Somatic Practice in Yoga Therapy: Explorations of body, movement, mind, and self

Jaime Stover Schmitt

Oct 2023 · Jessica Kingsley Publishers

About this eBook

One value of yoga therapy is its ability to bring us to our senses-figuratively and literally. Inner body sensing and the knowing it evokes is a large part of how we become aware of what we need to attend to and work on in our growth as individuals. In Spanda (R) Yoga Movement Therapy, the method from which this work arises, embodiment practices are as vital to the process of self-understanding as they are to understanding anatomy, anatomical concepts, and physiological processes. This book shares a host of somatic practices that can readily be used in teaching, therapy, yoga practice and other avenues of personal exploration at the physical, energetic, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels. A wealth of illustrated step-by-step directions are given for somatic practice at each koshic level. The practices shared have been in use in clinical yoga therapy, in workshops and in classes for the past thirty years. They've resulted in greater knowledge, insight, and awareness of the body and the wisdom it can reveal.

About the author

As the founding director of Spanda (R) Yoga Movement Therapy's accredited yoga therapist and teacher trainings, Jaime Stover Schmitt EdD, CMA, SME, IDME, E-RYT500, C-IAYT is devoted to the education and mentoring of yoga therapists and teachers in somatic practice. She believes safe embodiment to be the ground for insight and positive change.


Dr. Schmitt holds certifications in a variety of hands-on and somatic practices. She began the practice of yoga at age five accompanying her mother to class-this well-suited her introspective nature. Discovering dance to be "traveling yoga poses" she earned her doctorate in Dance at Temple University in Philadelphia-a hotbed of somatic investigation at that time. This confluence inspired her to develop her own approach to the therapeutic use of yoga, movement, and hands-on technique. Throughout her thirty years of private practice, she refined her perspective recognizing Rudolph Ballentine, M.D., Joan Shivarpita Harrigan, Psy.D., H.H. Sri Swami Rama, and H.H. Sri Swami Chandrasekharanand Saraswati, along with Aileen Crow and Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen as her mentors in this endeavor.


Dr. Schmitt serves on the International Association of Yoga Therapists Accreditation Committee having also been a past board of director member of Yoga Alliance. A contributor to Yoga Journal, Yoga International, and A Moving Journal, she is the past editor-in-chief of The Journal of Authentic Movement and Somatic Inquiry. She's also written Yoga for Pregnancy (HI Press), Yogini's Kitchen: A Recipe Book of Healthy Vegetarian Cuisine, and Every Woman's Yoga (Prima/Random House), which has been translated into several languages.