Somatics is the field which studies the soma: namely, the body as perceived from within by first-person perception. When a human being is observed from the outside – i.e., from a third-person viewpoint – the phenomenon of a human body is perceived. But, when this same human being is observed from the first-person viewpoint of his own proprioceptive senses, a categorically different phenomenon is perceived: the human soma.
The two distinct viewpoints for observing a human being are built into the very nature of human observation, which is equally capable of being internally self-aware, as well as externally aware. The soma, being internally perceived, is categorically distinct from a body, not because the subject is different, but because the mode of viewpoint is different: it is immediate proprioception – a sensory mode that provides unique data.
It is fundamental to recognize that the same individual is categorically different when viewed from a first-person perception then is the case when they are viewed from a third-person perception. The sensory access is categorically different as are there resultant observations.
The categorical distinction between these two viewpoints establishes the ground rules for all studies of the human species. Failure to recognize the categorical difference between first-person observation and third-person observation leads to fundamental misunderstandings in physiology, psychology, and medicine.
Physiology, for example, takes a third-person view of the human being and sees a body. This body is an objective entity, observable, analyzable, and measurable, and the same way as any other object. The universal laws of physics and chemistry are brought to bear on this body, because – as an observed body – it richly displays universal physical, and chemical principles.
From a first person viewpoint, however, quite different data are observed. The proprioceptive centers communicate and continually feedback, a rich display of somatic information, which is immediately self-observed as a process that is both unified and ongoing. So do not need, first, to be mediated and interpreted through a set of universal laws to become factual. First person observation of the soma is immediately factual. Third-person observation, in contrast, can become factual only by mediation through a set of principles.
It should be understood that this difference in data is neither a difference in truthful accuracy nor of intrinsic value. The difference is that the two separate modes of recognition are irreducible. Neither mode is less factual or inferior to the other. They are equal.
Psychology, for example, takes a third person viewpoint of the human being and sees a body of the behavior. This bodily behavior is an objective data that is observable, analyzable, and measurable as is any other behavioral data. The universal laws of cause and affect, stimulus and response, and adaptation are brought to bear on the behaving body, because – as an observed body – it richly displays these behavioral principles.
But from a first-person viewpoint, quite different data are observed. The proprioceptive centers communicate and feedback immediate factual information on the process of the ongoing unified soma– with the momentum of its past, along with the intentions and expectations of its future. These data are already unified; they have no need to be analyzed, interpreted, and later formulated into a unitary factual statement.
Medicine, for example, takes a third-person view of the human being and sees a patient ( i.e., a clinical body) displaying various symptoms that – when observed, analyzed, and interpreted, according to universally known clinical principles — can be diagnosed, treated and prognosed.
But from the first-person view, quite different data are observed. The proprioceptive centers, communicate and feedback, immediate factual information on the continuous, and unified past of the soma and expectations for the future. The somatic appreciation of how the past of the soma led to ill health and how the future may restore – or not restore – health is essential to the full clinical picture. Ignorance of the first-person viewpoint is ignorance of the somatic factor that permeates medicine: the placebo effect and the nocebo effect.
Thus, the human being is quite unlike a mineral or a chemical solution in providing, not one, but two irreducible viewpoints for observation. A third-person viewpoint can only observe a human body. A first-person viewpoint can only observe a human soma – one’s own. Body and soma are coequal in reality and value, but they are categorically distinct as observed phenomena. Somatics, then, is a field of study dealing with somatic phenomena: i.e., the human being as experienced by themself from the inside.
Interlude: How This Distinction Affects the Sciences
Apart from the requirement that it have a methodical discipline, science has validity in both its research and theorizing exactly to the degree that at all data are considered. to ignore essential data, either willfully or innocently, automatically calls into question what one claims to be factual, as well as what one speculates to be so.
The fact that two modes of cognition on the same generic subject will lead to two distinct sets of data has no bearing on the validity of the physical sciences, whose subjects are inanimate and lack the proprioceptive awareness that the scientist himself possesses. But this fact does bear directly on those Sciences dealing with subjects who are just as consciously observant as are the scientists who are engaged in observing.
The life sciences in general and the sciences of physiology, psychology, and medicine in particular lacked valid grounds for what they assert to be established fact and sound theorizing exactly to the degree they ignore, willfully or innocently, first-person data. to avoid evidence that is " phenomenological " or "subjective” is unscientific. to dismiss such data as irrelevant and / or unimportant is irresponsible.
2. The soma is self regulating as well as self sensing
When you, as a scientist, are looking at a subject who, unlike a rock, is looking back at you, it is not easy to pretend that the subject is merely a complicated rock. If one insists on doing so, it is certain that no valid scientific conclusions will be reached, Nor will, they have genuine applicability to anything at all – unless, perhaps, to a complicated rock.
Thus, the first step in understanding Somatic is to recognize – and never cease to remind that somas are not bodies, and the objective scientific varieties concerning the latter are not in fact applicable to the former. To do so would be what logicians refer to as a “category mistake. “
The second step into the somatic realm is just as significant: it is the recognition that the factor of self-awareness is only the first of several distinctions of the human soma. The human is not merely a self-aware soma, passively observing itself (as well as observing its scientific observer) , but it is doing something else simultaneously: it is acting upon itself; i.e., it is always always engaged in the process of self regulation.
When we play the role of scientist and observe a rock, nothing thereby changes for the rock (except as Heisenberg reminded us, there are minute changes caused by our body heat, shadow, etc.). But the soma that is being observed is not only aware of itself through self observation, but it is also simultaneously in the process of modifying itself before the observer's eyes.
A fundamental finding of physiological psychology is that humans perceive a sensory impression only of that for which they already have an established motor response. If we cannot react to it, the sensory impression doesn’t clearly register; it is shunted away from perception. This happens because in the perspective process, the sensorium never operates alone, but always in tandem with the motorium.
The indissoluble functional and somatic unity of the sensory motor system is testified to by the obvious structural and bodily unity that is built into the human spinal column. The column is composed of descending motor, nerves, and ascending sensory nerves, which exit, respectively, to the fore and aft of the vertebrae. Schema continues all the way up the spine to the top of the brain where, just to the fore of the central sulcus of the cerebral cortex, the motor tracks and just to the aft the sensory tracks are aligned. It is a schema that is at the center of our being.
The sensory motor system functions as a “closed-loop feedback system” within the soma. We cannot sense without acting, and we cannot act without sensing. The inconsolable unity is essential to the somatic practice of self-regulation; at all times, it allows us to know what we are doing. And also – as we presently discussed– it is at the core of our unique way of learning and forgetting.
It is not possible to have a distinct sensory perception of any external objective situation without having a distinct motor response already established. This also happens to be the case with the internal sensing of somatic perception: to sense what is happening with the soma is to act upon it, i.e. to regulate it.
When, for example, we focus our awareness internally on some portion of our body – our right knee, for instance, the sensory perception of the knee is, indeed, more distinct. But this distinctive highlighting of a body part takes place only by selectively relaxing the cortical motor neurons of all the muscles attached to the right knee while contractively inhibiting all of the other motor areas of the body. Say that focused sensory awareness occurs through focused motor inhibition as a negative “ground” against which a “figure“ stands out. Thus, the sensing is not passively receptive, but it is actively productive, involving the entire somatic process.
This interlocking reciprocity between sensing and moving is the heart of somatic process – a process that constitutes its own unity and continuity by constant self regulation. The externalized “body” seen by the third-person observer is the living product of this continuous somatic process. If that process ceases, then the human body – quite unlike a rock – ceases to be: it dies and disintegrates.
It is the soma’s internal process of self regulation that guarantees the existence of the external bodily structure. Hence, the dictum that is universally valid in somatics: function makes structure.
The second step in understanding the distinctiveness of the human soma is, then, that it is both self-sensing and self-moving and that these interlocked functions are at the core of somatic self-organization and adaptation.
The soma has a dual talent: it can sense its own individual functions via first-person, and it can sense external structures and objective situations via third-person perception. It has the distinctive talent of possessing two modes of perception.
When a human soma looks at itself in a mirror, it sees a body– a third-person, objective structure. But what is this same body when looked at from an internal, somatic perspective? It is the unified experience of self-sensing and self-moving. From the mode of first-person perception, the soma’s “body” is a body of functions.
Descartes was not sufficiently thorough. To think it’s not merely “to be” passive; it is to move. “I am self-aware, therefore, I act,” it is a more accurate description of first person perception. Cogito, ergo moveo is a statement accurately reporting the data of first person experience, which always perceived “mind “ and ”body” in an indissoluble functional unity.
In passing, it should be noted that, by concluding his famous phrase with “…therefore I am.” Descartes was incorrectly depicting himself as a passive observer, whereas he was –like all humans– an actiec observer: a sensing-moving self. It is insufficient to say passively, “I am my self.” Inasmuch as “being” is a self-organizing, self regulating activity for all living beings, it is sufficient to say, actively, “I am being myself.”