What is embodiment?

Embodiment is the interdependence of mind, body and soul. It’s what happens when we truly allow all parts of ourselves to communicate. It is not quieting the mind so that we can tune into the body, nor vice versa; it’s nonjudgemental understanding and observation of all parts of our lived experience. It’s the inextricably woven fabric of mind, body, and soul, operating as one.

True embodiment requires nothing outside of ourselves, and everything inside ourselves. It’s our natural state of being to be completely tuned into ourselves [and in turn, the universe!]. Since it is a state of BEING, it doesn’t require much DOING once you get the hang of it.

What does it mean when we say that someone “embodies peace”? Does it mean that they are themselves the abstract concept of Peace, and no longer human? Or that they have done so much assimilation of peace in their lives and in their bodies that they are able to walk the Earth exuding peacefulness so strong that the feeling energetically permeates everyone they touch, and is undeniable even to the casual observer leading us to label them ‘the embodiment of peace’ *in human form? Okay, so that was rhetorical. It’s the second one. 

No matter how much work a person does around peacefulness they will never be able to become peace. BUT, they are able to incorporate peacefulness into their bodies and their lives to such an extent that it actually comes to rest in their cells and their biology, thereby they are embodying peace, which contributes greatly to their embodiment of self.

The unique techniques we each choose to use to get to our goal of true embodiment, are referred to as ‘embodying practices’— that is what I teach. For example, when you do shadow work, one could say that you are embodying your shadow for a time. Embodiment requires attention in every part of the human experience simultaneously, not just the parts we’re comfortable with, or used to.

Embodiment is found in the space of intentionality. It’s crucial to understand your goal, and take measured steps, so that embodiment work does not become overwhelming. Even though embodiment is our natural state as humans we’ve grown detached from this experience of wholeness. 

Embodiment is strengthening the bond between your body and your mind. It’s the work of reminding yourself that they are pieces of the same whole, that they need to be able to communicate efficiently, and to understand each other quickly, accurately, and compassionately. Embodiment is inextricably linking body, mind, and soul weaving them back together as they were always meant to be. It’s teaching your core processors how to interplay with one another to create a high functioning, well-balanced whole. Because when you are whole you lack nothing.

Let me be clear, embodiment is NOT about chasing perfection, it’s about craving wholeness. Wholeness and perfection are extremely different concepts. Perfection requires an absence of mistakes. I believe mistakes are how we learn. Well, we learn by doing, but how often are you able to do something perfectly the first time you try? When we make mistakes, ideally, we are able to see them as learning opportunities, by observing and dissecting them to figure out where we went wrong and how we can do better next time. 

My views on embodiment

What I witness most in our society is that we’ve taken our experiences and reduced them down to a few “acceptable” ones, while doing our best to throw out the rest. Only trouble is, the rest never left, they just stored themselves in our bodies. In response most of us have learned to cut our bodies off from our brains—to disconnect, or disembody ourselves seeking safety, comfort and relief. In my work I often see people experiencing their lives in their heads [mind], in their hearts [soul], OR in their body [somatic experiences]. Their lived experience is not integrated as a whole because few of us remember how to merge the three. This leads to disintegration in our lives. Dis-integration. I’m here to help you learn how to merge them consciously, responsibly, and sensitively without setting you off into chaos mode.

I’ve noticed this disconnect for what feels like my whole life. People’s language is disjointed, their intentions are missing, or extremely foggy; they say one thing and mean another. I don’t subscribe to the belief that we’re all just dirty filthy liars, I do believe there’s a deeper issue here. In my life I’ve been fortunate enough to be let in on many different experiences. I’ve sampled the rainbow of human emotions, and spent more time than most in the shadows, because I needed to be sure that I was seeing them clearly so that I could understand their value. I’ve always found value in darkness, only more still as I let my eyes adjust. 

I’m a highly sensitive, highly sensation seeking person, a naturally curious observer of everything, and an intuitive. This is something that I believe people can grasp through minimal interaction with me, and it often amounts to people telling me things— all the things. Ever since I was young strangers would confidently approach me, softly, carefully, but with an enduring confidence that this was a space they would be heard in, that they would be witnessed. I’ve collected these stories, holding them near and dear as I decide how to honor them.

What I hear the most in these stories is a chronic lack of understanding and embodiment. These people are confused, hurt, scared, angry, self-denying, self-sacrificing, or self-abandoning because they are only accessing one part of themselves at any given time. The people in their lives don’t understand them, or have lost patience for them, and so begins the cycle of lost faith and disembodiment. 

How does one become disembodied if it is our natural state?

disembodiment is misattunement and it often starts in childhood

Logically, I believe that we all understand that children are largely helpless beings who need guidance and outside sources of care and nurturance in order to grow and develop into well-balanced adults. Children are not well-equipped to manage their own care. This is why we have parents and legal guardians until we are 18, because as a society we understand children enough to know that they need help interpreting and integrating their experiences in this world, as well as simply accessing and providing for their basic needs. 

Now, imagine what would happen if you gave a child the choice between themselves and their caregivers. This is of course an impossible choice, and therefore what I like to call a false option, but it’s the option that is given to so many of us in our youth. The younger this choice is presented to the child the deeper their trauma will run, you are literally hardwiring this fresh little brain to abandon itself in order to be taken care of, especially when the choice is made [out of necessity of survival] in the formative years, which then has the capacity to transform into formidable years.

This can look like an emotionally or physically unavailable caretaker, commonly do to their own trauma blinding them to any experience but their own, or if they are able to be aware, perhaps they simply don’t have the energy or mental follow through to be supportive in all the ways that parenting requires. I’m not here to demonize caretakers, only to shine a light on where our pain might start, and the trouble it causes when it starts before our brains are effectively ‘online.’

A child forced to choose between themselves and their caretakers is a child forced to choose between their authentic somatic experiences, their growing heart-soul experiences, and the very logical choice of shrinking, or becoming the ‘good child’ who doesn’t have many needs. This is one way that children learn to choose their caregivers, and by default, to abandon themselves. That is why this is a false option, it’s one of the first places we learn that it is dangerous to be fully ourselves, to be fully embodied. I understand this effect implicitly, as I was one of those children taught to abandon myself. I have spent my entire adult life learning to heal through embodiment and awareness practices.

Whether we learned this as children or adults, is important in our healing. Our patterns will be much more entrenched, and harder to break free from when they began in childhood, because they will be largely subconscious. If your misattunement began in adulthood, it’s often the result of poor relationships or poor resolution in those relationships. This teaches you to not show up as your full self because of traumatic conditioning, fear, guilt, or shame based ideologies, and more! ;) We believe that we are staying safe by only offering smaller and cheaper versions of ourselves, but in reality we are continuously abandoning ourselves. 

embodiment work is trauma work is shadow work

Our trauma has many ways of keeping us stuck through self-protective coping mechanisms and deep seated conditioning. It can be difficult to face or work through because trauma involves our entire being whether we have access to our entire being or not. These patterns are physically embedded in our neurobiology, our cells, our muscles, our energy, and our emotional states. Trauma affects every part of our lives, and it can only be truly dissipated when we learn to see all of our parts. Refusal to abandon yourself may be one of the most healing practices in trauma work.

Self abandonment is what happens when we make disembodied choices. We can never truly satisfy ourselves if we never inquire about our own needs. We won’t feel fulfillment until we understand what fullness is for us on an individual level. As you can imagine the needs of our three processors [mind, body, soul] are vastly different and not always naturally in agreement. That is the work of embodiment. We are not looking to kill the ego, or shame the heart, we are merely building containers, setting boundaries within, and learning how to feel our way into harmony.

rewiring your brain for peace, rest and healing

Rewiring our brains isn’t a physical surgery, it’s an emotional one. Meaning that a surgeon cannot open up our skulls and reorder our neurons, shuffling our synaptic connections, changing the placement of our dendrites. We have to do that. Though it is a tangible change, often measurable with fancy technology, the process of rewiring is much more esoteric and emotionally based. Our brains change themselves through our thoughts and actions, and the ways we continue to condition ourselves and strengthen the synapses that keep up stuck.

In order to heal we must be able to convince our bodies that we are safe. One way to do this is through seeking out safety in our connections with Other, and valuing ourselves enough to set boundaries with and cut out the connections that aren’t serving us or our growth—the ones that don’t feel safe. We then need to replace those connections with building increasingly safer relationships as felt in our lived somatic experience. This looks like learning to trust ourselves, to trust our guts. If someone feels icky— you can trust it. They probably are. This is quite separate from cancel culture, and I believe you will find yourself becoming more tolerant of yourself and others, while simultaneously being less willing to take shit. 

the peter pan archetype is all body, and we feel it’s lack

We see this in the well known Peter Pan archetype that gets to be young and carefree forever. It’s easy for most to understand that it is with an air of grief as he never feels relationally fulfilled due to his chronic running and childish behavior. We may also surmise that this archetype could stand to spend a little bit more time in their mind, logically assessing whether this lifestyle truly serves them. Yet, they’re curious and bright, so obviously there is more to the story. This archetype is often in pursuit of bodily pleasure and sensation seeking habits to please their senses, this is their limited view of wholeness, though of course, it is far from it.

It’s not that it’s bad to be Peter Pan, in fact, many of us could stand to learn from this archetype’s relationship to play, pleasure, and bodily thrilling experiences. However, the reason we aren’t diving headfirst into that experience is often because we see the shortcomings. While Peter Pan might be wildly connected to nature, and his lived experiences of visceral feelings, we can also see his avoidance of emotions, and his missing thought processes that allow him to continue along a path that is actually deadening his senses. Peter Pan is all body, and too much of anything can become poisonous.

Embodiment work is fucking messy, and not for the faint of heart

be ready.

Embodying yourself is fucking messy. The only promise I can make is that you will make mistakes. You will most likely do things that feel ‘out of character’ for you. You will probably feel unsure of yourself fairly often, you might even find yourself disgusted at who you see, but you will also be able to touch parts of yourself you may have never seen before, or only caught glimpses of.

You will learn how to tap into your desires, and your needs in a big deep way, and to let go of the shame, guilt and fear they are often encased in. You will learn that no one can be your everything and ultimately the only thing you have control over is yourself, and your own choices. You will be breaking through timeless [often ancestral] patterns of automatic being and thinking, and you will learn how to assimilate your experiences in a way that they don’t have to fight with each other to be heard anymore. You will become an observer of yourself, and the world around you.

This is my work, this is what I see as my current purpose in the world. Helping each of us to heal, to come back to ourselves, and to integrate our wounds in a powerful, loving, transformational way. If this sounds like something you might need, please contact me. I currently have 3 spaces available for embodiment work, and I would be thrilled to start or continue this journey with you.

When all is said and done, we are energetic beings, part of a larger matrix of energy and connection. We have the option to tap into and reestablish ourselves as a crucial component of the universal energetic mycelium that makes up our energetic world. Once we learn how to come back to ourselves, it is a joy to think for ourselves, not a chore. It becomes a pleasure to learn the language of our subconscious, of our shadow and of our desires. When we are embodied we are fused together, no longer a machine, but a human being, made of flesh, blood, energy, electricity, saltwater and spirit. Embodiment means no part of a wo[man] left behind.

Webster’s take:

Meet ‘embodiment’ as defined by the dictionary: n. “the act of embodying: the state of being embodied”

First of all, Merriam-Webster has it down as a noun, meaning BEING not DOING. Which is true, but not quite the whole picture. True, because as the secondary part of our definition explains, it is ’the state of being…’ That phrase is invaluable in understanding who embodiment is, because true embodiment is our state of BEING, not our journey of becoming, that is embodiment as a verb, which is also known as ‘embodying,’ and is the rest of the picture.

The verb form of this word, “embodying” is what we do [the actions] to become embodied. To embody is “to give a body to a spirit; to make concrete and perceptible; to cause to become a body or part of a body; to represent in human or animal form,” as told by Merriam-Webster. 

Okay, so let’s break that down. “To give a body to a spirit.” If that ain’t just the description of being a human, I don’t know what is. I believe that humans are soul & spirit that are contained within a living, breathing flesh sack, or “body.” So when we bring life into the world as women, we are creating embodied souls, or humans, and what are human bodies if not ‘concrete and perceptible’ physical manifestations of our soul, or spirit work?  The problem is that somewhere along the way, due to trauma, emotional wounding, and even lacking physical resources we have stepped out of our bodies and into the experiences being sold to us, or modeled to us by other disembodied beings. This creates a toxic loop of stepping out of our bodies, and forgetting where we put the key to getting back in.

how do i become embodied?

Embodying yourself is literally the most human, and humane thing you could ever do for yourself and for the world. We are meant to live fully within our own experiences, needs, passions, fears, interests, dislikes, and callings. Others are here for observation and connection. We are meant to observe other people’s xyz’s as neutral bystanders for our own learning opportunities. We are meant to enter into relationship with Other as very much our embodied selves meeting another embodied self to enhance both experiences by living them paralleled.

Embodiment in our world, is living your own experience every second that you are able to. This often happens through observation over time, of yourself mostly, and then when you are ready, of your interactions with Other, and finally when you feel *embodied you are able to observe others as a learning implement for self, and nothing more, because when you are embodied you are unattached to outcomes outside of your state of experiencing. Embodiment sees the ego, but does not allow it to run the show.

 *Embodiment is paradoxically, a state of being that is always in a state of becoming, or doing. This will become clear in our work together, so please try not to stew on it to extensively just yet, but feel free to visit it periodically to reassess your understanding.