapes of our experience. As we move, our fascia and nervous system is registering feedback from our environment through a variety of sensory channels.
Slowing Down to Intercept the Ball
At the heart of somatic movement patterning is slowing down. We practice slowing down the movement to the speed at which the experience can be tracked. The first skills include the ability to tune into our soma and to settle our nervous system. We tune in to listen to our body in a fresh way. We listen to the language of sensation. Paying attention to our body in movement gives us cues about how our body organizes movement, about the nuts and bolts of our motor control.
When it comes to teaching movement, if our student or client has a holding pattern limiting progression, the external feedback in the form of our cue or verbal instruction may not be helpful. Instead, guidance on how to “intercept the ball” in the SPA cycle may provide the most efficient learning pathway. For example, one of the primary sensory channels we track in Somatic Groundwork is force transfer through our fascial matrix. If I slow down in a floor bridge and pay attention to how the foot push travels through my lower body, I may notice that it gets stuck below my knees. In that moment, perhaps there is a belief that surfaces about my knees being weak. With this realization, a new inquiry arises: how can I move the force through my knees? And what happens when I do?
The process of monitoring with attention and modifying with intention is the basis for neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to adapt and repattern the neural circuitry through our daily routines and practices. Neurons have the ability to change their structure and function in response to experience which ultimately affect perception and behavior. Where does a present moment experience emerge from? Our felt-sense. The spaces between raw sensory data and perception.
Behavior change requires tuning in to our felt-sense before the action or reaction takes place. Say I desire to improve my listening skills, for example, and change a habit of interrupting people in conversation. First I might begin some self-research by tracking the energy and charges and story happening within me when I am around others. Am I anxious? Do I feel tense? How is my breathing? Who are my thoughts while a conversation is occurring? Am I actually present to the moment in front of me or am I lost in myself while others are talking? By focusing attention to my inner lived experience, I discover what underlies the interrupting habit.
Engaging in the SPA cycle begins with slowing down and paying attention inward to inspect the underpinnings of our sensory life. When we slow down sufficiently enough to check-in and research what is moving inside of us, we find the key to changing behavior. External feedback from a trusted person is part of our journey toward change. Yet, the internal feedback we gather through somatic practice is like tending to the soil from which the plants grow.
Conclusion
As movement teachers, we thrive on educating our students and clients to discover new connections in their movement training and practices. One common challenge we face are the inevitable roadblocks of holding patterns that cause limitations due to cumulative injury, pain and under-recovery. We are not keen as a culture to slow down and tune into the intimacy of our lived experience to nurture change. Quick fixes, doing rather than being and forcing outcomes are tendencies in western society. Somatic movement practice offers a different way to support change by moving from the inside out.
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TAP HERE to download a full color infographic of the sensing-perceiving-acting cycle. The infographic illustrates details of the overall cycle and summarizes the relevance of external and internal feedback.