(art by Heng Swee Lim)
The difficulty is to learn to perceive with your whole body, not with
just your eyes and reason. The world becomes a stream of tremendously
rapid, unique events. So you must trim your body to make it a good
receptor. The body is an awareness; and it must be treated impeccably.
~Carlos Castaneda
The body says what words cannot.
~Martha Graham
~Martha Graham
Take a minute right now to consider what you are currently embodying in your life. Imagine seeing yourself as you move through your days; observing from a distance. Think of your routines, habits and interactions. What are the first impressions that you get when you see yourself in this way? Do you see someone who is rushed and distracted, lonely or lost, peaceful and purposeful; melancholy or content? Possibly a combination of a few states of being?
We are all familiar with what body language is...you’ve had a “gut reaction” about something or maybe you have been talking to someone and sensed that what they were saying and what they really felt didn’t sync up. It's a kind of nonverbal communication where thoughts, intentions, or feelings are expressed by physical behaviors such as facial expressions, body posture, gestures, eye movement, touch and the use of space. Our bodies contain a wealth of information and intelligence that we need only learn how to connect with and respond to appropriately.
The body doesn't lie. But often we ignore the feedback of our senses and nervous system and have grown increasingly disconnected from our natural instincts and deeper intuition. Usually an imbalance or dis-ease of some kind results. One of the things that has been confirmed time and time again during my experience with healing work is that physical illness is the result of an energetic blockage in the body and energetic blockages contain emotional information that is needing to be expressed and released in order for healing to complete. That is why working with the body is a vital part of my work with creativity. We can "talk" about our issues all day without any significant change, but when we are willing to step into the experience of the issue as it lives in the body and allow it to be felt and voiced, then true healing or wholeness is possible.
The concept of embodiment is one that holds the human being as a vessel or vehicle for consciousness--we posses the miraculous difficulty of being both matter and spirit and we have been gifted with the messy business of learning how to operate as a boundless, limitless soul within the confines of a mortal body and finite structure. Any practice that call us into a conversation with the body/mind processes can be considered an embodied practice--yoga is a perfect example as is any movement based expression that fosters the development of greater awareness through the body. Embodiment is closely tied into the feminine process of creativity which is earthy, cyclic and intuitive and can be viewed in partnership with enlightenment which tends to be a more masculine, linear, transcendent and spiritual process.
I have been able to identify three important principles that relate to the concept of embodiment.
The first is CONNECTION. When two or more things are joined or bound together, a connection is made. This uniting of parts to make a whole is what connection is about. It happens to be the very definition of Yoga, which comes from the Sanskrit Yuj, meaning "to yoke or bind." Embodiment calls us into relationship with ourselves by creating a conversation with what is occurring between the inner landscape and the outer environment. Culturally we have created a divide between the mind and body and we live in a very "head-centric" culture that places greater value on the the development of the mind as separate from the body. As a result, many of us learned from a young age to disassociate from our natural rhythms, ignore the instincts and impulses of the body, and mask our true emotions. Many are trapped in unconscious patterns of fight, flight or freeze from the continuous triggers of stress that impact us daily. We long to make a connection but feel lost, tired and overwhelmed. One of the wonderful things about creativity is that it invites us back into relationship with our life force and encourages us toward connection no matter where we may find ourselves. The creative process always offers us a way home to ourselves because it is a natural process that lives within each of us and unites us with our soul essence. Cultivating a connection to our bodies requires a consistent, dedicated practice of learning to become aware of the more subtle "felt sense" of the body. This concept of the "felt" sense emerged out of the research of psychotherapist Eugene Gendlin who observed that those who were successful in therapy were those that were able to connect to this internal body awareness. Movement and breath practices are wonderful for helping us gain access to and thereby express our authenticity directly.
One of the gifts of becoming aware of what we are currently embodying in our lives is the ability to consciously choose what it is we would like to more fully develop and express as we move through our days. In this way, we become a living work of art that is interconnected with all other living things.
If you are curious about the other two principles and exploring your own creativity through the body, I invite you to attend my next workshop on April 18th at One Yoga and Fitness: Body Language: Embodiment as a Gateway to Authentic Self Expression. We will cultivate a connection to the wisdom of the body through story-telling, poetry and expressive arts practices such as authentic movement, embodied journaling and "body-mapping." For more details and to register:Embody Your Essence .
Happy Spring!
The body doesn't lie. But often we ignore the feedback of our senses and nervous system and have grown increasingly disconnected from our natural instincts and deeper intuition. Usually an imbalance or dis-ease of some kind results. One of the things that has been confirmed time and time again during my experience with healing work is that physical illness is the result of an energetic blockage in the body and energetic blockages contain emotional information that is needing to be expressed and released in order for healing to complete. That is why working with the body is a vital part of my work with creativity. We can "talk" about our issues all day without any significant change, but when we are willing to step into the experience of the issue as it lives in the body and allow it to be felt and voiced, then true healing or wholeness is possible.
The concept of embodiment is one that holds the human being as a vessel or vehicle for consciousness--we posses the miraculous difficulty of being both matter and spirit and we have been gifted with the messy business of learning how to operate as a boundless, limitless soul within the confines of a mortal body and finite structure. Any practice that call us into a conversation with the body/mind processes can be considered an embodied practice--yoga is a perfect example as is any movement based expression that fosters the development of greater awareness through the body. Embodiment is closely tied into the feminine process of creativity which is earthy, cyclic and intuitive and can be viewed in partnership with enlightenment which tends to be a more masculine, linear, transcendent and spiritual process.
I have been able to identify three important principles that relate to the concept of embodiment.
The first is CONNECTION. When two or more things are joined or bound together, a connection is made. This uniting of parts to make a whole is what connection is about. It happens to be the very definition of Yoga, which comes from the Sanskrit Yuj, meaning "to yoke or bind." Embodiment calls us into relationship with ourselves by creating a conversation with what is occurring between the inner landscape and the outer environment. Culturally we have created a divide between the mind and body and we live in a very "head-centric" culture that places greater value on the the development of the mind as separate from the body. As a result, many of us learned from a young age to disassociate from our natural rhythms, ignore the instincts and impulses of the body, and mask our true emotions. Many are trapped in unconscious patterns of fight, flight or freeze from the continuous triggers of stress that impact us daily. We long to make a connection but feel lost, tired and overwhelmed. One of the wonderful things about creativity is that it invites us back into relationship with our life force and encourages us toward connection no matter where we may find ourselves. The creative process always offers us a way home to ourselves because it is a natural process that lives within each of us and unites us with our soul essence. Cultivating a connection to our bodies requires a consistent, dedicated practice of learning to become aware of the more subtle "felt sense" of the body. This concept of the "felt" sense emerged out of the research of psychotherapist Eugene Gendlin who observed that those who were successful in therapy were those that were able to connect to this internal body awareness. Movement and breath practices are wonderful for helping us gain access to and thereby express our authenticity directly.
One of the gifts of becoming aware of what we are currently embodying in our lives is the ability to consciously choose what it is we would like to more fully develop and express as we move through our days. In this way, we become a living work of art that is interconnected with all other living things.
If you are curious about the other two principles and exploring your own creativity through the body, I invite you to attend my next workshop on April 18th at One Yoga and Fitness: Body Language: Embodiment as a Gateway to Authentic Self Expression. We will cultivate a connection to the wisdom of the body through story-telling, poetry and expressive arts practices such as authentic movement, embodied journaling and "body-mapping." For more details and to register:Embody Your Essence .
Happy Spring!
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