The Somatic Movement Method
PME
PME is a somatic approach that brings together perception, movement, touch, and reflection — a way of sensing and moving in which your body is supported to reorganize itself, from the inside, on its own terms.
How does PME work?
Sensing, moving, and touch are treated as questions asked to the body. The body answers — through sensations, impulses, images, emotions, movements, and shifts in organization. Those answers are listened to and supported, rather than corrected.
Rather than imposing change from the outside, we explore how meaningful responses can emerge from within on their own.
The reframe
The body is always adjusting to information that it perceives. Perception is a combination of raw sensory information, sensory information filtered through beliefs, and concepts. Thus the adjusting, i.e. the conscious and habitual physical expression of the body, is a function of what physical information is sensed, the meaning one's beliefs create of sensory information, as well as the consideration of concepts per se.
Like in any endeavor, access to accurate and live information allows for the most amount of learning and development. Therefore PME is designed to help a person sense inwardly in the here and now and then to allow the body to naturally develop from this information. PME therapists and methods help a client (a) safely and curiously navigate the inner entangled space of emotions, beliefs, concepts, and sensations and (b) use the sensory information for the body to self-learn, self-heal, and self-develop.
The self-healing / self-developing process is a natural state every body can be in. PME teaches you to enter into that state intentionally and then support and amplify the body's natural self-organizing abilities once there.
A distinction to remember
The difference between listening to the body — and listening to the body's response to compassionate inquiry and attention.
PME at a glance
On the name
EntWicklung
to un-wind
PME defines Entwicklung — usually translated "development" — as the opposite of Verwicklung, entanglement. Written as two words, Ent–Wicklung, it means an un-winding. So the method's name is closer to dis-entangling than to "development" — which describes the practice more honestly: not building something onto the body, but letting what is wound up come loose.
Who created PME?
PME is the work of its founder, Dieter Rehberg.
Dieter Rehberg, MA, MSMT/E · in brief
Read the founder directly at academy.somatic-training.com
What makes sensing the active ingredient?
How you sense is the active ingredient — not what you sense.
This is what separates PME from "just pay attention to your body." Sensing mindfully and compassionately is not preparation for the work — it is the work. The offer is as "a practical framework for how we can sense," asking how different qualities of attention shape perception, movement, self-regulation, and the unfolding of experience.
What is PME not?
PME is salutogenic — it works toward health. It does not cure diagnosed disease, and it is complementary to appropriate medical care, not a replacement for it.
PME is not
Why does Kelly teach PME?
I want people to feel good in their bodies. I want bodies to be a comfortable, calm and inspiring place to inhabit.
There are an infinite amount of ways to get to this outcome; establishing a direct, open dialogue with sensory information is the most effective and sustainable way (that I’m aware of) to get there. This is what PME offers. It is a simple method for compassionate self-sensing and moving coupled with experiential education in physiology, anatomy, and Buddhist psychology that cultivates self-development and self-learning to create lasting curiosity, compassion, and wonder for the nature of the inside and its connection to the nature on the outside.
— Kelly Lazzara
RSME/T