What is this thing 'embodiment'? that I and many others are talking about lately??
And why do I call what I am sharing with clients 'embodied breathwork' or 'embodied movement'??

Since it's Friday afternoon (or whenever it is that you get here, your own 'now'), I thought we could have a chat about it :)
so, What is embodiment??

“ Embodiment is a state in which the whole of your intelligence comes into coherence with the present.”
Phillip Shepherd [ The Embodied Present Process ]

You could spend the next few hours or weeks, just soaking in that sentence.
[ why not ?? Why stop?!]

We could also say that embodiment is a way of “listening to the world through the body”.
Embodiment is certainly an experience.
not something we think about or even really 'do'
the potential for experiencing embodiment is always there
but we don't often go there - into the experience of the moment
(which is the only place you really exist... in this moment)

As a 'people' we have learnt to prefer the known (safe!), socially acceptable (not alone!) and deeply conditioned habits of being in our heads/thinking (smart!), getting things right (I'm a good person!), planning (I'm valuable!), goal setting (I'm worth!), sorting things out....

[ read those words in brackets - this is what we are trying to prove to others, to quash the deep inner primal fears of the opposites - alone, unsafe, bad person, not worthy, not enough, not smart ]

This is how we live most of the time isn't it??
All that thinking doing planning learning and fixing things - it puts life just beyond our reach, something that we will attain in a future that actually never arrives...
Rather than ally those primal fears, we are mostly more succesful in seemign to prove them to ourselves as we strive to hide them from others. Oops. Big Ooops.

Again, this is a lot of how we tend to live our lives. Its the background programming that keeps us entangled in stories, power plays and mind games.

It creates inner states of tension and contraction, stress, tight muscles, being 'stuck in your head, chasing high's from external sources....

It keeps the experience of the moment at arms length, even just a breath away, anywhere but here. It pushes you away from YOU, and our of your body.

If we spend more time 'in' our body - EMBODIED - and let ourselves relax and expand into that space, things unwind, soften, broaden
Awareness, knowing arises from within rather than having to be found, earned or 'worked out' in some way.
We start to live the experience of knowing and creating who-we-are from the inside out.

Embodiment is not just ‘listening’ to your body,
which can imply in our actual experience that our body is somehow outside of or ‘other than’.

EMBODIMENT is being in the body, connecting, experiencing and listening to the world from where we actually ‘are’.

From and in this moment, here and now, with all its comforts and discomforts, all its pleasure and pain.

Disembodiment has been a part of our cultural experience since before Plato, who’s writings described the supremacy of the head over the body, with the body as a ‘mere vehicle’ to move the head around.

This disconnection/separation between head/mind and body has then rippled out into our primal belief that we are alone, and we are separate from the earth, nature & each other.

As we become more embodied we come to realise that our body is of the earth, that we are of our body, that we are nature.

We begin to live the experience that all is connected and in relationship.
disconnection shows up as the illusion that it is.

Importantly, this happens naturally. We don't have to be better, fix anything, wait, plan or sort it out.

we simply notice, allow and 'drop in' to what is, letting everything else go. over and over again, a beautiful endless flow, a dance if you like.

lets summarise this and make it real in a lived experience sense:

Disembodied: separation, thinking, self-criticism, doing, contraction, rigidity, ungrounded (living from head), stuck, linear

Embodied: connection, experiencing/listening, self love and appreciation, engaged with life regulated by the present, spacious, fluid/free flowing, grounded, living in your body.

This is the core of what Natalie and I are living and sharing these days, across our differnet modalities and facets of life - its even behind our farming and #goatlife - there is nothing like a screaming goat mumma giving birth to get you real about what life REALLY Is!

When you join us - which we woudl ove you to do - you are diving into experiencing the joy of being ALIVE on every breath, embodying YOU.

What a magical world when we all live our Selves - not cardboard cut outs socially acceptable or squashed into a box versions - goats are good for teaching you that too!

We need a more human world right now, and we need you, the earth needs us - it's not carbon credits or green laundry detergent that will save us (borrowing from Peter to pay Paul in different ways) its being in our bodies so we KNOW, BEFORE THINKING, how our own actions impact ourselves and others, and from that place live in integrity with all of life - that is the big dream of embodiment.

It starts with You.
You have all you need, and plenty of good company along for the JOY ride.