What Does It Mean To Be Embodied

As a movement-based wellness practitioner, consultant, and writer, I use the term, “embodied movement” an awful lot. Like getting a good night’s sleep and eating foods that nourish me, embodied movement is one of the cornerstones of my own personal wellness plan, not to mention my professional practice. But it has occurred to me recently that I may have skipped a step in all this talking and writing about embodied movement. I rarely talk about what it means to be embodied and why practicing embodied movement is an important part of my wellness practice. 

When we go through our days—ordering a latte from our favorite barista, getting mad at our boss, hugging our loved ones, enjoying the feeling of sunlight on our faces, working up a sweat in the gym, or gleefully binge-watching a guilty pleasure—our whole body is involved, not just our brains. 

In the moments we are “embodied,” we are receptive to and therefore able to use more of this body-based information to help us make choices, both on a conscious and unconscious level. This impacts how we interact with others and how we make choices both great and small.  Whether we are aware of it or not, our bodies are taking in and sending us information through bodily sensations which can all be used to determine how we feel about someone or something. And how we feel about someone or something is important information too. 

Our feelings, no matter what they are, are important information.

On a primitive level, feelings keep us safe and help us survive. We respond to a perceived threat before we even realize it with our cognitive parts of our brains. You quickly jump back from an oncoming bicycle before your thinking catches up and says, “I need to jump out of the way.” Your body felt the threat and responded without ever consulting the thinking part of your brain. We often call this ”a gut reaction.” That “gut reaction” is your feelings keeping you safe. 

Feelings also help us survive because they allow for social ties. Humans are social beings and we need each other. And when we feel deeply connected to one another, we often describe it as a “deep emotional connection.” The bond between baby caregivers is essential for a baby’s survival. That bond takes place on an emotional, or feelings level.

But I won’t begrudge you the fact that sometimes feelings are inconvenient, a downer, a burden, or overwhelming. I cannot tell you how many times I have closed my eyes, turned my face up toward the sky signaling I am about to cry out to anyone who is listening, and I say, “too many feelings!” Feelings are useful and then some, but they are not always a joy to have. When it comes to feelings, it’s complicated. 

Unfortunately, we don’t get to pick and choose what feelings we experience. So that means that if we don’t want to feel painful feelings, dissociate from them, rendering us disembodied, then we miss the warm and fuzzy emotions too. We are either in touch with our feelings or we are not. If you are not embodied, you may be able to pass up the churning stomach and cold, sweaty palms of anxiety. But you also miss out on the awesome feeling of  expansion inside your chest and across your face that feels like joy. 

Feeling our feelings, and using our feelings to make choices both consciously and unconsciously allow us to have rich and meaningful lives. I met my husband David when I was working in the Cleveland Park Bookshop, in Washington DC. I had always believed that I would meet my life partner in either a book store or a laundromat, but on the day I met David I was just minding the shop - not looking for love. I was already in a relationship that kept me busy with its own set of complicated feelings. David came in for a gift for his sister -- a copy of Steve Martin’s Picasso at Lapin Agile. Another clerk, a friend of his, introduced us. Almost immediately my hands started to sweat. I became clumsy, nearly dropping books and bumping into a table. I felt like my whole body was quaking. I have no recollection of what I said, but witness accounts claim that I sounded totally normal. On the inside I was feeling anything but. To put it succinctly, I “lost my cool.” 

“What was that?” I asked myself at home that night, shaking my head. I stayed curious about all of the feelings that came up. I tucked that memory away and took it out to examine it and to even feel it again over the next few weeks. “Why did I act so weird?”  I figured it out. I was attracted to him which seemed wholly inconvenient. I will spare you the details of my break up, which was unrelated to my crush on David, but a week after my relationship ended, I called David and asked him out on a date. 

In a paper seeking to create a taxonomy to aid scientific study of movement-based embodied contemplative practices, Laura Schmalzl, Mardi A. Crane-Godreau, and Peter Payne note that: 

...the experience of one’s self in the world… involves a complex interplay of brain, body and environment and the seamless integration of interoceptive, proprioceptive (including vestibular), kinesthetic, tactile, and spatial information. *

I wasn’t thinking about all of these systems when I “lost my cool,” but, without a doubt, these were the systems in play.

Feelings are what motivate us to take risks, to do better, and to take in a whole experience. Joyful feelings such as dancing with your friends are easy for most of us to embrace. Painful experiences are less so. But as long as they are tolerable, painful experiences are part of how we learn what we don’t like and what isn’t okay with us. For example, the feelings we have when a romantic relationship goes south can be really miserable, but if we can be curious about them, we can learn about things like our boundaries, values, and how we communicate. And we can take that newfound awareness with us as we move forward with our lives. Painful feelings are a good, and often unlikable, teacher.

Feelings add depth and meaning to your days. What stories would your favorite authors tell with no feelings? Why would you read them? What purpose would watching your favorite shows serve? What would art do for us? How would we come together in pairs or groups? Why would we get up and go to work? 

Trauma, or complex trauma which comes from experiencing an overwhelming amount of adverse experiences, can lead to us losing touch with our feelings. But this disconnect need not be permanent.

In my next newsletter I will write about why we might become disembodied, what an embodied movement practice is, and how it helps us restore our capacity for feeling our feelings so that we may live richer and more fulfilling lives.

Sources

*Schmalzl, L., Crane-Godreau, M.A., & Payne, P. (2014) Movement-based embodied contemplative practices: definitions and paradigms. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. V.8. Retrieved from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00205/full