Mari Crook Somatics

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Berlin
Mari Crook Somatics

English-speaking certified somatic bodywork practitioner working in Neukölln, Berlin and online. www.maricrook.com

Somatic bodywork offers an approach to personal change that integrates conversation with empathetic touch. I'm Mari, an English-speaking certified Pantarei somatic practitioner working in Neukölln, Berlin and online. My path to somatic bodywork grew from my own journey of reconnecting with my own body after struggling with anxiety, depression, and burnout in my twenties. I bring to this work a bac

kground in education and community building with seven years as a teacher and educational leader, plus extensive experience facilitating groups and designing programming for international communities. My approach to Pantarei somatic work is informed by my experience creating safe environments for exploration and growth. I understand that meaningful change happens when people feel genuinely seen and supported in their process. Having completed my Pantarei Somatic Practitioner certification, I'm passionate about supporting others in discovering the wisdom their bodies already hold through embodied practices and somatic bodywork in Berlin and online.

23/05/2026

This is the first of three post series sharing books that have shaped my thinking. This first part starts with my roots: the concepts I encountered through meditation and nondual ta***ic teachings before I even trained as a somatic practitioner. These books form some of the foundation underneath my practice, and they reflect where my personal path began, which also happens to be a particular, predominantly white male corner of the spiritual world. The series broadens from here, moving into books on somatics, trauma, and worldview that bring in wider perspectives.

18/05/2026

This testimonial captures something I hear often, and not just from clients. I've found somatic work more effective for my own healing than talk therapy alone, and so have my partner, my mother, and my childhood best friend.

I think this comes down to a common misconception about the mind and body. Many people tend to treat the two as separate and view understanding ourselves as primarily a cognitive act. But the body is a site of neurological activity in its own right. The enteric nervous system alone contains roughly 500 million neurons. The heart has its own intrinsic neural network. Embodied cognition, the intelligence that lives below the neck, is part of the same system as the thinking mind.

What this means practically is that when we try to understand our lives, solve problems, and make sense of our experiences from only a "cognitive" level - which is just the tip of the iceberg - we're depriving ourselves of our primary store of implicit knowledge.

When we include the body in the conversation, we gain access to memory, emotional charge, and unprocessed experience held in its tissues, breath patterns, and points of chronic tension. And because it is a connected system, grounding in the body tends to also sharpen cognitive access, unlocking deeper layers of imagination and insight. As this client found, one session that included the body helped them access what months of talk therapy could not.

I personally think all therapy should be somatic, in the sense that all approaches to healing the human experience should recognize the body as a source of knowing, understanding, and processing.

14/05/2026

I think the reason that somatic approaches can be effective as a form of relationship coaching is that it works on both the level of understanding what someone thinks and how they talk about their relationships, and on the level of meeting someone’s experience through their body.

The Pantarei somatic approach integrates both talk and touch, which means the body is included in the process rather than treated as downstream of whatever is being understood cognitively. Including the body in this process means that when a client names what they want from a partner, or recognizes a pattern they keep repeating, the body’s response becomes part of the conversation. That response carries its own information: it might show the emotion sitting underneath a pattern, or reveal that someone has been carrying more longing, or more hurt from a previous relationship, than they had yet let themselves know.

This is why, I speculate, that some people engaging in an embodied approach can see changes ripple out quickly into their lived experience, and why somatic coaching might be actually be relationship coaching.

12/05/2026

It was Adyashanti who first introduced me to the practice of questioning what I know. He suggests that asking ourselves “What do I know for certain?” can be one of the most liberating questions we sit with. That when we are willing to admit how little we actually know, something in us opens up. That with this question, we can stop bracing against an imagined future and become available to what is actually in front of us.

As someone who was very prone to worst-case thinking, I found this simple question to be a game changer. My inner monologue would run constantly, and with remarkable certainty. “There’s a tickle in my throat, I’m going to get sick.” “I said the wrong thing, my friend is going to get mad at me.” “My boss didn’t mention my work at the meeting, she thinks I’m doing a bad job.” Each conclusion arrived as if it were fact. But when I started asking myself whether I could be completely 100% certain of what was going to happen, I realized that I couldn’t. I could tell myself “most likely.... yes.” but there was always a part of my own brain that had to admit, I could be wrong.

For my anxiety, this was quietly freeing. Every time my brain reached its next conclusion, “My friends aren’t going to reach out this weekend,” I would cut through it with a simple reminder: I don’t actually know this.

My mind still drifts into prediction. But now when I catch it, I can chuckle and let it go, because when I stop deciding what’s going to happen, I’m often pleasantly surprised by what the world has to offer instead.

07/05/2026

Touch has a direct effect on the nervous system, and this post breaks down some of the science behind why. From how the skin is wired to receive it, to what happens in the body when caring touch is received, to why so many of us are getting less of it than we need.

If you’re curious about what a talk and touch based bodywork session feels like, I offer somatic sessions at in Berlin, combining conversation and conscious touch to work directly with what the nervous system is holding. You can book through the link in my bio or at www.maricrook.com

05/05/2026

I know this might sound like a simple take, but it is something I think about a lot.

In psychedelic culture, people talk about “set and setting” as two of the biggest factors shaping how a substance expresses itself in your system. Beyond the physiological reaction, the physical environment and the energy of the people around you are actively shaping the experience. I think the same is true of everyday life. Our mood, our emotions, our capacity to focus are all in constant interplay with the people and places we inhabit.

Part of what makes this more than just a social phenomenon is that it operates at a physiological level. Our nervous systems are designed to pick up on and co-regulate with the states of the people around us. When you’re around people who are at ease, your nervous system receives that as a signal and begins to orient toward that same state. This happens below conscious awareness, through mechanisms like physiological entrainment and the body’s constant reading of subtle cues in voice, posture, and presence.

I think there is something beautiful in this dynamic. We impact the spaces we’re in and the people around us, and in return those spaces and people impact us. The cycle continues in both directions.

Which means that when we come together, whether in a park, a library, or a café, we can have more permission and more capacity to do what we struggle to do alone. Whether that’s finishing a work assignment or finally, truly resting.

What are some places you like to body double? And what do those places, or the people in them, give you more permission to access?

30/04/2026

I just finished a workshop focused entirely on the shoulders, and I wanted to share some thoughts.

The knots in my own shoulders have felt like an impenetrable force for as long as I can remember, at least since I was fourteen, when I left for boarding school. I’ve come to think of them less as a problem to fix and more as something that has been faithfully doing a job.

When I work with people on the table and make contact with the tension held here, people very often have a visceral image arise of armor. The shoulder girdle is implicated in how the body learns to suppress feeling, particularly around breath. When we brace against something emotionally, the breath shortens and the muscles of the upper back contract, restricting the lungs from fully expanding.

I’ve noticed two patterns that tend to show up. Elevated, braced shoulders, preparing for an impact that may have already come and gone. And hunched shoulders that tend toward self-enclosure, a withdrawing inward. Both are protective, just in different ways, and in doing their protective work, both restrict the breath and the capacity to fully feel.

My theory is that the shoulders protect, carry responsibility, and maintain a vigilance that keeps us functioning. But in that same tightness, they can keep us at a distance from the emotions underneath that were never quite safe enough to feel, the grief, vulnerability, or pain that the armor was built to protect us from having to feel.

In somatic sessions, rather than pushing against that holding, I try to guide my clients to meet it with curiosity and gratitude. And when the shoulders are met with presence rather than being forced to loosen, the nervous system can start to register that it’s safe enough to let go a little. The breath gets more room to flow, and something that had no space to be felt might finally begin to move. For some people that has been grief, and in meeting that grief, people find themselves more in contact with a heart that has been protected for a long time.

If you recognize tension in your own shoulders and you’re curious to explore it, you can book a session with me at in Berlin or online at www.maricrook.com

28/04/2026

I like to think of mindful practice as running an experiment on yourself. The only person who can tell if something has an impact on your experience of life is you, and while these practices are generally scientifically backed and have actually worked for me personally, your mileage may vary.

These practices also don’t work overnight. You might feel a little calmer right away, but the real shift is when you start to notice a generally calmer baseline and a greater resistance to stress. So if you want to run an experiment on yourself, remember it’s a longitudinal study. Give it three months, be consistent, and see for yourself.

As a somatic bodywork practitioner, I work daily with the relationship between the body, the nervous system, and emotional experience. What I've found, both in my own life and in sessions with clients, is that some of the most effective self-regulating practices are also the ones that feel a little strange at first. The ones that make you feel slightly silly. These are seven of mine.

Do you have practices that have worked for you? I’d love to hear them in the comments.

24/04/2026

I wrote a blog post on a theory I’ve been toying with for a while, one that started forming after living in several different countries and picking up a few languages along the way. It’s that each language we speak might be a different key, opening a different door into the psyche.

It’s also a personal piece about my own resistance to learning German, and what I eventually realized that was about.

I’m curious about your experience. Have you found that your personality shifts when you speak a different language? And have you ever found yourself resisting learning one in particular?

Read the full blog post here: https://open.substack.com/pub/maricrook/p/german-mari?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

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