New clients and students can find helpful information here to prepare for your upcoming session or class, as well as learn our policies for your business, including lateness and cancellations.
New clients and students can find helpful information here to prepare for your upcoming session or class, as well as learn our policies for your business, including lateness and cancellations.
Sessions, while gentle, do require movement, and that movement should generally be slow and unrestricted, not forced or uncomfortable. As such, it is important that you wear appropriate, non-restrictive clothing. Jeans and other tight pants will interfere with your session (and may significantly limit your results and the value of your session). Shirts that do not allow comfortable movement will also interfere. Skirts or dresses should also not be worn, as they do not allow comfortable movement of the lower body for either the client or the practitioner. Be prepared to remove your shoes, jewelry, belts or restricting apparel, and pocket items.
Slacks, yoga pants, sweat pants, shorts or other easy moving pants are the best things to wear, along with a comfortable shirt such as a t-shirt or jersey (“button-down”/“oxford” shirts may work, but some clients find them restrictive).
Because the session will be conducted without shoes, socks must be worn during the session, even during summer months. If you are wearing sandals in bare feet, or if you are arriving from an athletic situation, please bring a pair of clean socks as a courtesy to your practitioner. Similarly, if you will be coming to the session from a setting where your clothing will be excessively soiled or covered in chemicals or industrial materials, please bring a change of clothing. Our clinic tables are expensive, and can be torn by sharp parts of clothing or permanently damaged by paints, solvents, etc. Furthermore, our practitioners work with other members of the public all day and we can't expose them or their belongings to dangerous or destructive substances. Please also refrain from wearing strong perfumes, as others may have chemical sensitivities to synthetic fragrances. We thank you in advance for your responsibility and consideration in these matters.
Sessions are not aerobic, but it is recommended you do not come to your session overly stuffed from a meal. Additionally, please do not prepare for your session by stretching or conducting any other body routine from other modalities.
Clients should arrive 5 minutes early for their session, to be ready in time for the session. If you have brought a change of clothes (to change out of restrictive work clothes, etc.), you should change before the scheduled start time for your session. Most of our locations have bathrooms or other changing facilities for your convenience.
First time sessions may involve completion of some paperwork and other intake, so you should arrive 15 minutes before the start time of your scheduled appointment.
Somatics sessions are gentle, comfortable, and easy. You will not need to be physically fit, or aerobically active. You will be actively participating for much of the session, consciously engaging in slow, simple movements. Thus, while this is not a math test, you will be involved and awake. Somatics is not like some kinds of massage, where you can nap for the duration of the session. Somatics is also not like some kinds of fitness training, where you will be watching television while working out.
Your session will generally take the entire scheduled time, and may occasionally run over a few minutes. You should plan to be present for the entire time alloted, and possibly for 15 minutes beyond that.
Occasionally, in the process of day's schedule, sessions may start a few minutes after their scheduled times. Regardless, you will be provided with the complete time required for your session.
On the other hand, each individual session is specialized precisely for the client's individual needs, including how long or short their duration should be. Different clients will need more or less neurological information and physical effort per session for the work to be effective. This means that some sessions will be shorter than others, even within the scheduled time slot. First sessions may be scheduled for one hour and a half, but some may only take, for example, 1 hour and fifteen minutes. Regular sessions are typically scheduled for a period of one hour, so they are shorter than first time sessions, but each of these shorter sessions may vary in duration as well.
The value of some sessions for some clients will be enhanced by the neurological integration your body does in the time after the session. We recommend that you allow some time after the session to not rush into your normal schedule. Long-distance travelers may wish to take 15 minute walk before driving home; local clients may wish to plan a few moments of time to move leisurely before their next high-demand activity.
To obtain optimal benefits and results from your session, we recommend that you do not engage in any high-performance athletic events for approximately 1-3 days after your session. There is no harm in doing so, but you may counteract some of the improvements made in your session (and slip back into some of the symptoms and conditions you had before your sessions), by re-engaging your body in old habitual activity before it has had a few days to fully integrate the changes achieved in your Somatics session.
To best achieve the outcomes sought in your course of sessions, you should follow your practitioner’s complete recommendations and routines. Leaving out some parts of your routines may diminish the efficacy of the sessions.
All services are payable before or when they rendered. Payment may be made by cash, check or credit card. Please make checks payable to Somatics.
Your clinic session appointment is reserved for you. It takes a substantial amount of commitment and energy from your practitioner and our clinic, and it is reserved for you, so others cannot take that time. To assure you this quality of care, session cancellations or rescheduling must be made at least 24 hours in advance of the session starting time. Sessions that are canceled or rescheduled any later than that (or missing an appointment and failing to call at all) must still be paid for in full.
Clinic sessions usually require the entire time alloted to you. Clients arriving more than 10 minutes after the scheduled start time of their session will be considered to have missed the session, and charge policies outlined above may apply.
Somatics, including promotional and educational materials as well as conversations with staff and information provided in sessions and classes, is not intended, nor should it be regarded, as medical advice. For such advice, you should consult a medical doctor. If you experience serious or protracted pain during or after Somatics sessions or exercises, then you may have problems other than sensory-motor amnesia, and you should consult your doctor immediately.
Of course, you should always speak with your doctor before beginning any exercise or movement regimen, or if you have concerns about your health. Neither Somatic Systems Institute nor your Somatics practitioners and teachers are medical doctors; they cannot provide medical advice or diagnose medical conditions.
