The Language of Movement and Developing Her Somatic Self with Zoe Hewett PhD

Free Your Soma with Aimee Takaya

She had been outsourcing control and knowledge of her body to the "experts" ever since she was a child. And even in becoming a "body expert" herself, she still was experiencing an internal disconnection from her body that became amplified during the birth of her daughter and her postpartum experience. She felt deeply that something needed to change.

She needed a sense of belonging and ownership within her own physical experience of life. Somatics, and specifically Hanna Somatics, has been a powerful doorway to regaining and actually creating an embodied sense of self and personal authority within her!

Today, I have with me Zoe Hewett, a yoga teacher, exercise physiologist, and mother of two who recently graduated from the Radiance program. She’s here to take us through how Hanna Somatics has impacted her life, career, and experience of motherhood.

In this episode, Zoe takes us through:

- Her traumatic birth experience and how she felt disconnected from her body and power.

- Her somatic exploration journey and how she found it profound and empowering.

- Her journey through the Radiance program and what she learnt, including honoring her own knowing, asking for what she needs, and setting boundaries.

- How the subtle, slow, Hanna Somatics movements allow the nervous system to release chronic tension patterns layer by layer.

- How she incorporates somatic principles when working with clients healing from injuries.

- How both effort and rest are beneficial, and finding the balance is crucial for preventing burnout and injury.

- How healing happens in a non-linear, quantum way as we renegotiate the past and build new capacities in the present moment.

And so much more!

Zoe Hewett is an exercise physiologist, Bikram yoga teacher, and mother. As a former elite athlete, via the PhD experience, and by observing her daughters’ early years, movement, and the study of movement’s effects on the human experience, has been her language for most of her life. In recent years she discovered somatic movement, which then distilled into a focused dive into Hanna Somatics, which presented a whole new - yet old! - way of treating stress and chronic pain.

Living with the benefits of her own evolving somatic movement practice, Zoe can’t help but share somatic principles with clients in both her exercise physiology and yoga work. She is excited to see where her life work takes her as she continues to work with people from a whole person, somatically aware perspective to facilitate each individual’s self-healing journey.