What Embodiment Really Means

You may have heard the word embodiment floating around the coaching world for years. Soma means the body. So what does it actually mean to be embodied? Talk therapy works from the top down. We speak about what happened, we come to awareness, we notice our patterns. That matters, and it leaves out the feedback loop from the body itself. This is where research and practitioners who have devoted their lives to the nervous system, people like Peter Levine and Gabor Maté, have shown the body to be essential, especially when an intense experience stays stuck and keeps carrying an emotional charge.

Embodiment Begins With a Pause

To be embodied is to have done something so many times that it becomes a habit, a new neural pathway. The first step is simply to pause and take a breath, and notice where it lands. Upper chest? Lower, into the belly? While recording this, a wasp came into my space, and I am allergic. I did not panic, and a small part of me tightened all the same. Only when I lengthened my out-breath did I notice I had gone into a subtle freeze, a tightening in my chest and hips. That is the subtlety of embodiment: the ability to track yourself.

The Voo Sound Exercise

This one is subtle and it can be strong, so if you are driving or busy, bookmark it and come back. Give yourself a few quiet minutes and sit down. Bring your attention to your hands. Take a deep breath in through your nose and a long exhale through your mouth. Notice any sensation in your hands: tingling, warmth, stillness, movement, temperature.

Now place a hand on your belly, thumb near the navel. Take a breath in through your nose and make a low Voo sound, like a foghorn on a big ship, all the way down from your belly rather than up in the chest. The vibration helps move things through the body. Do it two or three times. Notice if your hands become warmer, cooler, more electric. If a part of you wants to tremble, if your jaw quivers or an eye flutters, let it. You are completely safe. Whatever you passed through is in the past. You have already survived it, even if the body does not always know that yet. Afterward, bring your attention back to your hands and feet, wiggle your toes, feel the floor, and notice the new, deeper breath. This is one of the exercises used in Somatic Experiencing, simple and remarkably effective.

Ways to Come Back to the Ground

If you are empathic or highly sensitive, you may know the feeling of a crowded room where you suddenly have to get out. That is your body telling you that you are not grounded. Grounded is where you feel the earth's energy and know you are in your body, not lost in a swirl of thought. Here is a simple tool I give clients: imagine zippers in the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet. Place your hands on a desk or something wood or metal, feet on the floor, and with each breath send energy back through those imaginary zippers into the earth.

There are other doorways. Bare feet on the ground, time in nature, hugging a tree that pours out its own steady energy. Being near someone very grounded, whose nervous system helps regulate yours, since we co-regulate one another. Being near a pet, and an older, settled dog is wonderful for this. Eating grounding foods and easing off sugar, caffeine, and alcohol, leaning into root vegetables, sweet potatoes, lentils, and greens that bring the nervous system back on board.

To anchor it in, try a cross-body movement. Right hand to left shoulder, squeeze three times, draw it across the chest to the opposite hip, then down to the knee and release. Repeat on the other side. We carry a lot of emotion in the hips, and crossing the midline helps wire the left and right hemispheres back together when we are dysregulated. Becoming more in touch with your body, thoughts, and emotions is becoming more aware of yourself, and that is the most intimate relationship you have.

"Becoming more intimate with yourself is becoming more aware. As you do, the exterior of your life starts to fall back into place."