I want to invite you to join me in a small exercise.

‘Feel your feet on the earth and the support that the cushion/chair that you are sitting on offers you.
Take a few minutes to intentionally relax and release your weight to your feet and into the cushion you are sitting on.
Gently bring your awareness to your breath and notice how it enters and leaves your body.
Now scan your body from your feet to your head and notice any sensation that feels alive.
Notice if you are carrying any emotion/feeling.
And finally, be aware of any images, memories, or even thoughts that are coming up.
As you become aware of your physical, emotional, and imaginal selves, notice if there is a movement gesture that feels right for you to do. Repeat this gesture a few times, amplify it, slow it down, and as you explore it, notice if there is a desire, an intention, a question, or an observation that is coming up for you, in the here and now.

What we have just engaged in is a small exercise towards conscious embodiment. By being aware of and holding our physical, emotional, and imaginal selves, we are now present to ourselves and to the other in a far more wholistic manner. Our listening is deeper and our empathy far greater.

Unfortunately, in our modern world, we view ourselves in fairly fragmented ways. Broadly we are aware that we have a physical body, we have emotions, and we have a cognitive ability to make meaning of the world around us and make decisions. Our mental/cognitive abilities is almost always prioritised over the other two. We are taught that we ‘have’ bodies and not that we ‘are’ bodies. As a result, the body becomes an object (something that we have ‘control’ over or something that ‘controls’ us), and we are distanced from the immense wisdom and possibility held in our body.

Conscious embodiment is a vital awareness of our bodily experience. It’s a sense of being present with ourselves and others in an alive manner. It’s a shift away from the idea/concept into the experience. We begin developing Self-awareness through an internal compass.

We can practise embodiment through breath-work, working with our five senses, becoming aware of sensation, emotion, memory/thought, interoception etc. As a trainer, I always start my training day with a short movement visualisation to get my trainees aware of the sensations, emotions, and thoughts held in their bodies in the here and now. This brings trainees into the space with a heightened sense of presence and allows them to acknowledge what they are holding. This goes a long way towards owning projections and deepening empathy. But most importantly, they learn to listen to their body signals – a tightening of a muscle, a quickening of the heartbeat, sweaty palms etc.

Interestingly, when we tune in, we can observe splits in the body – where one part of the body may feel very different from another – the lower body is heavy, the upper body is light, the right side of the body feels stiff while the left part is fluid etc. A recent example is after moving for a while, a student in my class observed a ‘dark heaviness’ around her chest while the rest of her body (limbs, pelvis, and head) felt light and joyous. She was struggling with the end of a close friendship and felt betrayal and grief. However, while sharing her movement experience, she noticed that there was also tremendous relief and joy within her at the prospect of freedom from this relationship, which had become stifling in recent years. Experiencing this in an embodied way gave her the strength to allow this relationship to come to its natural end, knowing she was making the space she needed for her authentic Self.
One of my favourite body-based practices is Authentic Movement. This is a simple but profound movement discipline in which the mover moves with her eyes closed in front of a witness. The mover is not ‘performing’ for the witness but instead waits to see what the body suggests, thus experiencing the sense of ‘being moved’ as opposed to ‘moving.’ As the mover moves, she also tracks her movement, refining her own inner witness, accentuated by the external witness who tracks the mover and offers her own responses to the movement.

This practise brings alive the transformation/healing possible with compassionate witnessing. It creates a safe and sacred space within which we can encounter both our wounding and our potential. This embodied encounter of more than one way of being results in a far more expansive sense of Self. We begin to access that part of ourselves that is greater than our wounding, the Self with a capital S as defined by Jung. This practice holds possibilities for psychological healing, artistic impulses, and experience of the numinous.