SEVA Method Fundamentals

SEVA™ is a healing framework combining the sensory-motor training principles of Hanna Somatic Education® and the benefits of Theraputic Yoga Principles.

Hanna Somatic Education® is a form of neuromuscular (mind-body training) movement re-education that focuses on the brain and the way in which it senses and organizes the muscles and movement.

By learning to regain both awareness, sensation, and motor control of muscles – an educational process that can only be achieved through movement – the brain can remember how to relax and move the muscles properly.

This process of sensory motor training creates improved muscle function and enhanced sensory awareness.

As a long time Yogi, Equestrian and Certified Hanna Somatic Educator, Gloria developed SEVA™, a unique methodology using a combination of healing modalities, drawing from each discipline.

Adaptive Tension Patterns are Common to All Vertebrate Animals. The Results are Pain, Misalignments and Loss of Functional Movement. Every vertebrate animal – that is, every animal with a spine – demonstrates the same patterns of holding in response to stress or trauma. Anytime we feel apprehension for any reason, we unconsciously contract the abdominal and other muscles. This pattern will remain held in the unconscious and is cumulative with each additional experience.

Over time this becomes a pattern of dysfunction, creating a vicious cycle: the body’s response reinforces the feelings of fear and apprehension, feeding back to the brain which then responds by shortening the muscles even more. Shortened abdominal muscles result in an inability to breathe deeply, which in turn leads to additional carbon dioxide being stored in the bloodstream, irritating the nervous system.

Fortunately, all of these habitual responses can be addressed. By re-educating the nervous system we enable the individual to self-correct and to release chronic holding patterns in the musculature. Adopting from the tradition of Thomas Hanna’s Somatic work, the brain and the body begin to have a different kind of communication with one another. This work involves alpha gamma motorneuron co-activation in the central nervous system to allow the voluntary portions of the brain to reset what the involuntary portions of the brain have been controlling up to this point.

Control is taken from the brain stem and cerebellum and is given back to the sensory-motor cortex. In this way we address and reverse the chronic cause of the problem rather than temporarily alleviating the symptoms.

SEVA™ is about creating the ideal environment for ones own nervous system to fully recover so that the natural healing response of that individual is once again fully integrated.

Instead of using one specific modality to get results, SEVA™ is a combination of scientific principles, principles of nature, practices of awareness, non-local awareness, working in what some might call the quantum field, the principles of yoga therapy, yoga as a healing art, the subtle body. Also important is the quality of touch, awareness of ones movement and space and the effects of both, mindfulness traditions and embodiment practices, how to support the physical body and the effects on the energetic subtle body.

There’s an energy and subtleness to SEVA™, requiring different techniques for different situations, not holding an agenda or getting in the way of an individual’s Karmic ties.

Sensing energy and the movement of energy to facilitate direction toward the innate wisdom of the person or animal is a core part of SEVA™.