em•bod•I•ment: something or someone that embodies a spirit, principle
The embodiment I am referring to is bringing the spirit more fully into the body. Your spirit is within your body— every little cell and inch of you hold it. But what can often happen, is part of your spirit will pop out of your body when things get difficult.
As a reminder, you are not just a body— you are a spiritual being living a physical life. You are made up of multiple layers, or bodies, such as the emotional body and mental body. Each holds a different vibration and a different purpose. What you are currently experiencing or have experienced in the past can impact each of these bodies and how you react to fear or traumatic experiences.
If you experienced trauma early on in life, or never learned how to deal with your fear, you can respond to difficult situations by either energetically popping out of your body or disassociating.
Dissociation, and/or emotional detachment, is a defense mechanism used to cope with distressing or overwhelming emotions. It involves disconnection between your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Often it begins as avoidance of memories of traumatic events or negative emotions — and is particularly common in survivors of trauma.
Eventually, to avoid all the discomfort of feeling, you start directing all the attention up into your head. You begin thinking your way out of your pain. You start feeling less, which means less pain but also less joy.
You have also been trained to live mostly in your mind, consumed with data, information, and constant stimulus. Analyzing every little piece of info, thought, action— pushing aside emotions and spirit. So, even when it comes to small bumps in life, there is a habit to go straight to thinking it through instead of feeling it through.
Emotions are the signposts in life. They help you navigate which way to turn and what to aim for. If you don’t feel emotions— then you don’t know what you need, what others need, or how to heal and move forward.
Embodiment means becoming whole. Coming back to your body. To have all of your bodies online and integrated. It is getting out of your head and feeling deeply and fully. Beginning to connect the feeling to the thought or the experience.
How can I become more embodied?
If you feel like you are emotionally avoidant, are up in your head too much, feel out of body sometimes, or resonated with any of the above then you can start with some simple exercises.
Breathing exercises
Breath is what animates our physical body. It’s what gives juice to our energy— stoking the fire within us. “Our breathing is reflective of our state of being.”
- Notice your breath— is it shallow or flowing, deep sighs or light? “When we want to feel less we stop our breath.”*
- Pay attention to your natural breath at different times of the day. Notice if you are holding your breath while doing certain things and take a moment to reset by taking a few deep breaths (I find that while doing things on my phone, like looking at social or playing games, I tend to hold my breath more)
- Breathe into the belly, then into the diaphragm, and lastly the lungs. Exhale out of the nose. Use this style of breathing to fill your being with air. Try this mini-meditation — Body Breathing
Movement
Connect your physical body with your emotions and senses. This helps bring your being further into the corners of your body. Try movement or dancing with your favorite music.
- Pay attention to the emotions that the song brings up and where you feel them in your body
- Notice how you feel as you do different movements and what feels good
Staying Present
Being present will help you identify when you are in your body and when you are not. It will allow space for emotions to rise so that you can identify them. Staying present can be difficult at first but it is a practice that you should work on a little bit every day. It can help to start with small tasks and trying to focus all your attention on one thing. Try doing something creative like painting or a craft where you can be present with your creation.
Pay Attention to Emotions
As you notice emotions arising, pay attention to where they feel strongest within your body. Try focusing on the emotion if it isn’t too much and see if you can see where it is coming from or linked to.
Keep an emotions journal and try answering some of the following questions:
- Where do I feel this emotion in my body?
- What triggered the emotion?
- Is there texture or color to this emotion (sharp, hot, dark, red)
Learning to Self-Regulate
If you have experienced a trauma that makes it hard to connect to your body then there are ways to connect slowly and with compassion. Using sensory experiences that make you self-regulate your feelings can help. Find something that physically is soft or nice to hold onto and pair that with some soothing music to help you ride out emotional waves. As you become calmer, you can try adding in one of the above exercises when you are ready.
*https://medium.com/swlh/6-core-elements-of-embodiment-b03eb9d2f8ee
