“We cannot shame ourselves in change. We can only love ourselves into evolution.” - Unknown
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” - Einstein
I had pretty bad anxiety for about a decade.
High school through college and past it. I did all the things I could think of to cure it. I got a degree in neuroscience, I saw a psychologist, a psychiatrist, I took two — no three? — types of meds, I drank too much, I tried all sorts of drugs, I practiced mindfulness meditation, I did breathing exercises during panic attacks, I dropped classes, I changed careers, I got fired, I got on a boat and sailed across an ocean, I walked across Spain and cried in front of La Sagrada Familia twice.
Surprisingly, it was Spain that did it.
I walked 500 miles of the Camino de Santiago with two of my dearest friends over five weeks. We walked and talked day after day. We admitted things we’d never said out loud. We held hands as we cried. We walked separately when we needed to cry alone. We had dance parties and climbed trees and ate “sad pasta” and worried about bed bugs constantly but not really.
But mostly we found a new version of safety with each other, and with ourselves. We realized we could face our greatest hurts without them killing us. We learned that nothing inside of us was going to overtake us. We would not drown in rage or grief or even shame. We learned how soon relief would follow if we just let it out. And the entire time we kept moving, allowing our bodies to both express and expel. Our “talk therapy” was grounded in our physical beings. We weren’t heads that happened to be attached like bodies. We were hungry and tired often. We got sunburnt and got cold. We were embodied. In touch with the rawness of reality but also our inner, undeniable resilience — as well the morphing, mystifying pain that played through our feet mile after mile.
We felt strong and flawed and evolving. We enjoyed being ourselves. We stopped hiding. We got weirder and weirder, trying to teach each other how to curse in french and make goat sounds and yell in the middle of a burp. We got in fights. We argued over the ocean and practiced conflict resolution when we saw the beach. We started to talk less about the past and more about the present and our dreams for the future. We caught ourselves saying things like, “I’m ready to forgive myself.” “I’m ready to move on.” “I’m ready to tell them.” “I’m ready to stop pretending.” “I’m ready to do something about it.” “I’m still scared but not paralyzed.” “I didn’t know I’d ever be able to talk about it like this.” “I’m ready for my life to be bigger than this.”
We hadn’t been “healed”, whatever that means. But we had been unleashed.
Embodied is an ill-defined word.
Or maybe it’s a perfectly-defined word because it’s so versatile. It feels like an old word; lending itself to poetry and spiritual scripture. Like Latin words I learned in high school (shoutout Ms Herndon) that mean the beak of a bird or the prow of a ship depending on your context. In essence embodied means, “to be an expression of an idea, quality, or feeling”, which is about as specific as “something pointy that goes on the front part.”
Really, it’s a feeling. And like many things that our bodies just know — the smell of the house you grew up in, the color of your favorite Starburst, the foreboding sensation of something being wet that shouldn’t be wet — it’s almost impossible to describe it to someone who hasn’t experienced it (or something close to it) themselves.
But six years of practicing embodiment myself and two years of studying it so I can teach it, I think it’s time to try.
Embodiment is:
Embracing the wisdom that exists beyond your logical mind — in your body, in your emotions, even in your triggers and soft spots.
Asking the tension in your shoulder to tell you what it’s holding onto. Promising your tight, dense hips that you’re here to help. Letting your upset stomach know that you’re not mad at it, you just want to know why it’s hurting so bad.
Finding and working through limiting beliefs, fears, and conditioning that your conscious mind has jettisoned but still live in your body, literally restricting you.
Letting the animal of your body shake in stress, sob in grief, roar in rage, whatever it needs to release.
Letting go of fixing yourself in favor of knowing yourself.
Mindfulness below the mind.
Excavation.
Regenerative psychoanalysis.
Self acceptance. Self compassion. Self trust. Self liberation. Self actualization. Self realization. Self love.
Grounding your soul in your body.
Swimming in your undercurrent.
Coming home.
I asked participants from my embodiment workshops to describe it too.
They came back with:
Embodiment is making the time for and committing to the acceptance of our emotions. Specifically, the physical expression of our emotions (both icky and beautiful) that get stuck in our bodies. The ones that we tend not to allow ourselves to fully experience in the moment for fear of social humiliation, to name one of many other reasons. The emotions that we don't even realize we're hanging onto without asking ourselves to take a really good look at them and inviting them to surface.
Embodiment is taking time to let our bodies process all the emotions it holds for us without us even knowing. It’s taking time to move our bodies for joy. Or grief. Or frustration. Or anger. Or strength.
Embodiment is connecting with the parts of us that we don’t understand or don’t always honor. It’s checking in with yourself. Where nothing is “wrong” and nothing is “right”.
Embodiment is moving feelings/emotions through your body… Allowing them to be acknowledged and therefore released.
Embodiment is pretty fucking liberating.
In summary, embodiment is getting out of your head. Getting into your body. Getting into the world.
And if my experience is any indication, your head, your body, and the world will thank you for it.
✧˖°
Leona
So glad I found this piece, thank you!
Though I've heard the word often, I don't think I ever tapped in with the idea of embodiment, because it felt unavailable to me for whatever reason. the way it was broken down here makes it seem attainable and also allows me to see that this is something I've subconciously been working towards.
been having this urge thats telling me I legit need to go find somewhere to scream as loud as possible, that just the sense of vocalizing my rage could be helpful. reading this helped me connect some dots on that feeling. gratitude!
This was the perfect week to read this! Love that you’ve drawn the connection between hiking - vigorous and extensive as it was in this case - and embodiment work. My body does better in embodiment practice when I’m working it out consistently.
Working this week in treating my breath as not only fuel for the soul but also - more novel for me - as the source of listening - trusting that life-force travels through my body on my breath - the mind need not hear it nor understand it.
Love it! Thank you for this!