NEUROSCIENCE FOR SOMATICS

Tim Cacciatore  PhD, MSTAT

Sebastian Zahler PhD

Thursdays, May 1st–June 19th, 2025 • 12-1:30pm ET

Find your local time here.

Somatic approaches change lives. But when asked how or why, practitioners often struggle to articulate their insights. Common explanations range from neuroplasticity, self-image and brain maps to the autonomic nervous system, hormones, and fascial remodeling. But do these really reflect our current scientific understanding of mind and body? More importantly, how do they fit together into a coherent picture?  

In this webinar, we will examine these questions (and more) by diving into the exciting world of modern neuroscience. Taught by two somatic practitioners who are also PhD-level neuroscientists, this course builds a bridge between embodied experience and conceptual understanding. While the course offers many practical takeaways, its deeper value lies in the idea that expertise comes from understanding a subject from multiple different perspectives.  

This course emphasizes accessibility and relevance for somatic educators, therapists, practitioners, and movement professionals. Each week we will cover one of the following topics in the context of Somatics: perception, attention, emotion, body representation, brain states, movement/posture/tone, and how these relate to the mind and emotions. A more detailed syllabus is provided below. In addition to pre-recorded lectures, we will hold weekly discussions to integrate course material with lived experience.  

No prior background in science is necessary as the course will provide the necessary background. Participants will work through course content before the week’s live session. This entails watching approximately 1 hour of pre-recorded video lecture, writing a short essay to bridge practice and experience to the course content, and answering a multiple-choice quiz to reinforce important concepts. There is also optional reading for those who want to go deeper on particular topics.  

Engaging discussion in the live classes will help you process and relate to the course material. However, if you can’t attend, recordings of the live sessions will be available to watch after each class.

LEARNING GOALS INCLUDE:

• Becoming a better educator by learning to communicate the science of Somatics to students and clients.

• Deepening your practice by building an appreciation for the underlying neurophysiology.

• Building confidence in your practice by understanding its effects on the body and mind.

Course outline: 

Week 1: Introduction 

1. Overview of Somatics as a field, including common approaches and outcomes 
2. Discussion of existing theories and their limitations. 
3. Neuroscience fundamentals: misconceptions, neuroscience basics, and the macro structure of the nervous system 

Week 2: Perception and attention 

1. Predictive processing: perception as the brain’s best guess 
2. Attention as a mechanism for somatic change  

Week 3: Emotion 

1. Why do we have brains? 
2. Common (mis)understandings of emotion 
3. The theory of constructed emotion 
4. Somatics, emotion, and well-being  

Week 4: Self and body 

1. Self as construct: how the brain creates our sense of self 
2. Embodied selfhood: body ownership, body representation, and peri-personal space. 
3. Changing our(selfs) through Somatics 

Week 5: Imagination 

1. Examining the differences (and similarities) between reality and imagination 
2. Imagery for perceptual learning
3. Imagery for movement 
4. Imagery for state change 

Week 6: Brain states  

1. Understanding brain states: Networks, rhythms, and neuromodulators 
2. Somatic states through the lens of meditation, psychedelics, and the breath   

Week 7: Motor activity in Somatics 

1. Overview of motor control 
2. How Somatics affect movement, posture, and balance   

Week 8: Motor, mind and emotions 

1. The neuroscience of somatic organisation 
2. Attention and movement 
3. Non-doing 
4. Embodied cognition and emotion 

Tim Cacciatore

PhD, MSME, MSTAT

Tim Cacciatore, studies the neuroscience of postural tone and its relationship with movement coordination. He became interested in postural control because of the lack of plausible scientific explanations for how the Alexander Technique affected posture and helped his own back pain. His research has aimed to use somatic methods as a tool to reveal properties of the motor system. He has held research positions at University College London, Oregon Health Sciences University, and the University of California, San Diego.

Dr Cacciatore later trained as an Alexander Technique teacher with Shoshana Kaminitz in London. His two decades of research and numerous peer-reviewed publications about how the Alexander Technique affects postural tone and movement make him a leading expert on mechanisms underlying somatic practices.

Sebastian Zahler

PhD

Sebastian Zahler is an expert in the neuroscience of sensorimotor control and movement coordination. During his graduate studies at the University of California, San Francisco, he was motivated to study movement because he wanted to understand how something so complicated could feel so effortless. Prior to his PhD, Sebastian spent two years as a research scientist at the National Institutes of Health studying how the brain regulates the autonomic nervous system. He has authored multiple peer-reviewed scientific articles and published in top-tier scientific journals.

In 2021, Sebastian discovered Contact Improvisation, a dance form and somatic research practice. Since then he has spent three years in full-time study of somatic movement practices. In addition to his work with Science of Somatics, he co-organizes a space for somatic research in Northern Thailand with his partner, Julie.