The spaceship is leaving

I didn’t mind this playful teasing. It did feel like a wild ride.
We’d lie on our mats and do Emilie’s novel movement experiments, and it was a mysterious journey. The body was our spaceship and we rode waves of awareness to discover new realms, within.
That was decades ago, long before I knew of the word “somanaut.”
I didn’t know the word’s origin ‘til last year when I asked acclaimed Integral Anatomist, Gil Hedley about it. He told me he’d coined the word after interviewing Emilie at a workshop in NYC in 1995.
It turns out, I was in the same workshop!
Was I “in the room where it happened?” Not exactly. Let me explain.
I often assisted Emilie when she taught here in DC or Virginia, and then I’d follow her up to New York to attend her New York City workshops. The NYC workshops were extra juicy and spicy with all those wild-ass New Yorkers— artists, dancers, and somatic innovators.
Gil was one of those cool somatic innovators. At the time, he was a religious ethicist with a PhD in Divinity Studies turned Rolfer*. At this workshop in April of 1995, Gil interviewed Emilie for the now-defunct Rolf Lines Magazine, of which he was an editor. Gil said he’d done the whole interview and forgot to hit record, so he wrote everything from memory. He wondered how to describe all these mysterious, wild-ass things Emilie was doing.
As he wrote, the word came to him — she’s a somanaut! A somatic explorer, one who explores inner space.
This is the sentence where the word was born:
“Emilie Conrad- Da’oud is, by any standard, the ultimate somanaut, navigating the high seas of her body with the barque of her own breath. Her relentless voyage into the fluidity of her body had led her to the experiential conclusion that the body itself is movement.
Gil goes on:
“To call the body a form is, from her perspective, nothing less than a category error with imprisoning ramifications. The body, much like the primordial earth in its origins, is without form in its essence… What we habitually perceive as a separate and individuated form is in fact a movement poured into relationship with another movement, with every movement.”
Emilie had broken free from the prison of form for form’s sake, understanding that all was fluid and connected.
She understood we are both particle and wave and that embodying the curving, spiraling fluid dynamics that shape life connects us to the primordial, star-like intelligence that we are.
What made Emilie different was that she invited us to sense these events through the portal of the body: to become the movement that we are.
Emilie was ahead of her time.
She hypothesized that vibrating microtubules connect and convey consciousness long before this fascinating research that just came out in Popular Mechanics.
Gil grokked this all those many years ago: Emilie Conrad was the original somanaut.
Today, Gil defines the word somanaut as “one who is dedicated to exploring inner space.” Gil believes that through this exploration, “we can expand our human potential exponentially.”
“I coined the word somanaut to describe Emilie. After a bit, I realized I too was a somanaut!” Gil named his business, Somanautics Workshops, Inc.
“Many folks have loved the word since, and there is even a band named Somanaut playing heavy metal, so the word has gotten around.”
It definitely got around to me!
In another full-circle moment, in 2021, when I became a Melt Instructor, I was delighted to learn that Melt Founder, Sue Hitzmann had studied extensively with Gil, and that his work greatly influenced Sue when she developed the Melt Method. Sue also calls herself a somanaut.
The word is charged with meaning because it borrows from astronauts, semi-heroic figures who endeavor to explore life in the universe.
Being a somanaut is no less compelling.
Somanauts travel through inner space, and inner space is just as infinite as outer space.
Indeed Emilie had often told us we can best understand and connect with interstellar space by investigating the quanta that we are. In one of her many mic drop moments, Emilie used to say that NASA engineers could save a lot of money “if they just went to the dollar store and bought themselves a mirror.” 🫳🏼🎤 👀🪞

For neurodivergents like myself, there is no separation. The experience of being neurodivergent becomes more clear when viewed through the lens of somatic inquiry. You grow your awareness so you can understand your unique sensitivities and perceptions. You see and sense yourself on so many different levels and grok your particular ways of processing and experiencing the world more completely.
So many people identify with the word somanaut, and you can too. Gil offers the use freely and he has a community of somanauts dedicated to “exlploring inner space” through his Integral Anatomy community.
Many came after her but Emilie was an original. Her work was extraordinary and she’s had an enormous influence on somatics for generations to come.
So that’s the story, and now you know!
Gil generously shared the original Rolf-Lines article with us; if you’d like to take a deeper dive, click here.
Notes:
*Rolfers are bodyworkers who reorganize and realign the connective tissues, called fascia, that permeate the entire body. Rolfing, named for its founder IDA Rolf.
*Barque is a cool word for sailing ship! It means “a sailing ship with three masts.”