Now I realize that the title of this article may seem exaggerated. I thought Thomas Hanna’s introduction to his methods sounded over the top. What pathos! when the truth sounds unbelievable! when what sounds too good to be true IT IS real!
To understand the metaphors, “Socraticus, Prometheus, and Herculeus” in relation to Hanna Somatics, we must understand a few things about Socrates, Prometheus, and Hercules.
Socrates He was a teacher and prominent character of ancient Greece. As a teacher, he guided his students along lines of consideration, asking leading questions so that his students could come to understanding for themselves. The view of knowing him, contrary to most contemporary ways of operating, is that we inherently know everything, but have forgotten almost everything, and the teacher only reminds us of what we have already known but forgotten.
Contrast the Socratic view with this conventional view of knowledge: fundamentally we know nothing and we have to learn everything, and the teacher is the one who tells us what is what. One who really knows what’s what ends up in Who’s Who, and if you’re not in Who’s Who, you’re nobody.
Kind of opposites, right?
So the Socratic method is “from the inside out, driven by what comes in from the outside”. Hanna’s Somatic Education methods produce, to quote Thomas Hanna, “an internalized learning process” by guiding clients through certain self-explorations of sensation and movement.
This is not the same as letting clients dictate the course of a session or misapproach our instructions or add irrelevant effort to a movement; It is not the same as taking what is given to us in response to our instructions. Remember, they are amnesiacs and usually do not understand their condition correctly.
Socrates led his students to conclusions interactively, according to their answers; we take our clients to results interactively, according to their answers. The statement comes from outside; learning comes from within.
Now Prometheus. Prometheus was the son of the Titan Lapetos and the nymph Klymene. The name, “Prometheus”, means “foresight”. According to myth, it was Prometheus who taught humanity the skills of civilization and gave us fire. (Crane, Gregory R. (ed.) The Perseus Project, www.perseus.tufts.edu, July 2002).
The gifts of Prometheus were the technologies of civilization and the corresponding awakening of attention of a special kind to receive and use these gifts.
Somatics is exactly an awakening of attention of a special kind. It is an awakening of attention on many levels of the human being, bringing self-mastery. The process teaches the relationship between mind “and” body (the “two” being internal and external manifestations of the same thing, and therefore not-two). It awakens us to new sensations. It cultivates the ability to focus attention, to act deliberately, to recognize the relationship between effort and its result, to self-correct, to follow through to the end. It teaches how to direct attention and intention towards the same thing. It gives us access to more of our abilities.
For almost everyone, these learnings generate a significant awakening. You can see how all elements of a solid civilization are necessary to responsibly use the gifts of Prometheus. My hope in working and playing with people in the somatic realm is that their “pilot light” lights up (they receive the gift of fire) and they can continue somatic awakening largely on their own.
And now, herculean. Known primarily for his strength, Hercules has been described as the perfect embodiment of pathos, the experience of virtuous struggle against great odds that leads to fame and, in Hercules’ case, immortality. (Crane, Gregory R(ed.) The Perseus Project, www.perseus.tufts.edu, July 2002).
Have you ever tried to get someone to do something in a new way? Has someone ever asked you for your advice and then argued with you about it? Doing somatic processes with people, even getting them to try them, even when they’re interested in doing them, often “gets interesting.” It seems, sometimes, that it takes a Herculean effort to guide people through the process of change, even when they want to change.
Magnify that challenge to an entire culture accustomed to placing responsibility for health and wellness outside of oneself, and you’ll see the scope of our work. Getting a culture to change its way of operating from dependence on a Doctor-Patient/Parent-Child system (saving people from the consequences of their own actions) to responsibility for their own well-being (reducing the need to be saved consequences) is a herculean feat equivalent to cleaning the stables of King Augeas by diverting a river. The exploits of Hercules, of which the cleaning of King Augeas’s stables was one of twelve, required strength and the use of available resources in new ways. They required more than Hercules’ solitary strength, but also his acceptance of others’ help and ideas, his persistence, and his ingenious development of new ways to overcome seemingly impossible challenges.
