SomaHut is a platform targeted at connecting and exchanging information and benefits of somatic work between somatic practitioners, educators and therapists, artists and activists who use the somatic approach in their work, and the wider public.
The main idea of the project is creating a network of various initiatives, groups, projects, practices and individuals through mutual interests and a need to redefine and affirm somatics as an approach, a way of thinking, acting and creating.
The project strives for moving the limitations of practices outside of the frame of exclusive individual action towards collaborative projects, which ultimately want to awaken the individuals and the community and increase the quality of life through art.
The project was initiated as a response to the needs of the community articulated at the initial meeting of the Somatic Network, held within the festival Improspections 2017, which had gathered artists interested in this initiative from Croatia and Slovenia.
Soma is what we are, a living body in its entirety and uniqueness which includes physical, emotional, psychological, relational and other aspects. Somatic experience is therefore what we all have in common and yet what makes us all different. The Somatic Hut wishes to affirm, on the one side, universal availability, and on the other side, the uniqueness of the somatic experience, as well as specific knowledge, methods and procedures of certain approaches and schools that label themselves as somatic.
The somatic approach starts from the body in its entirety and uniqueness. An individual and the community are perceived through it as an integrated unit, through a combination of biological, evolutionary, psychological, emotional, social and relational factors and somatic work implies working on various, mutually intertwining aspects of the self, the Other, and the life around us. The body, which possesses its own memory and intelligence, is understood as a unique locus of change, learning and transformation. A performance that is an outcome of such an understanding of the body becomes the locus of meeting and sharing which is neither performer’s, or viewer’s, but a common, inter-subjective experience inseparable from the performing moment. Therefore, the idea of SomaHut is to gather experts, artists and wider interested audience in order to jointly build a healthier, more tolerant and more mindful society through diverse types of work and public activity (artistic, educational, therapeutical and activist).
The director and founder of the project is Zrinka Šimičić Mihanović, dance artist and choreographer, Somatic Movement Educator (SME), Infant Developmental Movement Educator (IDME) and a Certified Movement Analyst – Somatic Practitioner (CMA-SP). After being intensely involved and educated in the area of somatics for the last 15 years, since the foundation of Multimedia Hut, Zrinka has been working on the dissemination of somatic knowledge through this organization as well.