While seeking to drudge up a history of somatics, this article questions how a historically revisionist history of 'the West' as initiated by Thomas Hanna informs systems of inclusion, exclusion, and power within the field. Hanna, who coined to term 'somatics' under which field continues to operate, sought in so doing to root it in a 'Western' tradition of philosophy and science that he fundamentally misconstrued. The European intellectual history from which Hanna derived his term 'somatics' cannot be historicized as a unified history of 'Western thought' on embodiment but shows within itself many misinterpretations, disciplinary severances, and cultural differences that Hanna's vision never accounted for. Subsequent accounts of somatics consequently articulate both the 'Western' history of somatics and its 'non-Western' 'influences' on false grounds. This article theorizes the colonial and 'Western' supremacist holdovers within a somatic field that nonetheless gives lip service to postcolonial discourse.