Karden’s Corner by: Karden Rabin
OK Karden, I get it, embodiment is like super duper important. But how do I do it? How do I learn to feel again? This is the million dollar question, isn’t it?
There are dozens of ways to learn how to embody, ranging from formal clinical therapies to yoga to theater. Before we dive into any of the particular modalities, I want to have a more fundamental conversation about what we are trying to embody.
If we return to the definition that I offered in my previous blog embodiment is:
The act of expanding one’s self awareness to include the felt experience of the body, such as sensory, sensational, emotional and physical experiences, and incorporating that information into one’s overall conception and conduct of oneself, and one’s identity, beliefs, behaviors, and ways of being.
Now, let’s just talk about the part in bold for a moment. Embodiment is awareness of many types of information such as sensory (five senses), sensational (hot, cold, tight etc), emotional (sad, angry, etc) and physical experiences (posture, movement). Too often folks equate embodiment with just one or two of these categories.
To put this in perspective, most people would agree that dancers are highly embodied. Their awareness and precision in their proprioceptive and kinesthetic (physical) capacity is essentially unmatched. Furthermore, their ability to transform sound and feeling into movement is quite simply magical. And, at the same time, almost every dancer I’ve worked with has very little awareness of their own emotional experience – especially when uncoupled from movement (i.e just sitting and feeling).
Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing (SE), uses a model called SIBAM to define the realms of consciousness. SIBAM stands for sensation, image, behavior, affect, and meaning. In SE, a helpful practice can be to support individuals flow from areas where they happen to have a lot of awareness, for example, meaning and image, to realms where they are less developed, like sensation and behavior.
One could say that the body is a continent where the inhabitants speak many different languages all rooted in a common mother tongue of felt experience. But inside that felt experience, we want to be able to understand and “speak” not only one embodied language like movement, but also emotional language, sensory language, energetic language, and more.
This is all to say that it usually “takes a village” of practices to help someone become fully embodied. There is no ”right” way to go about this, nor is there a “best” technique. In fact, often what works for someone does not work for others. For example, because of my childhood asthma, I found breathwork to be a very difficult embodiment practice where others find it to be their favorite. So, finding the right combination of practices is highly individual. If, for example, your observation is that you tend towards movement practices, as opposed to touch practices, you may want to explore touch. If you tend to feel a lot of emotions but avoid movement, I encourage you to find a movement practice that suits you. Also, when moving, focus on what sensations you can feel. When focusing on sensations, notice if your body wants to move or stay still, all the embodied languages are potentially available at all times. Lastly, slowing down embodiment practices almost always helps people notice more of their felt experience. As I like to say, the mind and thoughts move at the speed of light, but body and feelings move at the speed of water.
To this end, I recommend folks begin with a movement practice, a touch practice, and a sensational practice. For the more technical people out there, I am saying there should be a proprioceptive, exteroceptive, and interoceptive practice. Not only are these three types of practices important in and of themselves, they form a positive feedback loop by which one’s embodied awareness in one avenue like movement is expanded and refined by developing the avenue of touch. Now for some practical suggestions.
On the movement front, I am going to have to go with yoga. Few practices allow folks to slowly, safely, and mindfully explore the movement of their body like yoga does. Furthermore, as an ancient esoteric practice, exploring movement is just the tip of the iceberg of what’s possible in terms of embodiment opportunities along the yogic path. For a wonderful exploration of how broad and powerful the path of yoga can be I highly recommend Stephen Cope’s Yoga and The Quest for True Self. When it comes to choosing a yoga practice for this purpose, I would avoid intensely physical practices like power yoga and ashtanga and instead focus on more mindful approaches like Kripalu and Sivananda Yoga.
For touch, one could obviously work with a bodyworker, but today I want to recommend self touch approaches. This is because self touch is readily accessible and I have found it of critical importance for people to explore and create a relationship with their own bodies through touch (also, depending on someone’s prior experience, being touched by others may not feel safe for them). To that end, I love Sue Hitzmann’s MELT Method and Jill Miller’s Roll Model approach. Both of them guide you through comprehensive explorations of your body using a variety of self massage tools. I recommend beginning with the MELT Method, as it’s very gentle and kind, and then moving on to The Roll Model, and combining the two.
Lastly, there is feeling our emotions and the subtle sensations of our inner world. It has been my experience that this realm, interoception, benefits greatly from the guidance of a practitioner. That being said, there are self directed approaches as well. On the DIY front I highly recommend iRest. The training and guidance that it provides is a wonderful primer for exploring your inner world. As for finding a guide, Somatic Experiencing practitioners have extensive training in supporting people in connecting with and expanding their interoception in a safe and sustainable manner.
It is not necessary to do all of them at once, but you are certainly welcome to do so if you wish. Otherwise, listen to your True Self, follow your intuition and follow the approach that’s calling to you at this time; and, when the time is right, move on to another. What I can say about all of them, is that they all lead to expanding embodiment, knowing thyself and leaving your mind and body feeling way better for having done them.
Karden Rabin is a mindbody practitioner specializing in psychophysiologic disorders and the co-founder of CFS School.
Photo by Katie Rainbow 🏳️🌈 on Unsplash
