The Body We Know From The Inside

There’s a world of difference between how we see ourselves and how we feel ourselves.

When we look in the mirror, we see a body. Limbs, torso, posture, skin. We see what others see. But when we sense inwardly, a whole other world reveals itself. A world of emotion, sensation, story, memory, belief. I sometimes speak of this as the inner landscape, because it’s pulsing, shifting, breathing. Alive. 

It’s this inner landscape that the field of somatics explores – not just the body as a physical form, but the soma: the living, sensing self we experience from within. This distinction isn’t about thinking of ourselves as two separate things – body and soma – it’s about two distinct ways of knowing ourselves.

Two ways of knowing ourselves

Science, medicine, and psychology often take the third-person view of bodies – observing, analysing and measuring from the outside. This view has brought incredible understanding to how our muscles contract, how our brains process information, how our organs function. It’s the view of the microscope and the measuring tape.

But there’s another way of knowing – what Thomas Hanna called the first-person view, the world of felt experience. From this inner view (or inner landscape), the human experience is not a collection of elements to be analysed, but a unified, ongoing process. It’s the living self in motion – we are always sensing, integrating, responding, regulating.

In the external view, we can see a heartbeat, chart its rhythm, even analyse its chemistry. But from within, we can feel that same heartbeat – the change in pace, the flutter when we’re anxious, the steadiness when we’re at ease.

Science calls it data. Somatics calls it aliveness.

Both of these views are valid. They both offer truth. The trouble comes when we treat one as more important than the other.

Neither view is more real, they just belong to different categories of knowing. And when we ignore the inner world – the first-person perspective – we miss (at least) half the truth of what it means to be human.

This is why somatics matters. It’s an invitation to return to the direct experience of being alive, not through theories or diagnoses, but through awareness – through the body’s own language.

The self that senses and moves

Thomas Hanna is considered the ‘godfather’ of somatics, having spent his life dedicated to the fields movement education and self-awareness. Hanna said that the soma is not just self-aware, it is self-regulating. The soma doesn’t just observe itself, it’s constantly adjusting, responding and reorganising. It’s adaptive.

A rock or a machine doesn’t change just from being observed. But our human form shifts the moment we pay attention to it. Bring awareness to your breath, and your breath changes. Sense your right shoulder, and it subtly relaxes. Awareness isn’t passive; it does something.

This is the wonder of the sensory-motor system – the feedback loop that allows us to sense what we’re doing and, at the same time, adjust how we’re doing it. We cannot move without sensing, and we cannot sense without, in some way, moving.

To feel your body is to participate in shaping it.

Function makes structure

Before I was a somatic practitioner I spent over a decade in the design industry, where one of the most upheld principles for ‘good’ design was that form follows function. I understood that to mean that the shape of something should be informed by its reason for being made: what’s the purpose? How then, should it look?

The same is true from a somatic perspective: it’s not structure that determines function – it’s function that shapes structure. The way we move, breathe and respond to life continually sculpts our form. Over time, patterns of holding or collapse become written into our muscles, impacting our posture, our points of tension, even our sense of self.

And the beauty is that, because function creates structure, we are malleable. We can learn. We can change.

When we become aware of our patterns – physical, emotional, behavioural – we begin to open space for choice. We can’t force change, but by becoming aware, we can cultivate the tender space for it to unfold naturally.

This is the quiet power of somatic work: to bring presence to the places we’ve gone numb or automatic, and in doing so, invite the body to reorganise itself toward ease, integrity and aliveness – even joy.

Being yourself, literally

Hanna once playfully revised Descartes’ famous line “I think, therefore I am.” He suggested that a more accurate saying might be: I sense and move, therefore I am myself.

To be human is to be a sensing, moving organism, not a brain carried about by a body, but a unified process of being. We are not simply bodies that have experiences; we are experiences expressing as bodies.

So when we speak of ‘coming home to the body’ we’re really speaking of coming home to the soma – the body that knows itself from within.

When the body feels far away

Many of the examples here are practices of interoception – your body's internal sensing system. But this is just one doorway into somatic wisdom.

For many people, especially those who’ve spent years leading, caring, or keeping things together, tuning inward can feel like being asked to speak a language you never learned. The body may feel quiet, unreliable, or simply unknown.

That’s not a failure, it’s a form of protection. It’s what the body does when it’s had to prioritise survival over sensing. And if it’s the case for you, begin gently. You might start by noticing the feeling of your feet on the floor, the rhythm of your breath, or the warmth of your hands. Or you might find other ways in – through movement, sound, creativity or nature.

Somatic awareness is not about forcing a connection. It’s about finding the pathways that feel available to you now, and letting them widen over time.

If you’d like to explore a few of these other doorways, you might enjoy my article How To Listen To Your Body, where I share 3 more pathways.

An invitation to listen

You don’t need special training to begin practicing. You already live it, every moment. Every breath, every subtle adjustment in your chair, every quiet noticing is your soma in process.

Somatics gives language to what your body has always known: that your experience matters. That your body’s wisdom is trustworthy. That you can learn, unlearn and relearn how to move through the world with more awareness and grace.

To live somatically is to honour the body as a wise participant in life’s unfolding – responsive, relational, and alive to its own becoming.

So perhaps, next time you feel tension rising, or a deep breath calling, pause for a moment. Let your attention soften inward. Feel yourself from the inside out. What do you notice? What’s shifting as you listen?

That’s the soma – the living you, making sense of itself.