In order for an individual to be accepted into membership, the application must be approved in accordance with the ISMETA Board of Director’s process. Taken into account in making this decision will be the extent to which the applicant meets the eligibility requirements established by ISMETA, and whether it is the consensus of the ISMETA Board of Directors that approving the application will further the mission of ISMETA.
An individual is eligible to apply for membership with ISMETA if she/he fulfills all of the following requirements:
As an individual that is practicing as a professional somatic movement educator or somatic movement therapist, the practitioner has engaged in coursework, practice, and theoretical discussion on active examples of ways to create insightful body awareness through movement. This awareness is fostered so as to enhance in clients the capacity for living with a sense of integration which stems from:
Enhanced and/or effective expressivity through movement;
A lexicon for communicating about movement which can describe the sensation of creating, observing or experiencing movement;
A theoretical model for movement that releases patterns of restriction and encourages the potential for greater ease and capacity of total body integration;
Exercises that promote (positive/effective/corrective) re-patterning based upon the learned functional model.
The format of instruction includes these aspects of study:
500 hours of appropriate training that develops and examines the above mentioned attributes;
An approach to working with fully clothed clients;
Learned exercises that can be used, re-created and documented, and offer identifiable results;
Movement exercises that involve the whole being — accessing awareness of emotion, thought and sensation, encouraging insight into self and nature, and providing a platform for personal growth.
The individual educator and/or therapist engages clients co-actively in the process of learning, discovering, and healing through somatic movement.
The individual educator and/or therapist utilizes skills and tools for exchanging information to support their clients’ own self-healing process in the promotion of well-being.
The individual educator and/or therapist has an ethically appropriate approach to a structured and intentional use of touch for the purpose of communication and guidance with clients.
The individual educator and/or therapist incorporates a comprehensive inter-relationship between the understanding of the functional, biological, and affective/emotional aspects of movement experience.
The individual educator and/or therapist is able to identify new capacities for movement potential in clients and can offer movement resolutions to functional problems when the need arises.
The individual educator and/or therapist is able to identify and work with a client’s movement inhibition and resistance.
The individual educator and/or therapist is able to enhance internal sensation and kinesthetic movement awareness in clients.
The individual educator and/or therapist’s philosophy of movement holds primary that it is a body-mind approach, providing a fluid interconnection between movement, sensation, and thought.
A primary message in the individual educator and/or therapist methodology is that, what defines somatic movement is a person making or recognizing meaning and connecting meaning with their movement experience.
As it is assumed that each individual educator and/or therapist will specialize and develop unique approaches to the somatic movement field, particular foci may arise that define their practice by highlighting emotional expression and balance, spiritual components or various ways in which human beings can enhance their capacity to feel more alive and engaged with living. ISMETA considers the following features of each individual practitioner to be identifying considerations and not areas of necessary inclusion.
The somatic movement method of the organization teaches its practitioners a variety of protocols for specific body conditions.
The somatic movement process of the organization consciously works with a notion of energy as the initial source of aliveness.
The number of years the organization has been in existence.
