What is Embodiment?

As a trauma practitioner who works primarily with the tools of embodiment, I get asked this a lot. Stated simply: embodiment is a way of living aware of and informed by the felt-sense of the body.

In the years I spent in various religious spaces, I was not taught to honor the felt-sense of the body. Instead, I was taught that my body was a problem to be overcome. When I started running in my early 20s, I experienced, at times, profound emotional shifts, creative clarity and insight. I gained a new awareness of something untapped and sacred within me, but had no context for what I was experiencing.

I learned only much later, in practicing and studying yoga and the nervous system, about the connection between body, breath and emotions, about the profound wisdom of the body’s felt-sense, not just as it pertains to survival, but to inner-guidance, emotional repair and thriving.

I became aware of the various ways the religious teachings of my childhood had negatively impacted my ideas about my body. Words like flesh, physical, earth, self, were synonymous with sin, depravity, impurity, brokenness.

What’s more, I saw that I’d been actively prevented from seeking out resources that might have helped me gain a more healthy and well-rounded perspective about my body. Teachings that shamed body-based practices like dance and therapeutic yoga, or placed restrictions or conditions on those practices (for instance, dancing for the Lord at church was okay, but a community dance was unspiritual or sinful) were prevalent. Labels like “demonic” and “New Age” were thrown around often, and applied to everything from reading self-help books to attending an aerobics class where they played secular music.

This double-edged sword of being taught to disregard the body while being actively restricted from seeking resources that might counteract those teachings is, for many folk, profoundly, psychologically damaging. Disconnected from our bodies, we lose important aspects of our own aliveness (life, after all, happens in and through the body). We don’t learn to decipher the cues of our nervous systems; we become alienated from our emotions or even numb; we fail to develop necessary skills that help us navigate the world, such as self-soothing, decision-making, self-trust and meaning-making; we lose access to our own sense of grounding and being at home in the world and in ourselves. Our very vitality is compromised.

When we move through the world in this way, we intuitively know something is missing. Many religious cultures are more than happy to swoop in with fixes to this felt-sense of disconnection: join this program; get behind this wacky doctrine; “up” your attendance, volunteer for this event; shape your life-purpose around this mission; support this leader’s holy calling. But these things only serve to temporarily soothe the nervous system and are poor substitutes for what is meant to be there: a vibrant and authentic kinship with our own lives and the world around us.

Add to this that some of us came of age in church cultures that taught us there were dire consequences for rejecting their beliefs—the removal of God’s blessing, separation from God, loss of salvation, God spitting the lukewarm ones out of His mouth, to name a few.  It’s no wonder it took us a while to question certain narratives.

When we talk about embodiment work or embodied healing, we are talking about tuning into the emotional messages the body gives us through sensation—various expressions of constriction and expansion—and following them like breadcrumbs toward a greater sense of wholeness.

But if we’ve grown up in systems that wire us to fear or disregard the body, part of our healing work will be to move through resistance and learn to befriend the body again.

I say “again” because we were born embodied. Which is to say: to become embodied is to reclaim something that has always been ours.

I want to invite you to explore the messages you were given about your body in your upbringing. We carry these messages about the body IN our bodies. So instead of sorting through the mind for answers, let’s first explore this through the body itself.

This can be tender work, so I want to remind you to move gently with yourself. While this practice is simple, it’s important to honor your own capacity; if you feel at any time that you need to step away and do this with the support of a loved one or a practitioner, please take care of yourself in that way.

This is a practice for befriending the body:

Find a place to sit quietly.
Take a moment to get comfortable and then connect with your breathing.
Notice what it feels like to be you, here, breathing in, breathing out.

When you’re ready, place your palms over the space above your heart.
Can you bring a quality of warmth and tenderness toward yourself, as though you were comforting a friend or a child? Release judgement and keep bringing kindness and
warmth.

Now take a moment to simply greet your body and express gratitude toward it.
This can sound like: "Hello dear body. Thank for you for being here with me.”
Take some time to formulate your greeting in your own way.

Next, I invite you to rub your arms in some way. You can do this by wrapping your arms around yourself and moving your hands over your arms from shoulders to wrists a few times. Notice any initial resistance or hesitation.
Notice if your arms are asking for more pressure or a slower pace.
If it feels good to still the hands and hold yourself for a bit, feel free to do that.

Stay with this for as many breaths as you like, simply breathing and being aware of what you’re noticing.

If it feels okay, try the same thing around your head and neck down to your collarbones and then do the same down the length of both legs. Continue to cultivate a kind, caring presence toward yourself.

And simply notice whatever you notice. Does your body feel soothed by your own hands? Is there tightness somewhere in your body? Space or ease somewhere else?
Does this practice bring up restlessness? Does it help to land you a little more in the present moment? Notice if any images or memories float up.

When this feels complete for you, take a deep, grounding breath, bring your awareness back to the room and notice that you are safe in this moment, in this space. Notice the support of the earth beneath you.

Take some time to reflect. Do you have an easy relationship with your body or does it feel complicated?

You may want to spend some time writing in a journal about your own experience of growing up and what you were taught about your body. Was listening to your body encouraged? Discouraged? Never mentioned? Were the beliefs you inherited helpful or unhelpful? Are there some beliefs you’d like to upgrade?

In the days that follow, see if you can extend this quality of kindness toward your body as you go about your day. When you wash your face or put on clothing or slip on shoes.

This befriending of ones’ body is a good starting point toward living in a more embodied way.

Written by: Kim Johnson

Learn more about working with Kim here