Introducing the Somatics Studio at Forward to Health
w/ Iman Nacer Boundaoui
"the Somatics Studio" -- a no-frill online movement space, every Saturday morning, for women only, to move grief, rage, awe and joy; to feel, thaw, awaken, and release; to lubricate the joints, unhinge locked up emotions, and find a more flexible way of moving in the world-- launching soon (in November) through Forward to Health.
Why?? Access, access, access. I've spent 5 yrs of this somatics career trying to figure out ACCESS for Muslim women, BIPOC women, and I've been in the trenches feeling completely at a loss for how to make that happen. I had a MASSIVE somatic opening of complete and utter rage and anger for how inaccessible this work has been, even for me, and I'm IN the field....."the Somatics Studio" was my breakthrough after that opening!! Allahu Akbar 🤲🏽
Here's what this virtual Studio space will solve for...
1 Day Per Week for 3 Months
1-hour Weekly of Receiving
Come as You are - You are Right on Time
Experience the Somatics Studio
Somatic practice gets us out of theory and into the body as a domain of transformation and change.
In traditional Chinese energetics ("TCE") which underlies somatics theory, the Fall/Autumn time is connected to the lungs, which in turn are connected to the emotion of worry! Starting to feel worried, nervous, anxious? Natural. Trying to get into your head to work it all out? That's the part that's unnatural...i.e. misaligned with nature, our human nature. Trying to think our way out of worry creates a loop we can't get out of. Try these Tibetan breathing exercises instead...used by Tibetan monks for more than 3,000 yrs to prepare for meditation.
I use them in my Somatics practice to move anxiety/worry. Why? Because they target the lungs.
- The first exercise (gathering heavenly qi, wiping it over the body/face, and then pounding the rib cage to send vibrational pulses into the lungs) is a LUNG CLEARING/CLEANSING exercise-- literally moves stagnant/old oxygen out of the bottom 3rd of the lungs, where it can get stuck with anxious breathing (breathing with only the top third of the lungs); from a SOMATIC perspective, we ADD the intention of clearing stagnant worry from our lungs, and allow the body to somaticize that intention (which it knows how to do intuitively).
- The second exercise (pulling a bow and arrow on each side of the body, over the head) is a LUNG STRETCH-- literally stretching the connective tissue/fascia around the upper ribcage to make more room for greater expansion of the lungs, i.e. deeper breath, fuller breath, more aliveness and life coming into the body with fresh/new oxygen; from a SOMATIC perspective, we are INCREASING our capacity to handle/face the stresses/worries of our lives without that worry taking us out of balance, i.e. widening our window, our container for life, as it comes.
Together, these practices help us clear old/stagnant worries that we don't want to pay attention to anymore or hold in our tissues/lungs anymore, and increase our capacity to be with the worries of life from deeper ground, more clarity, and a vast, centered, presence.
This is just a TASTE of what we will be doing every Saturday in the new FTH "Somatics Studio"-- for women only. Come, get your somatic medicine every weekend for one hour, leave your towel at the zoom door-- no questions asked, no fusses given. See you 11/1 (November 1st for my EurAfrican sisters), 7am U.S. pacific (PST)/ 9am central (CST)/ 10am eastern (EST)/ 4pm central european (CET), for our first Studio session :)
Who is Iman?
Iman Boundaoui is an Algerian-American somatics practitioner with a five-year tail in trauma healing work. After practicing as a civil litigator for five years, Iman turned to the healing-arts for answers to a question she had been asking throughout her life and legal career: how do people come back into their wholeness after oppression and injustice? Bringing her experience working with traumatized people and groups as an attorney, Iman began to explore how healing and coming back into wholeness were the only true recompense after experiences of physical, emotional and psychological traumas– whether interpersonal or collective, direct or intergenerational.
Since that time, Iman has served a wide variety of people, both as a teacher of somatics, and a practitioner and facilitator of somatic trauma-healing, working with both individuals and groups through days-to-years long healing processes that are aimed at: transmuting trauma contractions in the body; freeing up life-force energy that gets trapped behind survival strategies; integrating traumatic experiences; cultivating post-trauma growth and resilience; re-building a felt sense of safety where it has been lost; envisioning new futures; re-engaging the relational space with more agency, consent, and new boundary-making and boundary-dissolving skills. Iman employs a wide range of practices, exercises, and touch-based bodywork techniques in working towards these aims, including breathwork, vipassana meditation, qi-gong exercises, aikido-based practices, and somatic elicitation and experiencing.
Iman’s professional training as a healer intersects and integrates *Co-Active Life Coaching, *Strozzi Institute’s Embodied Transformation and Somatic Bodywork Methodology, and Integrative Somatic Trauma Healing, which she weaves together to help clients generate insight, wisdom and change at all levels– the mind, the body and the spirit. As a result, the transformation and healing process for each individual is unique, and the approaches used are designed as a living curriculum to reflect the unique and present-time needs of each client.
Iman’s integrated approach is practical in helping clients generate new skills, practices and competencies, and is transformative by helping clients embody more aliveness, new behaviors and choices, and a greater range of emotions and moods, which in turn create long-lasting shifts in a client’s way of being, relating, and thinking. As a result, clients naturally continue to move towards greater change, healing and desired life outcomes long after the healing engagement completes.
Throughout her work, Iman grounds in spiritual praxis, bringing her own spiritual growth and cultivation to bear on the healing she offers others. With deep ground, and a spirited center, Iman calls on her own life-force to bear on the energetic healing field she creates for every patient/client/friend to step into.
Endlessly concerned with her own growth, Iman is a committed student of life, constantly working on her own healing and development of greater consciousness in order to serve creation. With every passing year, she adds new tools and techniques to her healing repertoire, learning from the wisdom teachers and healers that she comes across in all parts of the world she travels to, on her life-long journey of seeking, and sharing, knowledge.
