Embodiment Inspired Practice
You know you have entered your body when your state of mind changes
Today I want to write a bit about the effects of my own embodiment inspired routine has had on my psyche, my body, and my overall wellbeing. Perhaps as you read through my experience, you will connect with something you need or want and consider finding a similar practice for yourself.
Remember, if you are interested, starting July 8th you can choose to join me for a 10-week practice meant to inspire you into embodiment. Details coming soon.
A Brief History
I have had some sort of breath, movement, energy healing, and meditation practice for over 20 years. Over the years, what I do and how I do it has morphed, integrated, and become. My practice is an alive being, not a stagnant series of stretches follow by an obligatory meditation.
The purpose of an embodiment practice is to feel more comfortable in your being. As your heart, your body, your spirit, and your mind connect; you grow into your own version of self.
To me, any act of embodiment including yoga, meditation, chanting, or breath work is not about dogmatizing you into another person’s idealized self. The practices I teach and I practice have the goal of creating an empowered self. My goals is to create a sense of acceptance towards the self as it is.
The empowered self is very important for me to state as a core intent because a large part of my embodiment practice uses kundalini yoga techniques. The guru nature of kundalini yoga in the west has always been a huge red flag for me. The guru template has kept me away from sharing my practice. I chose to discover the medicine of kundalini yoga alone rather than become part of a toxic paradigm. I believe this paradigm has shifted and that kundalini yoga is now ready to shift into a yoga of discovery rather than dogmatically accepting an out of date demand.
For those of you who have done kundalini…what I offer has roots in kundalini yoga but it not kundalini yoga as it is taught by many practitioners. I am an energy healer and therapist and I cannot teach anything without integrating my knowledge of energy, healing, and psychological depth into what I offer and how I practice. While kundalini is a base point for what I offer, it is not an identification point. I know from the classes I’ve attended and the trainings I have done, what I offer is unique and cannot be held to only one genre of practice. For those of you who know of my work, it is similar to my brand resistance.
Any healing has to happen in relationship and relationships are always unique and ever changing. An embodiment practice is a relationship to the self. To actively engage in a practice means to be flexible and interested in what is new in the moment of the practice itself.
Reflections on the benefits I have received through my commitment to an embodiment practice.
For me, the benefit of a regular practice has been indescribable. I have changed to my cells in a way I would never have expected and could never have projected. I wrote this list for myself but chose to share it so that others might realize how important time spend with the authentic self and body in practice creates subtle changes that over time snow ball into a whole new way of living.
During the practice, I can adjust myself or find movement through injuries and pain. I have never injured myself doingmy embodmine practice but I have been injured and my practice has not had to lose its depth or effect.
The silence that comes through allows me to hear a quieter voice than that of the known mind. This quieter voice comes through often in my regular life as intuition, higher self, and perspective depending on what is going on.
My consciousness changes between the beginning and end of my practice.
I experience pleasant sensations in my spine. As a 48 year old person with a significant spinal injury from horseback riding, this is noteworthy. I don’t wake up with spine pain. My spine feels consistently flexible and strong.
I can shift between nervous system states of being - sympathetic to parasympathetic - within a few breaths. I also feel like I have a choice on what kind of nervous system state I want to be in when I am triggered.
I have healed my nervous system immensely. There was a point in my life where I could feel my body degenerating from stress. I have not only stopped the symptoms of degeneration but have made active steps back towards consistent nervous system well being.
My digestive system functions better. I know how to eat and digest in a relaxed vagal state instead of a stressed state of fight/flight/fawn. My body does not have to fight what I ingest because I eat in connection to my sense of fullness and trust in my food.
My state of being does not always have to be thinking.
I have a deeper connection to my higher and spiritual self.
I can find my deeper self during triggers and know how to make different choices that cause patterns to not repeat and feel victim-like.
My observer mind keeps getting stronger and stronger.
I can feel connection to my body and heart even in moments of great stress.
The key to a healthy psyche is a witness/experiencer/questioner. The witness self observes the situation one finds oneself in. The experiences experiences the situation, letting the self be immersed in it. The questioner asks what is going on with a curious mind to bring the full self on board with the situation. Moving through sensations and emotions in my embodiment practice has made this tripod of awareness stronger in me.
I have an ability to tolerate and understand my negative mind cycles without acting on them or reacting to them.
I talk to my body in the midst of negative sensations and emotions without becoming the negative completely.
I can access softer emotions and underlying normally unfelt emotions by not tightening into emotions as they arise or thinking into them. I let emotions flow during my practice without story and this means I often find a softer emotion that moves into an “ah ha” moment during my practice when emotions arise.
I feel like stepping into and out of states of being is a choice. I am not taken up by the current of negativity or overly fantasizing.
I have a more balanced endocrine system. As a perimenopausal woman, the breath work and energy movement I engage in support my decision to not use hormone replacement therapy. My practice has minimized my symptoms. I allow hot flashes to move through my system during my practice as a release. The emotional stagnation that can lead to rage, terror, or deep grief is caused by a tensing against emotion that my practice teaches me not to do. My all time favorite healing to give to people is a hormone balancer where I connect with the pulse of the thymus gland and bring each endocrine organ into connection to that pulse. During my practice, I do this as an energetic check in and often find that my endocrine system is already in resonance with my enodocrine organs.
I don’t get as lost in relationships. I can track my needs, my boundaries, and myself more in those tough indiviudal interactions and in groups.
My insecurities, child self, and super ego do not run my life but are a part of myself I can hold with understanding and compassion. I can actively choose to be vulnerable or engage healthily with shame and guilt as a way of healing my defended self.
An understanding that I am more than my defenses or disconnections. There are aspects of myself that I thought I would never ever get around or that were just me. For example, I really did believe I was a type A person. Not anymore! Now I know that I can access parts of me that I didn’t realize where even there.
Improved orgasms in length and strength. I didn’t expect an embodiment practice to improve my sex life but it has.
Bye bye incontinence. I know this is something any woman over a certain age or having had children has to consider. I can cough, laugh, move without peeing myself.
Breaking patterns in the moment happens to me all the time. I might start a fight and go into narrative or have a disagreement with someone or maybe even just get judgy in my thoughts and I just have no interest in continuing with the conflict.
I can sink into the fact of being me without pushing myself.
My husband and children could probably write a reflective list just as long as this one on how I have changed and become more relational, interested, and in the moment with them.
I can not just feel but sustain eros and creativity. For a long time I thought I was never going to be creative again (thank you homeschooling 3 children while working). I am once again an active creator of my life.
Less…less…and even less interest in screens. My reality has become more concrete and real to the present moment. I turn to working on my land and being with people in person or learning something new in order to feel alive in my world.
The foundational step is discovering a multidimentional practice. I am offering a 10-week embodiment practice starting on July 8th. From there, only you can discover the possibility of the unknown you.