When I was training with the School of Embodied Arts, we regularly coached each other as a way to develop our skills and practice the new tools that we were learning.
One of the people I coached in my final few weeks was very new to the programme. She hadn’t yet started one of our earlier modules, where we delve deep into shame, discomfort and painful emotions - always using personal exploration as a basis for developing our coaching skills. This module is often the one that course participants spend the longest on, and it requires a great deal of self compassion and patience to complete.
During our coaching session together I guided her towards some of the uncomfortable emotions she had been avoiding, and held the space for her as she allowed them to move through her. I watched her gradually relax as she had the realisation that she didn’t need to fix, control or manage these experiences - she could simply allow them to carry her through to her new state of being. And as she allowed them to pass through they transformed into something new. She felt more easeful, more relaxed, and more hopeful.
At the end of the session, as we discussed her body’s revelations, she talked about how she had been very nervous to begin the module on shame, but she was now feeling a little less concerned. She had learned that she could meet these feelings in herself and not be carried away by them, so she now felt more confident to move forward with the course.
At that moment I registered a flicker of surprise within myself. Because I had forgotten what it was like to be nervous to approach my shame.
The pleasure in fear, the grief in happiness
After a year of in depth embodied practice, my shame, pain and discomfort was now inextricable from my pleasure, joy and peace. It was all just sensation, life, movement and expression of the essence within me.
This isn’t to say that I enjoyed the feeling of fear as much as the feeling of pleasure, or that I welcomed it with open arms everytime it popped up in my life. But rather that I had learned that there is always a strand of joy wrapped up in the fear, and a strand of pain wrapped up in the pleasure. There is no separation.
Please don’t mistake my words to be some kind of brag or foolhardy “I eat fear for breakfast!” declaration. I’m sharing this story because it’s one of the key moments when I realised the subtle power of consistent embodiment work.
I, too, like my coaching client, had originally approached that module with trepidation. The idea of spending hours getting up close and personal with all my feelings of fear, pain, guilt, shame, embarrassment, uncertainty and anger wasn’t very appealing. But now, several months later, I looked on the same feelings and experiences with curiosity, appreciation, reverence and respect.
Few of us learn how to really feel these sensations. We learn how to recognise their essence and then most of the time we immediately jump into a strategy we’ve developed around avoiding them.
Perhaps we get up to deliver a presentation and feel a churning of fear in our stomach - straight away our awareness runs right up into our minds, listing off every possible thing that could go wrong and coming up with a way to stop it from happening.
Perhaps when we tell our family that we won’t be able to visit this month, we feel a flicker of guilt run down our spine, and start changing our plans, backtracking on our commitments and returning to the “good daughter” role.
Perhaps we put something new out into the world - a business, a piece of artwork, a poem, a song - and in the void between its birth and others’ reactions we feel adrift with uncertainty, embarrassment and worry. As these waves of sensation course through our body we close off to them. We tell ourselves and/or others that we “don’t really care what others think” or retract our offering, hiding it from the world.
Overthinking and perfectionism were my strategies of choice. The moment I felt an uncomfortable sensation like fear, doubt or worry my mind would go into overdrive trying to work out everything that could possibly go wrong and how I could avoid that happening. I gave myself so much work that I was constantly occupied and able to avoid my feelings altogether. I talked about this in great detail on my friend Annika Wolke’s podcast, Once More With Feelings.
The tipping point
There is absolutely nothing wrong with these strategies. At some point in our lives they have helped us to navigate life, and given us an anchor of safety.
But the time may come when these strategies are getting in the way of the life we really want to live.
Maybe listing off every possible outcome every time we feel fear is starting to get exhausting and stopping us from trying new experiences. Or dropping our own boundaries each time guilt pays us a visit is keeping us playing a role we no longer want to play. Maybe hiding our expression now feels just as painful as sharing it, and we’re ready to stop playing small.
When this time comes it’s a sign that the life force within us is ready to grow.
And the way we grow is by deciding that as we step into a new way of being in the world we are willing to hold all that comes with that.
Think about when you were a kid and there was something that you really wanted to do, but that you were also afraid of. It could have been a really tall climbing frame you wanted to climb, or a group of children you wanted to talk to, or a new skill you wanted to learn like riding a bike. There was likely a period of time when you ignored your desire to “just do the thing” so that you didn’t have to feel how scary it was. But then one day came along when you decided that enough was enough - it was worth it to feel the fear or the nervousness or the frustration so that you could follow that impulse in your heart.
The magic of embodiment work is that it teaches us the skill of how to feel these uncomfortable sensations and allow them to pass through us - with less drama, less mental stories and less “making it mean something about me”.
We no longer need to wait until our desire is bigger than our discomfort to take action, because we’re starting to approach discomfort differently in the first place.
And this speeds up our transformation in all areas of our life, because when we spend time learning how to be with our uncomfortable feelings we no longer need to organise our lives around avoiding them. We are able to live the life we want to live even if it brings us face to face with our shame, fear and guilt because they are no longer monsters we need to run from. When we face them, we take our power back from them, and we consciously choose our next steps. This is how we gradually create the life we really want to live.
What if your fear tasted like bubblegum?
I want to give you a flavour of what’s possible when you develop this skill - when you can feel all the unpleasant feelings you’ve spent your life avoiding and no longer run from them.
I want you to choose two emotions that you tend to avoid feeling. Take a look at the emotions wheel below and pick the two that stand out to you the moment.
Now I want you to imagine that these feelings taste like your top two favourite foods.
Maybe your fear tastes like pizza.
Or your disgust tastes like hot chocolate.
Or your grief tastes like strawberry ice cream.
Close your eyes and really imagine this for a few moments. Conjure the taste of these foods in your mouth. If you have some nearby you could turn this into a ritual and eat the food slowly, really letting yourself savour every bit of it!
For this journal practice you’re going to pretend that every time this feeling or emotion appears in your life it feels exactly like you are eating your favourite food. It’s a pleasurable and welcome experience that you enjoy.
Once you are ready, complete the journal prompts below for each feeling:
“If my [FEELING] tasted like [FOOD] today I would… “
“If my [FEELING] tasted like [FOOD] this week I would… “
“If my [FEELING] tasted like [FOOD] this month I would… “
“If my [FEELING] tasted like [FOOD] this year I would… “
The point of this exercise is that it opens you up to what could be possible in your life if you are no longer avoiding the uncomfortable feelings that challenge you.
Let me know in the comments below how you would live your life if this were true!
Sadly it’s unlikely you’ll wake up tomorrow with fear that tastes like bubblegum. But what you can do is learn how to feel anything that arises within you. This is the skill of embodiment.
This is what we do together in my embodiment coaching sessions.
And once you learn this skill, life opens up to you in unimaginable ways.
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