The Somatic Systems Institute was founded in 1993 in Amherst, Massachusetts to bring awareness of Dr. Thomas Hanna's work to fellow health care professionals and clients all over the northeast.
Somatic Systems Institute was the first online somatics resource center, our resource center Web site The Somatics Center, launched late in 1995 at http://somatics.org. Our site was also the first online shopping service for somatics products, providing convenient, centralized global access to important tapes and books that often might not be available any other way. To this day, SSI's Soma Shop online and in-person somatics retail stores offer some products available nowhere else, including specialized tables for Clinical Somatic Education™ practitioners, in addition to convenient one-stop shopping for other personal and professional somatics needs.
In 1994, Somatic Systems Institute moved 7 miles west to Northampton, right on the Connecticut River. In 2004, we moved to our current location, a 19th century brick former button factory, in between the historic Button Street and Northampton's former 1872 brick firehouse. This new location boasts a larger retail store, as well as expanded training facilities and an enhanced resource center to provide a downtown community center for laypeople, students, somatic educators, and other education and health professionals alike.
After SSI had established satellite practices in Manhattan (1995) and Providence, Rhode Island (1999), Somatic Systems Institute became the first and only practitioner training program to succeed Hanna's original program. Directed and taught by Hanna's original disciples, the Clinical Somatic Education Professional Training Program continues SSI's 15-year tradition of improving the quality of both health care and education. Now, as training operations expand, SSI is realizing its long-cultivated (and long-demanded) vision of Somatics' groundbreaking pain-managment methods becoming accessible to everyone.
Since it's founding, we have offered small clinical operations in the New York metropolitan area. To make this critical service available as best we could despite the scarcity of practitioners, limited clinical hours and special workshops were provided in Manhattan and Long Island.
In 2006, for the first time in the history of somatic work, Somatic Systems began work on its flagship New York center. Located in the prestigous Tribeca district, conveniently near the city's major subways, our office can be reached from all 5 borroughs and every transportation system into New York. Like at Somatic Systems' other major locations, visitors can enjoy group somatics exercise and fitness classes for pain management, flexibility, comfort, and athletic performance, as well as one-on-one clinical sessions and a small retail store for self-help products.
Somatic Systems Institute will open its new location in September 2006, as the beginning of great things to come for the future of somatics worldwide.
