Embodiment is something that we take entirely for granted. In our own minds, we are inseparable from our visual form: our body. We tend to strongly identify with how we look, have an opinion about the shape and size of our body and notice when our body is in pain or discomfort.

Despite all of this, many of us are not very in touch with our body and really only pay it much attention when it starts to cause us problems. How is it possible that despite exercising, trying to eat well and taking time with how we look, we can still be somehow disembodied?

Our contemporary culture is strongly oriented around mental activity. A lot of emphasis is placed on using our minds to think our way through and around problems, going at such a pace that intuition doesn’t get a look in. Thinking can be very quick, especially if we’re highly educated, racing through different theoretical scenarios to come to a solution and proposed action. Intuition or gut-feeling needs us to be still and considered, allowing for decision and action to arise from a different place in us.

This emphasis on mind and thinking takes us away from our bodies. Even if we take a lot of exercise we can still be out of touch with our body, escaping into our thoughts without even noticing that that’s what we’re doing.

One of the problems with too much thinking is that our brains are wired to be more responsive to threat than to positive experiences. If we spend a lot of time ‘in our head’, it is likely that we will spend increasing amounts of time worrying about things that have happened or may happen in the future. This, interestingly, has an effect on our body, lowering the threshold at which our sympathetic nervous system is activated. We are more easily agitated, may find it difficult to get to sleep and are easily startled.

It may also be that we felt we needed to abandon the here and now, and with it our body, a long time ago, during a traumatic or overwhelming experience. Such experiences can leave us feeling that we are living ‘two feet to the left’, numb or somehow ‘missing’ parts of our body. The effect of such an event can stay with us for years or decades and leave us profoundly out of touch with our body.

The body is full of wisdom that can support us throughout our lives if we can only hear it speak to us. Becoming full embodied is not a process of becoming increasingly touchy or hyper-sensitive, rather it is an ongoing experience of coming into touch with our own wellbeing, as well as coming into touch with past wounds. By gently practising sitting quietly and allowing ourselves to have a felt-sense of our body, we can start to understand what is held in our body, and then how to start to release it.

With this in mind, I always start a session of craniosacral therapy with a few minutes settling, bringing attention into the body, and noticing sensations. Sometimes this is very difficult, or brings emotions to the surface, and it is never helpful to force anything in doing this exercise. However, over time, and with tremendous patience, it can start a process of coming back in touch with our precious body, and open new insights for us about how we can be happier and enjoy this process of being embodied.

For deeper reading on this subject I would recommend Peter Levine’s ‘Waking the Tiger’.