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How Somascience connects existing knowledge

Many disciplines. One living system. No single discipline or researcher explains human adaptation in its entirety. Across neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, systems thinking and many other fields, researchers have uncovered important pieces of the puzzle. Somascience brings these complementary insights together into an integrative framework for understanding how they interact within one living system.  

Understanding the four mechanisms. The first four principles of Somascience each describe one mechanism of human adaptation. Together they explain how living organisms change, how experience becomes embodied, how repeated patterns shape development, and how these interacting patterns shape our learning environment. 

Biological Mechanism

How living organisms continually adapt to change.

Neuroscience • Physiology • Evolutionary Biology • 
Epigenetics

e.g. Lisa Feldman Barrett

Neuroscience
 • Affective science

Feldman 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 
• Anthropology

Bateson'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.


To understand the whole, we first need to understand the relationship between its parts. 


Why Somascience emerged

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)