Herein is a guide to, and review of, Somatic Exercise lesson series recordings. These reviews of Somatics guided movement sessions are designed to give potential listeners some disclosure of content and quality in order to help you with your purchasing decisions. They will also serve as a guide, in the event that you possess multiple sets of lesson series (recommended), as a quick reminder of which lessons can be found and where. All guided movement series, except as noted, are by Thomas Hanna. Most guided sessions run about thirty minutes, and all were recorded before a live audience. All were originally recorded on cassette. Consequently, in transferring from cassette to CD format the discrepancies in recording times makes for some less than fully clear boundaries between lessons.
Throughout these series, Hanna is at his best - a real tour de force - when his delivery is patient and measured, articulate and precise. Occasionally, he suffers brief lapses in these regards, where he comes across sounding more like an impatient drill sergeant than an expert communicator, which can detract from ease of listening. But, mostly, Hanna presents as an extraordinarily gifted orator and a most helpful teacher. In a few, rare, instances, sound quality suffers due to the live format as Hanna gravitates nearer to or away from his microphone (apparently he wasn’t wearing a lapel mic).
I must stipulate that the pedestrian titles under which these various series of guided lessons are marketed represent something of both a misnomer and a misrepresentation. In each case, i.e. “Somatic Movements for Feet, Knees and Pelvis” really ought to be retitled, “Amazing Somatic Movements to Help You Achieve Absolutely Fabulous Feeling Feet, Knees and Pelvis!!!”, in order to do fuller justice to their respective content. I encourage shoppers not to be put off by any mundane sounding titles in choosing your CD series.
I use a star * system to rate each individual lesson. Stars are awarded taking into account (1) "what" is taught (content), and (2) "how well" it is taught (quality). In descending order, ********** (10) is outstanding, ******** (8) is very good, ***** (5) offers good information, but the same lesson is taught better elsewhere or the delivery is lacking, *** (3) weak information/weak delivery, * (1) don’t bother. In a few cases I may indicate a personal favorite with an extra (*).
In several cases of seeming redundancy, I compare the relative merits of same lessons repeated in different series. Please note that despite the ostensible redundancy of similar lessons occurring in multiple series, Hanna often "tweaks" his guidance to ensure its specificity to the lesson immediately at hand, making even redundant lessons well worth the listen. Reviews also indicate a guesstimated percentage (%) of theory/discussion versus actual guided movement. Happy listening.
