What does it mean to become a Somascientist?
Somascience isn't just something you study—it's something you become.
Whether you're a parent, educator, therapist, researcher, or simply someone wanting to better understand yourself, Somascience offers a new way of exploring the human experience.
Somascientist noun - From soma, Greek for "the living body".
A person who learns to use their somaintelligence to navigate lived experience in ways that keep them open to learning, growth and possibility.
The Five Principles of Somascience
The ideas that bring Somascience to life.
The first four principles explain who we are and how we adapt as living organisms. Principle 5 brings them all together, showing how our relationship with discomfort shapes our learning environment—and ultimately changes our capacity to adapt.
Principle 1
We are somatic communication systems
Our living bodies continually communicate through our FEELINGS—an intelligent, in-built communication system expressed through sensations, emotions, thoughts, to every level of biological messaging.
Principle 2
We learn through lived experience
Every lived experience shapes us. Somaplasticity is how our biology continually adapts to experience, reorganising itself towards stability
or instability depending on how we respond.
Integration
Principle 5
How we handle discomfort changes everything
Every response to discomfort shapes our capacity to communicate, collaborate and adapt. Over time, it either compounds patterns that constrain our potential or creates the conditions for learning and creative expression to flourish.
Principle 3
We are
pattern-based
learners
Through Somaplasticity, our learning is embodied as reusable somatic communication patterns. Repeated ways of responding to discomfort become our default patterns for navigating uncertainty and change.
Principle 4
Patterns
become self-amplifying loops
Repeated use of protective default responses creates self-reinforcing loops that compound instability and insecurity, generating somatic inflammation and progressively compromising our lived experience.
Want to understand the science in Somascience?
The Four Mechanisms of Human Adaptivity
Explore the research and different fields of knowledge that inform Somascience, and discover how they contribute to our understanding of human adaptation.
Biological Mechanism
How living organisms continually adapt to change.
Neuroscience • Physiology • Evolutionary Biology •
Epigenetics
e.g. Lisa Feldman Barrett
Neuroscience
• Affective scienceFeldman Barrett's research demonstrates that the brain is continually shaped by experience rather than being fixed or hard-wired.
How Somascience builds on this:
Adapation is not limited to the brain. Somaplasticity describes how the entire somatic communication system continually reorganises through lived experience, adapting towards patterns of stability or instability.
Behavioural Mechanism
How experience becomes embodied as default patterns.
Learning Theory • Embodied Cognition • Somatic
Psychology
e.g. Karl Friston
Predictive Processing • Computational Neuroscience
Friston proposed that the brain continually builds and updates predictions about the world, using experience to reduce uncertainty and guide adaptive behaviour.
How Somascience builds on this:
Predictive patterns are not formed by cognition alone. Repeated responses to discomfort (FafFFs) become embodied as efficient somatic communication patterns that shape how we perceive, respond and adapt.
Developmental Mechanism
How embodied patterns shape human development.
Attachment Theory • Developmental Psychology • Anthropology
e.g. Daniel J Siegel
Interpersonal neurobiology • Developmental Psychology
Siegel's research demonstrates that repeated experiences, particularly within relationships, shape the ongoing development and organisation of the mind throughout life.
How Somascience builds on this:
Development is shaped not only by our experiences, but by how we repeatedly respond to the discomfort they evoke. These responses influence our biology, behaviour, beliefs, and our developing sense of identity, belonging and purpose.
Systemic Mechanism
How interacting patterns create self-reinforcing systems.
Systems Theory
• Complexity Science • Anthropology
e.g. Gregory Bateson
Systems Theory
• AnthropologyBateson's work demonstrated that living systems cannot be understood by studying isolated parts alone. Their behaviour emerges through the patterns of interaction between those parts.
Somascience builds on this:
FafFF protective patterns don't exist in isolation—they create self-amplifying patterns that continually reorganise the whole system. These interactions generate either stabilising or destabilising feedback loops that constrain or expand adaptation.
How we became Somascientists?
The story of JamPac-Ed
Our journey didn't begin with a theory—it began with questions. Lots of them.
Existing disciplines provided important pieces of the puzzle, but they weren't answering the questions we were asking, nor did they fully explain what we were experiencing in our own lives and in the lives of the families we were supporting. As teachers and anthropologists, we wanted to understand the whole living system, not just the individual parts.
The more we researched, observed and applied what we were learning through our own lived experience, the more our questions changed. What began as an exploration of the importance of acknowledging our FEELINGS gradually evolved into a much bigger question:
How is our relationship with discomfort shaping our capacity to communicate, collaborate and adapt?
Looking through that lens, many of the health, wellbeing and developmental challenges we had observed could finally be understood as different expressions of the same underlying adaptive process. The answers made sense because they reflected what we had been observing, living and supporting for years.
Somascience emerged as an integrative framework for understanding how lived experience shapes human adaptation.
Co-Founders
Pam Andrew & Jackie Neill (aka JamPac-Ed)