How this will be our downfall if we don't tune into our body's wisdom and the wisdom of the great Mother Earth we inhabit...
I have a superpower: I am embodied. I can feel my entire body. I occupy my body. I am in touch with its deep somatic emptiness and also it's infinite wisdom. I'm aware of my emotions as they arise and most of the time, I can discern what mix of emotions is present and where they originated. I am skilled at sitting with what's present (for me or others); and being open to the experience I'm having without attachment or aversion. I can also sense my subtle anatomy--channels, winds, bindus, chakras--and I can work with them to open, release, relax and heal. I can do this in myself and for others.
Most people take it for granted that they are embodied because they walk around and don't bump into things, or they do their yoga, or feel like they're in touch with their emotions. To some extent, this is true. This is why being TRULY embodied is a bit of a mystery. Most people don't even KNOW there's more embodiment available to them. Most people don't know they're NOT at home with themselves and they're constantly overriding the body's signals. The culture of absence we've created and we subscribe to on a daily basis makes genuine embodiment a rare and almost freakish thing.
Being fully embodied requires healing the parts of us that are numb, frozen, and absent from trauma. We have to reclaim and integrate the fullness of ourselves and bring our subtle sensing back online. We unblock the channels where emotional, energetic residue is clogging and dampening the signals. We retrieve parts of the soul that fled the body through the challenging process of growing up in a traumatized culture. And we have to -- this is a hard one -- commit to being counterculture, a rebel or anomaly. Because being fully embodied puts you in touch with how out-of-touch most social interactions and institutions are.
It was an incredible relief when I finally realized that my greatest gift is just this: being fully here. This is what I have to offer to the world--an embodied and loving feminine presence. I am here. Whoever I am with can benefit from it if they are aware. Just as I benefit when others offer their gift of presence. It's a strange thing because it's so profoundly intimate and healing to be fully present with other people, but we so rarely do it. What prevents us from being fully present is trauma and the disembodiment that comes with it.
Getting into the habit of being present with others can feel awkward or even confronting. A lot of people love being with me and some people really dislike it. There's too much awareness in the space, things that were hidden emerge into the light. And then there is the tricky thing that fully embodied and present people are likely to name what's happening for them--we love to make the implicit explicit--and that can lead to unpredictable and unexpected conversations and interactions.
The greatest gift of embodiment, it seems to me is NOT the ability to sense danger or lies with your nervous system. It's NOT the ability to intuit the next step. It's NOT even the ability to manage and influence people and situations because you can feel more than others. These are all great advantages, but the real gift is the attunement the body has to the greatest wisdom there is--the intelligence of LIFE itself. The body resonates with LIFE and follows the Natural Laws. Therefore, it can guide us into more aliveness and more healing potential in every situation.
The body doesn't cater to social conventions and concepts. It doesn't give a hoot about the "rules of man," but it does have a direct line to integrity and higher ethics. So the body will ask us to say and do things that might not make sense to "regular" people, but the individual committed to embodiment will find ways to honor and follow the body's prompts without completely upending civilized life. Or sometimes, when that is exactly what's called for, the body will make us do or say the thing that feels destructive in that it breaks the habitual, challenges convention, or interrupts the status quo. When it does, you can bet that the destruction was necessary and a creative act...something needed to break for there to be a breakthrough. So the greatest gift of embodiment is that it is in service to LIFE.
In my experience, this gift is frequently misunderstood and even disparaged. I have been underestimated more times than I can count by disembodied people who are still in the complete thrall of the mind. These are not bad people, but they are operating in a flat and one-dimensional way. They can't feel their own bodies, so they can't feel how my body is coming to the space. They don't value presence, so they don't value all the work I've done and the sacrifices I have made to BE present. They don't trust their own intuition, so they can't imagine why I would trust mine. They don't sense the subtle energies and are typically moving faster than the speed of feeling, which means they miss A LOT of cues in the room. They override their own and other people's emotions, thereby missing so much richness and so many of the signals life is trying to get through to us. All the time -- and I mean, all the time -- disembodied people take things I say at a superficial level (the level at which THEY understand things) and assume they know what I'm talking about and even assume that what I am offering is simplistic or naive. The arrogance of a body that is being operated by the ego-mind insulates it from receiving the wisdom of embodiment.
People like this (and let me tell you this is the majority of people) misread my stillness for dullness; my free expression of emotions as instability; my vulnerability as weakness; and my spontaneity as baffling or irritating. I think it's all compounded by my being a woman. My best friend is a male empath and he gets much more latitude to be impulsive and confident in his assertions. He even gets extra credit for being expressive with his emotions. Women, who in actuality have more capacity for embodiment, more healing lifeforce energy in their bodies, AND more subtle nerves, are still wading through centuries of persecution for being in touch with the healing magic of their bodies; bearers of life. We have so much power when we're genuinely embodied--awesome, staggering power. This was what was suppressed by institutions like the church and patriarchy and this is what we are reclaiming individually and collectively when we come back into the body and move through the world expressing what it is to be in service to the Shakti, the lifeforce that moves the planets around the sun, the wild, untamed spirit of creation.
The only people who really understand me are other empaths and embodied people who know what it takes to clear the body of enough trauma that we can be at home in it again. This is a small and rarified group. Then there is a bigger group of people (a lot of my clients fall into this camp) who understand that I am holding a perception that is beyond ordinary and pretty valuable. These people experience me as a fascination or source of wisdom. There's a group beyond them who simply misunderstand me, project onto me, or make assumptions about the way I behave that just don't get me and never will. And finally, there are those who actively misunderstand and block the wisdom I am here to offer. I avoid these people as much as possible. Unfortunately, many people in positions of great power are in this last camp. This is something that MUST change if we are going to evolve into a culture and society that is in alignment with the Laws of Nature and the only infinitely sustainable force--LIFE.
There really is no future for humans without a deeper experience of embodiment. As long as we are out of touch with the body's wisdom, the wisdom of Life, we cannot create life-generating and life-sustaining technologies. We will continue on the current trajectory, which so abhors and ignores these wisdoms, it covertly and unconsciously seeks to destroy them. We are operating with a death wish at the center of our methodology. It's madness and we can't THINK our way out. This is a job for FEELING, SENSING, and ATTUNING together to the infinite wisdom of the subtle realms. The receipt of this wisdom and the ability to intact it in the world happens in and through our reverence for the body: our body, the body of GAIA, and our connection to all life.
What I can do is available to anyone who wants to put in the disciplined work--an exercise regimen and practice of deep reverence for the subtle anatomy and the kind of cosmic spiritual connection that is accessed through the body. My orientation to my embodiment and sensitivity has taken me many years of painful, arduous, and sometimes harrowing spiritual work. It's been a long journey to finally coming home. I'm not complaining because I am here on the other side of the river. I made the swim and survived. Now, I'm here to share with anyone ready to listen...it's profound over here--truly ecstatic and magical--come join us!
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