The word is used a lot. Who is embodied? Everyone in a body. What is embodiment? It can mean things in different contexts. Embodiment in the context I use it in as a relational mentor and somatic therapist, is feeling the sensations of the body as the presence of the body.
Embodiment is a bottom-up approach to healing and insight into ourselves, rather than a top-down approach. A bottom-up approach starts with the physical body, rather than the mind, where the bodily sensations is the language our bodies speak in, and are the feelings we can interpret to make sense of ourselves, our relationship to life and others, and to our daily lives, emotions, and thoughts.
Embodiment to me, comes with an intimacy with sensations – feeling all there is to be felt.
Inquiry over inquisition
Embodiment as I apply it in practice and therapy, is about discovery, rather than following a set of rules. Sometimes there is an imposition needed for the body, like a medicine, a posture, a intervention or any other imposition onto the body that reduces an injury, symptom or dis-ease, but embodiment is really about discovering sensory clarity, whether there is symptoms or not, it is about becoming clear and intimate with the unique language of our bodies through sensation, feeling and aliveness in the body.
Embodiment is not a shiny dress and dancing a certain way or calling yourself a goddess, although these can all be part of your embodiment. Mostly, embodiment does not look a certain way other than a rootedness in your authenticity through the clarity and wisdom of your body that you can connect through.
Embodiment is not when you feel whole, safe or any other state. That is a very narrow experience of the possibility of feeling in the body.
Sometimes the body feels disconnected, unsafe, but that is still a valid bodily experience.
If you open yourself to feel the sensations of the body in disconnection, unsafety or otherwise, you are still engaging in embodiment.
In embodied practice, you don’t know what you’re going to find, but it is about a willingness to engage with whatever you find.
When embodiment is only a state of wholeness, you’re exiling a lot of different ways of feeling your body. If there is no need to classify good or bad states of feeling, then there is a whole range to feel. Embodiment opens you to be curious about all states, sensations and feelings.
Feeling what is
Embodiment is about feeling what is as is, without the need to move away from any feeling.
There is no conditionality to embodiment. If you want to get somewhere, to a state of wholeness for instance, you have to see where to begin, which is the actual sensations. We all come from different places to arrive at a destination. The way to a whole state takes a different route of embodiment for different individuals. And therefore, again, embodiment does not look any certain way other than your way of being embodied through your unique path that gets you there, with your unique bodily language.
Disembodiment
A reason why people are not embodied, is because it hurts at times. There is discomfort, stress, trauma and pain in the body, and that is really hard to be felt. That is why a lot of people do not (want to) feel; because feeling is really hard sometimes. And there is beauty to embodiment when all feeling is welcomed.
As a teacher and therapist, I don’t know what my clients precisely feel. Only they know the intimacy and depth of their feeling, just like I know my own depths and intimacy with my own body, sensations, emotions and thoughts. With that, I love allowing people to feel at their own pace and be there as a guide along the path of uncovering, clarifying and becoming more attuned and embodied in the process.
Embodiment is not creating loud enough sensations that overrule actual feeling (cracking your neck loudly, the hot yoga that deeply stretches you, but has you not feel the quiet, subtlety of your hamstring pull that later results in injury). It is not extreme fitness as a means to feel the body something or intense sensations or a high although it does not exclude the intensity of sensation either. Intensity is just not a means to an end, or a way to feel more, deeper, or intenser.
With embodiment practice, we rather lower the noise and intensity: we relax, soften, to hear whatever is there to be felt.
This is embodiment as an inquiry in sensory clarity. Just like a wine-taster has more scope in taste because they are trained to taste more deeply, so is one who trained in feeling their sensations more able to acces their range, depth and clarity in feeling. For some, it is just any glass of wine or any feeling, but for a trained wine-taster or embodiment-practitioner, they are trained to detect more information and more distinctions. I like to see living embodiment as becoming a connoisseurs of the body – you learn your sensory clarity to detect more of what is going on within you, outside of you, and between you and the world and others around you.
If you keep engaging with embodiment practices, you tend to improve your embodied living over time. So regular (every day that is!) practice is necessary to increase sensory clarity and cultivate bodily wisdom. .
Why embodiment?
To me there is nothing quite like the richness embodiment gives to life. A bodily sensation is a rich experience of life, and so without attunement and engagement with embodied living, we miss out on a dimension of life if we do not feel.
Embodiment is about insight into self and others. It is about engagement with life by deeply feeling, and letting yourself be touched by life, in all the experiences you find yourself in. It is about the ability to move through any challenge you encounter in life, quite literally by moving the body too. Through embodiment you get to understand how your body works, how thoughts and emotions manifest and work within you. And as we are alike as human beings, your insights into your body, gives way to understanding others better. Embodiment is deeply relational. Our bodies grew, learned and became as they are through engagement with other bodies. And so embodiment deeply informs relationships..
Embodiment gives better navigation in life by the mere fact that you are in a body in this life. Your perception, understanding, your culture, your life experiences. You can bring the body in to contribute to the way you navigate your life.
Embodiment is about agency– having the choice to listen to the body.
Embodiment can help us in decision-making if we also can listen to the body. If you can feel your body, you can also feel the consequences of your actions, as you get feedback in your body through life.
Other reasons you want to engage in embodiment practice and living embodiment
Secondary benefits of embodiment are increased concentration to the things you deem relevant. Embodied practice increases concentration because you come back to it daily– it is a training in directing your attention. It enhances equanimity– the capacity to be with any feeling, without the judgement of ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but being equanimous and inclusive to all feelings. You get exposed to the range of experience the body can have, the various states, and you learn to not attach to any of them over another. And so you learn to be with what is in other people too. It trains your acceptance.
Mostly, embodiment get you really curious about your body, your self and your lived experience.
🌹 want to start your journey of embodied living and deeply relating? Schedule an exploration call for 1:1 mentorship here
with love,
Tessa

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