Embodiment is a journey home.
A gentle return to the truth of this moment that you forgot while lost in the labyrinth of your mind.
A soft, gut-wrenching, revolt against a society which thrives on our disembodiment.
An allowing of the experience of being breathed by life.
It’s how we lived before we learned to abandon ourselves.
Embodiment saved me, and taught me that I never needed saving.
I felt completely lost
When I first found my way to embodiment work I thought that I was very self-aware. I practised yoga, meditated, journalled and had been to therapy multiple times. I understood my patterns, the things that were holding me back, and how my childhood had influenced my adult life.
And yet… I felt completely lost. I struggled to make the most basic decisions. Not only did I not know myself, I feared myself, although I barely realised it at the time.
I feared the body which plunged into panic attacks day after day, sending my head spinning, my heart racing and my nervous system twisting itself ever tighter. I feared my angry mind which spewed criticism all day long and showed me images of the most terrifying futures which would happen if I didn’t make the “right” choice, right now. Worst of all, I feared that all of this meant that I was somehow, irrevocably broken, and that I would never live a life which included ease and happiness in any meaningful, sustainable way. And if anyone were to find this out they would know how horrible, and terrible, and broken I really was.
Just over two years ago, as I started falling into the depth of a months-long anxious hurricane once again, I decided that enough was enough. I could no longer go on like this; I was ready to face my anxiety head on and do what needed to be done to create a new way of existing within myself. I soon stumbled upon embodiment coaching and integrative therapy and everything started to change.
What is embodiment?
There are many definitions for embodiment. To me, embodiment is about developing a deeper relationship with ourselves by becoming intimate with our inner felt senses. Practising embodiment is about relearning how to be in our body and integrate the information it provides us into how we live our daily life. It’s developing the skill to not simply witness the emotions which arise within us, but to enter into them deeply, feeling their texture, their temperature, their movement.
While much of my personal development and therapy work up to that point had been about “figuring myself out”, “fixing” my thoughts and trying to turn myself into something new, embodiment was about the exact opposite. It affirmed that all that I was and all that I was experiencing was in perfect working order - there was no need to fix or change myself in any way. All I had to do was learn how to be with myself with greater and greater sensitivity, and acceptance.
As very young children we are already embodied - we cry out for our mothers when we want comfort, we scream when we’re angry, we laugh when we’re joyful. But as we get older we learn, increasingly, to ignore and suppress our physical, emotional and energetic sensations, which can leave us adrift and unable to fully understand our experience of life.
Of course, embodiment is not about returning to a childlike existence where we are unable to manage the sensations we experience; rather it’s about re-sensitising ourselves to the richness of life. We retain our cognitive ability to choose our responses, but we act from a place of greater connection with our truth. Through our sensitivity we learn more about who we really are, and how we can deeply care for ourselves.
Laying the ground for transformation
And in accepting ourselves fully and completely, just as we are, something magical happens - we start to transform. The more deeply I dropped into my confusion with no desire to change it, the more pockets of clarity rose to the surface. The more I danced with the energy of my thoughts, the less they crowded out my mind. The more I opened myself to pain, and anger and anxiety, the less they hurt, and the more those places within me turned to joy and peace.
In my discovery call for my first embodiment course, the coach took me through a short guided meditation. Once we finished she asked me to describe the sensations, experiences and emotions that had arisen for me. I couldn’t do it. In therapy sessions I could talk for hours; my mental analysis of my life was rich and deep. But a direct experience of my body felt entirely strange to me - I felt numb to it.
I spluttered a few words, but in that moment I realised that I had absolutely no idea what was happening in my body most of the time. In fact the only time I heeded my body’s sensations were when they were so loud I couldn’t ignore them - like the panic attacks that forced me to stop and listen.
Embodiment is how I finally learned to listen to the language of my body.
Embodiment isn’t something we either have or don’t. It’s a skill, which we can relearn and practice.
Practising embodiment didn’t just teach me that I wasn’t broken - it taught me that I could never be broken.
It taught me how to be myself, not just a version of myself that I deemed acceptable.
It brought me home.
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