Richard Strozzi-Heckler - The Art of Somatic Coaching: Embodying Skillful Action, Wisdom, and Compassion

Richard Strozzi-Heckler has spent nearly half a century as one of the few agents of transformation who has succeeded in carrying his work and explorations far from quiet meditation halls and therapy offices and out into the borderlands with warriors and entrepreneurs. He illuminates the smallest, almost invisible ways in which the culture shapes people to live at a distance from the body, even when consciously embracing a unitary philosophy. He puts forward a model of somatic coaching with easy-to-implement strategies that seamlessly weave practices of sensitive attention, conversation, breathing, touch, movement, and gestures. This book is particularly unique in its breaking out of a model of transformation that tends to be too narrowly focused on individuals and small groups, rather than the very large populations which have the major role in shaping the world.

Don Hanlon Johnson, PhD, founder of the Somatic Psychotherapy graduate degree program at California Institute of Integral Studies and author of Everyday Hopes, Utopian Dreams: Reflections on American Ideals

The dominant epistemology of our times fundamentally reduces learning and knowing to exercises of a disembodied intellect. This way of knowing is at the heart of the huge crises humanity is facing right now. Coaching was born as a reaction to that epistemology in order to take care of those issues. A deep and lasting transformational learning requires in each of us a shift of the dynamic coherence of our linguistic, emotional, and somatic being. Few people today understand and practice the somatic side of coaching as Richard Strozzi-Heckler does. In this book the reader will find a dimension of the art of learning that is simply an inspiration.

Julio Olalla, president, The Newfield Network

Strozzi-Hecklers latest contribution to the field of coaching emphasizes the essential work of cultivating the selfan embodied presenceas central to the development of the coach and key in the journey to mastery. A must read for coaches dedicated to transformational change in self, others, and our world!

Pamela McLean, PhD, and CEO of Hudson Institute of Coaching

The definitive book on somatic coaching. Strozzi-Hecklers wisdom and somatic mastery capture the mindset, mood, and methods that are essential to all coaches today. I feel changed and liberated after reading this bookmore awake and moved to align my life and my coaching with my core. This is a book that can change your life and might even save it!

Richard Leider, international bestselling author of The Power of Purpose, Repacking Your Bags, and Life Reimagined

The Anatomy of Change: A Way to Move Through Lifes Transitions

In Search of the Warrior Spirit: Teaching Awareness Disciplines to the Green Berets

Holding the Center: Sanctuary in a Time of Confusion

The Leadership Dojo: Build Your Foundation as an Exemplary Leader

AS EDITOR:

Aikido and the New Warrior

Being Human at Work: Bringing Somatic Intelligence into Your Professional Life

Electronic Edition: ISBN 978-1-58394-674-9

Copyright 2014 by Richard Strozzi-Heckler. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by
North Atlantic Books
P.O. Box 12327
Berkeley, California 94712

Cover photo iStockphoto.com/shaunl
Cover and book design by Claudia Smelser
Printed in the United States of America

The Art of Somatic Coaching: Embodying Skillful Action, Wisdom, and Compassion is sponsored by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences, a nonprofit educational corporation whose goals are to develop an educational and cross-cultural perspective linking various scientific, social, and artistic fields; to nurture a holistic view of arts, sciences, humanities, and healing; and to publish and distribute literature on the relationship of mind, body, and nature.

MEDICAL DISCLAIMER: The following information is intended for general information purposes only. Individuals should always see their health care provider before administering any suggestions made in this book. Any application of the material set forth in the following pages is at the readers discretion and is his or her sole responsibility.

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE PRINTED EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Strozzi-Heckler, Richard.
The art of somatic coaching : embodying skillful action, wisdom, and compassion / Richard Strozzi-Heckler.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-58394-673-2
1. Mind and body. 2. Somesthesia. 3. Body schema. 4. EmployeesCoaching of. I. Title.
BF161.S93 2014
658.3124dc23
2013027764

v3.1

To Cameron Grace

and the next generation
of somatic coaches, teachers,
and practitioners

I have been immeasurably blessed to have extraordinary teachers and mentors who have contributed to my life and to this book. My gratitude to them is unending, and while there is much to say about each of them and their significant role in the discourse of somatics, I will simply mention their names with the highest respect and gratefulness: Randolph Stone, Robert K. Hall, Doris Breyer, Magda Proskauer, Thomas Hanna, Al Bauman, Mitsugi Saotome Sensei, Robert Nadeau Sensei, and Frank Doran Sensei. The influence of these individuals lives in these pages. Thank you for your efforts in helping to make a better world.

I would like to gratefully acknowledge my colleague Staci K. Haines at Strozzi Institute for her contribution to my thinking about the importance of social context. This contribution is present wherever the ideas of social context appear in the book; as well as her input in the design of the graphic model of the methodology and in the design of Sites of Shaping/Sites of Change graphic model. Her thinking and application of somatics to social change is a next frontier for the discourse. The courseSomatics and Traumathat she created and directs is a groundbreaking offer that democratizes somatics and expands its influence.

I would like to thank the staff and teachers of Strozzi Institute, especially Mark Mooney, Karen Short, and Susie Nichols, for their support, loyalty, and encouragement in bringing somatics and embodiment to the fields of leadership, health, education, and organizational culture.

The Strozzi Institute associates who are too numerous to name here spread the art of Somatic Coaching and Transformation throughout the world. They have made it possible for individuals, teams, and companies in five continents, in organizations as diverse as multinational corporations, technology start-ups, local and national government, social and environmental justice organizers and leaders, the military, and educational institutions from grade school through graduate school to experience the power of embodied leadership and coaching.

Because of the many thousands of students who have gone through the courses at Strozzi Institute or experienced the practices of Somatic Coaching and embodied leadership through their organizations, the ideas and principles in this book have been tested and have come to maturity. Thank you for your commitment and goodwill.