What is embodiment?

To be embodied is to exist in a state where you’re connected to your body and senses, as well as your mind. Instead of spending all your time in your head or your “thinking mind”, you’re able to drop down into your “feeling” body. Essentially, the separation between mind and body vanishes, bringing you fully back into the present moment, or the physical here and now.

Most of us think of our body as a “thing” or an object, made up of systems and body parts. We think of our mind as “us”, as the part of our being that holds all the answers and knowledge we possess. But in reality, your body has inherent knowledge and insight too. It’s as much “you” as your mind - you just need to relearn how to listen to this wisdom.

Embodiment involves flipping the idea of the mind and the body as separate entities on its head. Fields such as neuroscience are beginning to recognise that the body and mind are so intricately linked, they can’t possibly be thought of or treated individually. Instead, the body plays a pivotal role in understanding your mind and consciousness.

And yet you’re probably so used to focusing all our attention on your head - on the chatter in your mind, the endless to-dos and stressors and anxieties of everyday life. As a result, your capacity for sensing in your body can be lost. And if you’ve lost awareness of anything happening outside of your head, this can compromise your emotional health and resilience.

Interoception refers to your ability to sense any feelings or experiences occurring inside the body. This is intimately related to your ability to regulate and identify your emotions. When your interoception is disrupted due to disembodiment, so too is your ability to manage and process your emotions. Naturally, this leaves you less capable of understanding and tolerating your own emotional demands.

When you relearn to recognise the value and knowledge held by the body, this can help correct any over-emphasis on your thinking mind. But beyond simply redefining this hierarchy is the practice of embodiment. Embodiment is a state of being in which you are wholly connected to your body and your senses, allowing you to be fully aware of your feelings and emotions and physical experiences, as well anything going on within your cognitive, thinking mind. Your mind listens to your body, as well as the reverse. Finally, the division between your body and mind is no longer.

How will you know when you’ve achieved embodiment?

Embodiment is not a destination as such, but an ongoing, constant practice. It requires consciousness and intention. You’ll start to notice physical sensations and experiences, and begin to rely on your body’s signals and feelings to indicate how you’re experiencing something - instead of only paying attention to your mind’s processing of events. Over time, you’ll come to understand how your sensing, feeling body interacts with your conscious mind. You’ll start to appreciate the feeling of sand between your toes, the cool breeze on your face, or the smell of peppermint toothpaste as you brush your teeth. More importantly, you’ll notice you feel more present, and can really immerse yourself in the current moment. Not only does this allow your body and mind to be more connected, it also enriches your experience of life and your relationships with those around you.

The Benefits of Embodiment

It helps improve your relationship with your body.

When you realise your body is a being to live in, instead of a thing to sculpt, you can move towards achieving the sense of “being” in your body - and this is embodiment! The experience of being you in your unique body includes all of the body sensations connected to your emotions.

Embodiment encourages you to lean into the fullness of life. To connect deeply with your body, to show it empathy and compassion. To savour the experiences your body allows you to have - and the emotions associated with this, both positive and negative. In doing so, you can begin to appreciate your body for all it allows you to do and know.

You can begin to appreciate your ability to better understand your emotions, and the opportunity to be present and connected to the present moment and the world or people around you. For the opportunity to be wholly and authentically you. Embodiment encourages intuitive eating and movement which focus on both nourishing and caring for your body. It’s all about appreciating your inherent knowing. And allowing this knowledge to guide your actions and choices. And it’s about trusting your body to be as powerful and knowledgeable as your mind, and honouring its signals and needs accordingly.

If you’re able to do so, this can be so beneficial for your relationship with your body. Because it’s no longer something to punish, hate or pick apart. It’s not something to mould into a certain shape or size. Instead, it’s a source of knowledge, identity and connection to your world and your experiences in it. And what could be more worthy of respect and recognition than that?

Embodiment enhances your self-awareness and insight.

Your body holds so much information about your emotions. By tuning into this, you can learn to understand your feelings - and therefore yourself - much better. Instead of denying your emotions, and pushing them down only to have them resurface down the track and overwhelm you in their intensity, being embodied means you’re processing and dealing with your feelings and experiences in the present moment, as it’s happening. This is a much healthier way to experience your own feelings, and can help you build emotional resilience and better understand yourself and your interpretations of the world around you. In turn, this can help to foster self-acceptance and confidence.

You become more in control of your behaviours and thoughts.

Embodiment helps you to be more in control of your actions, as you’re no longer dictated to by the narratives created in your head. Often, these emotional responses that happen in your mind drive your choices and behaviours, making you more reactive instead of responsive. This puts control in the hands of the external world around you.

Whereas, when you reconnect your body and mind, you’re better able to operate from a place of inner control. You’re also able to use more information when determining your actions or behaviours - as you have additional input from your body and senses, allowing you to make more rounded, informed and rational judgments.

Embodiment fosters self-compassion.

All of us get stuck in our own heads sometimes. Your thoughts are often constant judgments towards yourself and others, and if they’re left unchecked then these can have negative effects on your perception and relationship with yourself. Many people tend to forget that thoughts are exactly that: thoughts, not facts. So if you’re regularly experiencing critical or harsh thoughts towards yourself, these can become internalised to the point where your relationship with yourself is severely damaged. Essentially, you begin to deeply believe the negative thoughts you have towards and about yourself.

However, in learning to be more embodied, these thoughts are no longer unchecked. Your body has the chance to weigh in and provide another perspective or sensation, offering a more objective way to observe how you’re feeling and thinking. This can help you escape the cruelty in your mind and return to the present moment, where there is no place for rumination. In this way, embodiment greatly helps to heal your relationship with yourself. It shifts you away from self-judgement, and towards self-compassion instead.

The body can teach the mind.

While the mind knows a lot, it doesn’t know everything. In fact, your body knows things your mind doesn’t - and only by listening to your body, and learning to speak its “language” can you tap into this additional wisdom and knowing. Embodiment isn’t a process of thinking. It’s an act of redirecting your attention down from the chaos of the mind, into the feeling and sensing that happens in your body. This allows you to move away from rumination or overthinking, and towards awareness and focus by listening to your body’s form of communication.

When you begin to listen to your body, you can tap into somatic knowledge - which involves your sensations, emotions and body experiences. This can teach your mind things it previously didn’t know. For example, noticing the weight of your body connecting with the ground beneath you can physically signal to your mind that you’re grounded and safe.

While you might resist the idea that your body has the capacity to teach your mind, this is often due to the mind’s desire to control everything. We’re conditioned to believe the mind is separate and superior to the body. But by surrendering some of your mind’s control, and contemplating the idea that your mind isn’t separate from your body, your body can teach your mind that you’re grounded, present, and intuitive. It can help you recognise that your ‘self’ is not just your mind - it’s also your body, and your essence. Your experience of life takes place in your body, in your feelings and sensations, in the present moment. Away from rumination, away from the past and the future.

How do you achieve embodiment?

As mentioned, achieving embodiment requires ongoing work and intention. But there are things you can focus on to help you get there, which can make the process of dropping fully  into your body feel easier, quicker and more natural. These include:

Begin to recognise your body isn’t an object or a “thing”, but a being.

Instead of speaking to your body objectively or cruelly, consciously shift towards only speaking to it kindly, with compassion and respect. If this feels challenging, think of how you’d speak to a loved one or your best friend. If you wouldn’t say the same things to them that you say to your own body, it’s time to rethink how you speak and think about your body too!

Acknowledge that your body is enough, it is functional, it is your home. It allows you to move through the world, to breathe, to hug your loved ones, to laugh. Respect it unconditionally, and practice being grateful for these experiences and abilities, instead of tearing apart any imperfections or flaws you’re fixated on. It takes time to build trust, connection and compassion for your body, but make a concerted effort to continue building this sense of safety and respect for your body, and it will eventually become second nature with practice.

Focus on your internal experiences, rather than the external appearance of your body.

When you fixate on the external, you tend to disconnect from the present moment and the sensations your body is experiencing. This means you miss out on feelings of pleasure, passion, vitality, playfulness, joy. So it’s time to tap back into these. Think about the moments when you feel your best. Is it after a really intense, rewarding workout? After a deep-belly laugh shared with a loved one? When you’re cuddling your pet, or madly dancing around your bedroom without a care in the world?

Each of these scenarios are positive experiences involving both your body and mind - and they each require embodiment in order to be able to fully experience and appreciate the moment. Consider what it is about these experiences which makes you feel good, and reminds you that your body is good and worthy - beyond the way it looks. Reflect on the sensory experience of embodiment, and what you can notice about your body in the present. Do you feel connected, empowered, free? Does the practice of embodiment release you from the belief you need to look a certain way to be loveable and worthy? Does it free you from the idea that your value is tied to your appearance? Does it allow you to step into your true, authentic self, and embrace the present moment without the underlying anxieties, overthinking and stress that clouds so much of your life experience?

Embodiment encourages you to fully express or release any emotion you experience, instead of avoiding or numbing yourself to them.

Recognise your body’s wisdom.

Your body is a vessel of emotional knowledge, understanding and wisdom. Emotions flow within and through your body, bringing awareness of how you’re feeling and what you’re experiencing. These truths may not always be comfortable or what you want to hear, but the wisdom your body holds is undeniable and imperative to tune back into.

Practice noticing, recognising and honouring your emotions without trying to mask or deny them. If you’re feeling distressed, let yourself cry until you feel you’ve released your sadness. If you’re ecstatic, jump up and down or dance with joy and embrace the emotions you’re experiencing. If you allow feelings to naturally pass through your body, most emotions actually only last for around 90 seconds - any longer than this and your feelings are actually just stories you’re telling yourself mentally.

By embracing each emotion that flows through your body, you can fully immerse yourself in the experience of living - and at the same time, you can feel safe and secure in the knowledge that no emotion is too big or scary for you to handle, as they’ll all pass quickly if you allow them to. Only in connecting with your body can you properly process your emotions without storing them up for later - and there’s always inevitably a point at which they catch up with you! So trust in your body’s ability to withstand, tolerate and move through emotions, and embrace the opportunity to wholeheartedly do so.

Practice curiosity.

Notice your surroundings regularly, and be inquisitive about the things happening both internally and around you as often as possible. Tuning back into the sensations and experiences in the present moment helps you to be more embodied. Incorporating mindfulness into your daily routine - whether that looks like meditation, breathwork, journaling or something else - can also be hugely beneficial in teaching you how to surrender to the here and now, the present moment. And when you’re fully immersed in the present, there’s no space for unnecessary anxiety or the endless mental noise that isn’t serving you.

Breathe.

Full, deep-belly breathing in a conscious, aware state is a really effective way of reconnecting your body and mind. In bringing mindfulness into your life, you’re able to return to the present moment - which is a core concept of embodiment.

Try embodied movement.

Some forms of movement help you to tap back into your sensations, without judgement. This is known as mindful movement, or any type of movement done with awareness and intention. The key to mindful movement is focusing on the body’s sensations as you move, and remaining present throughout your practice. In this way, these movement styles act as a form of mindfulness, helping to alleviate any physical or mental distress, and supporting your wellbeing in allowing you to just spend time with yourself in a space of compassion and gentleness.

For example, many yoga sequences and postures create a deeper awareness of the physical body, and help to reconnect your body and mind. Pranayama is an excellent example of this. Even movement styles like dancing - when you’re feeling jubilant or energised, shaking your body and moving dynamically can act as a way of expressing your inner state and emotions. Using movement styles that align with your emotional experiences and offer a way to externalise your internal state, or help to repair and enhance the mind-body connection, can be hugely effective in helping you become more embodied.

Why is embodiment so important?

When you’re disconnected from your body, you may notice you also feel disconnected from the world and people around you too - as well as from yourself. This can be very uncomfortable and isolating, and often leads to feelings of rejection or exclusion. Interestingly, research has shown that feelings of disconnection can be just as real and distressing as physical pain is.

Working on cultivating positive, healthy relationships with others - and even more so with yourself - can help you to drop back into your body and repair the mind-body connection.

Embodiment is also critical for cultivating respect and kindness towards your body. While many of us know we should love and speak kindly to our bodies, and nourish them with adequate food and mindful movement. But in reality, loving your body is often much more difficult to actually practise.

We’re taught our bodies are only acceptable if they look a certain way. From a very young age, the media messaging you’re exposed to, the compliments you receive after losing weight, the endless advertising around weight loss products and diets, the comments parents and role models make around their own bodies - all of these factors (and more) mean the representation of bodies you’re shown is very limited and narrow. As a result, if your body doesn’t fit within these strict and rigid standards or “ideals”, you’re told to believe you’re not worthy or ‘enough’. But this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Even body positivity has limitations in this way. It focuses on loving your body for its flaws and imperfections - but again, this approach still emphasises self-objectification and emphasises your body’s appearance as being hugely significant and important.

Embodiment, on the other hand, teaches you to appreciate your body for more than its appearance. It teaches you to recognise your body isn’t an object to praise or to criticise, but it’s a vehicle to enhance your experience of life, your depth of knowing and understanding towards yourself, and another realm through which you can sense and experience the present moment. In essence, it’s about being a body, rather than having a body. And this is a profound shift.

In this way, embodiment is the key to reconnecting to your body. To improving your relationship with both yourself and your body, and living life to its fullest extent - as your most authentic and whole self. It allows you to move past the noise and judgement in your mind, to a place of true connection to the present moment.

It’s about trusting your body and mind as one, and believing that you are in control of your own life, and have all the resources and knowledge you need to move through the world with power and confidence. And for this reason, amongst many others, moving towards a state of embodiment is crucial for your body image, happiness, health and wellbeing, and for your sense of satisfaction in your own life.