What is Embodiment?

Being embodied itself can just be a thought. In fact the only way to talk about embodiment is through thought.

But being embodied is not a cognitive experience. Being embodied is a felt experience. And once the description has been said out, a portion of “senseness” is lost and we are no longer in the full embodied state.  Our mind generally likes this, as it is used to being in control of how it views the nature of reality. And this view of reality does not always align with our body’s reality. (Side note -many illness and diseases can come from this separation and/or repression of body from mind.)

Our bodies have wisdom, a wisdom which speaks and learns slower than the minds. The brain’s cognitive neural speed is very fast. The neurons for body movement and muscle command fire much faster then neurons for bodily sensing and awareness.

What this means more simply is that when we go to descriptors and thoughts of the felt sense, we are generally in faster speaking inner mind languages and not in the slower sensory-somato body languages.

Many of us are so programmed to be in our mind. Even we may “think” we are not, but we are. Through slower embodied practices we can begin to get out of thought and into body. And it is in the body where there is so much richness, it’s just hard to be “seen” at first. An example of this which I like to share with many of my clients is of being in a car traveling 150mph. When you are doing 150mph it’s hard to see your friend in the lane next to you or even in your lane when they are doing 2mph.

We need to slow down, come to our body’s neural speed and move in and around from there.

Here is where my usual educational “warning” comes.

Just because something calls itself “embodied” doesn’t mean it is. This post is an embodied post, but nothing about it is itself embodied, unless the reader is taking pauses to soak it in and feel into their body the where and how this information is landing or being processed. Not the thought of, but the feeling or sense of. Before the thought comes to label and define, is a sensation… and that is what we are looking for here.

The marketing of embodiment is a strong thing these days. I see many buzzwords and catch phrases which practitioners on the purely thought side of this, not actually in their bodies. As we learn more about this process of being in our bodies we can also begin to sense and “see”more with our bodies of what is authentic and what is just using words and hype to attract and differentiate itself from others but still itself not embodied.

Of course, this is explanation is all just a thought experience as well… so come meet me for some embodied awareness and movement sometime and we’ll find and discuss so much that we already know, just hidden below.

Let’s be “somanauts” and explore the lived-body experience.