What happens if we live through our bodies?
Embodied: to be an expression of or give a tangible or visible form to an idea, quality, or feeling..
I don’t love the definition of “embodiment.” I think, like most things in our society, it prioritizes the outer, and diminishes the inner. To me, embodiment is not about giving something form, nor making it visible, but feeling it.
To me, embodiment is about living our lives, our relational, intellectual, political, social, emotional, spiritual lives, through our bodies.
And this is something most of us don’t do most of the time.
We live and experience and interact too often solely through our heads, minds, and devices.
We leave the body to absorb, but we don’t honor its experience.
So, what happens if we live through our bodies?
We make choices from our gut.
We tune into body language.
We acknowledge our needs, sense our desires.
We are authentic and truthful, because the body doesn’t lie.
Sounds good, right?
But how do we become embodied?
It’s a choice, and a practice. It’s deciding to make space for listening to our bodies, and to stop ignoring them, or expecting them to get us from here to there, and be healthy and resilient, without treating them with respect and kindness.
It’s being mindful about tuning in to our body’s cues, expressions, and resistances. There’s a reason sayings like “digging our heels in” and “stomach is in knots” are centered on the body’s experience: it always tells the truth.
Making space for listening to ourselves is not easy and requires commitment. Undoing a lifetime of putting the mind first requires that we consciously decide to create space and time for the body.
This is the reason I created an ongoing community called “Body Story Community,” where we speak, write, move, and draw about our feelings, thoughts, relationships, and needs. It is a space for women to come together and take care of themselves from the inside out. So, in some ways, the definition of embodiment DOES fit here: Body Story Community is a tangible, visible form of self-care, a personal commitment to yourself that, I’m guessing, is long overdue.
To find out more, or join us, check it out HERE.
