Danielle Klafter

Embodiment

“Some wisdom lives in your body before your mind can explain it. Trust what your bones know.”
― Lawrence Nault

Wisdom paths teach that true wisdom or being “fully awake” does not happen until all three centers of knowing are online and working together: the intellectual center, the moving center, and the emotional center (I have learned these concepts through teachings by Cynthia Bourgeault distilled from Gurjieff). In the west we tend to rely heavily (if not solely) on the intellectual center. But brilliance in one center is not wisdom. It takes integration of them all to reach a higher level of consciousness or being. The easiest way to integrate another center is to engage the body.

The more I lean into embodiment practices, the more I come to recognize the body has a wisdom all its own. It has things to teach me, an awareness that comes before language. The mind is the slowest to process. When we learn to tune in, the body tell us things the mind cannot yet understand. I have also found that practicing embodiment can be a doorway to open the emotional center as well.

I am no expert in these practices. I’m still exploring and fumbling my way through to wisdom. The list of ways to engage with embodiment is limitless—probably as vast as the number of unique souls spending time walking this planet in unique bodies. In the options below I merely offer an entry point for exploration. You are invited to find your own way.

Breathwork

Breathwork is such a broad category. You’ll find a wide variety of different kinds of breath patterns, but at the heart of them all is bringing intention and attention to the breath. Breathing is something we all do at every moment, even when we are sleeping—an automatic body response. If you stop, you won’t be physically alive anymore. Yet stopping to notice your breath can offer insight. In my therapy sessions, when my breath grew short and high in my chest so that I started gasping, it was a sign my brain and body were overloaded and we needed to step back the intensity of what we were doing. Slowing the breath down can help reset automatic nervous system responses and restore a sense of calm and safety.

It’s also no coincidence that the word for spirit and breath in the Biblical sacred texts is the same root word. When humans are created, it is Divine breath that brings them alive. When I consider this, such a common, taken-for-granted action as breathing becomes something sacred and miraculous. The breath of God within my body—in and out—intermingled with all my cells. I am sustained by Divinity, at one with Divinity. Otherwise I die.

Box breath

If you are new to breathwork, one example of a way to slow down breath is the box breath exercise. And explanation is linked here.

https://thejoywithin.org/breath-exercises/square-breathing

In my course with Cynthia Bourgeault she borrows a technique from a Buddhist meditation.

 When you breath in, you visualize breathing in abundance.

When you breath out, you imagine exhaling blessings.

I love this because it is a reminder that the streams of abundance flow. Breath is available to everyone. There is enough abundance for me; there is enough abundance for everyone else (in the spiritual reality). It is an opportunity to remember how loved I am by the Divine and also how connected I am to others, all in a simple breath pattern.

Sense your feet

The invitation to sense your feet doesn’t take any set aside time. You can do it wherever you are, as long as you can catch a moment to bring your attention to them. I take a moment to uncross my legs and place both feet on the cool concrete floor of my front porch as I type this. They slowly begin to tingle with a subtle energy. Just the act of bringing attention to them creates an energy transfer and makes me feel more alive, more present.

In her Introductory Wisdom School course, Cynthia Bourgeault states about this exercise, “Attention becomes the way that you enliven the feet, and that responds with sensation. Your feet become more alive. They wouldn’t become more alive unless there was more energy flowing through them, right? In this sort of simple, dumb, what most people would think of as a throwaway act, you’re actually working with some really, really important energy feeding practices. Awakening aliveness, increasing the vitality and the vibrancy of your own body in a selected body part. This is a miracle.”

I personally associate that flow of energy with the Spirit, the flow of the Divine. It’s always there, but most of the time I’m too focused on other tasks to notice. You might set a reminder or alarm on your phone to go off three times during the day. Each time it goes off, can you slow down long enough to sense your feet? What happens for you? It’s okay if you don’t sense anything at first. Give it time. As you settle into the practice eventually the need for the alarm may drop away.

Gesture or body prayer

Your body can inhabit a prayer language without words. In a specific moment, can you choose a gesture that encapsulates your desire or expression or need?

General Examples:

  • Hands outstretched and cupped might indicated readiness or desire to receive
  • Full prostration (lying flat with your front on the ground) might show willingness or desire to surrender
  • Hands crossed over the heart might be a form of loving-kindness or self-compassion or simply savoring something holy
  • A bracing position (hands up as if warding off something you don’t want) might embody a feeling of resistance. Then transition into a more open stance and see if it helps you melt the resistance and enter a more welcoming stance instead.

Personal examples:

  • At times I begin my morning with child’s pose from yoga. This posture embodies surrender for me, much like a full prostration, yet softer. Yet the knees are bent and spread, arms outstretched so within the bowing it creates a type of cave for my heart. This posture becomes a prayer without words, a plea to manage surrender to what I cannot control and do not want to face. Yet also a position of self-compassion and tender care to my heart that genuinely possesses needs as well. It is both a validation and a setting aside of self all in one. It is a holding of seeming contradiction. It is a searching for abundance in the midst of scarcity. It is an offering of trust—that if I bow, I will also be held.
  • If I want to be somewhere emotionally but cannot yet get there, I cannot force my emotions to instantly comply. But I can choose a body position that represents that desire and place my body in that position almost like a prayer that says “God bring me to this place.” The body paves the way that can sometimes open the heart later. For instance, if I hate what is going on my life and am struggling with resistance to what I can’t control (my husband’s work hours, my children’s meltdowns, etc), I can choose a posture of surrender like a prostration.
  • If I feel empty and need to be filled up or receive, I can cup my hands and outstretch them as a way to ask for help, a plea to be filled beyond what I can summon on my own.

You can choose your own simple gestures wherever you are without it being elaborate or complicated. There are also those who cultivate specific gestures as prayer practices, a form of liturgy of the body. Here are some resources to begin exploring those:

Yoga

Yoga is a full-bodied experience, but years into practicing off and on, I’m still learning new subtleties of how it offers integration of so much more than muscle strength and stretching. It offers opportunity for grounding, self-compassion, attention to energy, intention of thought, integration of all three centers, and the flow of spiritual realities. The very word yoga means “union.” It’s a practice that invites union with yourself, with others, and with the Divine. Some days when I’m out of sorts, my body craves yoga, as if it knows my fractured and scattered mind, body and spirit energy needs to come home and reset. It asks me to pay attention to the nuances of my muscles—it is the subtle ways the postures are held, not the big grand gestures that make yoga most successful for me.

Not long after I first entered therapy, my therapist suggested I try yoga. At the time I put it off, internally judging yoga as a form of wimpy exercise I didn’t need. How wrong I was. Within ten minutes of my first youtube yoga video I thought, “Oh. This is why my therapist wanted me to do this.” It wasn’t about the physical exercise (although that can be a benefit; it’s harder than it looks!). It was about the mindset. Yoga was one of the first places that taught me to be kind to myself both on and off the mat, to learn to accept myself as I was instead of resenting myself for not being somewhere I couldn’t yet be. The movement of my body had something deeply impactful to teach me.

I happen to practice yoga at home through Yoga with Adriene’s youtube channel. For me its accessible, free, and comes without the self-consciousness of practicing in a room with other people, but there are so many ways to go about doing yoga.

Yoga Nidra

The practice of yoga Nidra literally means “union sleep” so it’s viewed as a form of conscious sleep. Unlike the more full-bodied practices of yoga, this one is usually done in a relaxed position like savasana (corpse pose; lying flat on your back). It’s more akin to a guided meditation with a body scan exercise that invites you to sense different parts of your body.

You can do your own google searching about it, but here is a fairly simple explanation:

https://yoga.com/yoga-styles/yoga-nidra-for-beginners-what-it-s-and-how-a-session-works

Here is a ten-minute yoga Nidra session by a practitioner I’m familiar with:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1SSB3dOE5U&list=PLPQb6nvvw_oyxreTlmiDhAvw0b8O_h2ll&index=2. You can explore more of her channel for other practices.

Atmosphere exercise:

The course I was a part of taught an atmosphere exercise which begins with something akin to yoga Nidra and includes a sensing of your energy atmosphere by the end. I’ve learned to reach for it as a place of safety, to realize that I have an atmosphere that surrounds me that nothing else can penetrate. I am safe inside a womb in a spiritual reality, so therefore sensing this atmosphere can remind me that I am safe despite whatever external or emotional chaos may be trying to pull at me. A guided atmosphere exercise by Heather Ruce can be found here.

Sufi turning prayer

The gesture of this prayer extends the left hand straight up to embody the connection with the Divine, between you and God. The right arm extends straight out to the side to embody the connection with others and a bestowal of blessings. Much like the Buddhist breath prayer where by one inhalation you receive and the other you expel out blessing. The arms of the turning prayer embody both at once. Sometimes just the arm piece is all I practice. I can do it sitting down or as I pray in a religious service. Adding the feet requires planting your left foot while bringing your right in front and turned to the left. Over and over the foot makes this step while the left foot stays in place by pivots with it. Skilled practitioners refer to this prayer as the whirling dervish because it moves so fast, but you can go as slowly as you like.

Here is a video about a long-time practitioner of this prayer:

Combine embodiment with other practices.

Work to mix and match. Take what sings for you and leave the rest (perhaps for another time). Incorporate an embodiment aspect into more intellectual practices that are already a part of your daily rhythm. Follow the threads of what brings you awake. Explore on your own from these trails I’ve been brazen enough to leave and find your own pathways.

Here are ways I’ve mixed and matched:

  • The Welcoming Prayer begins with sensing my body. It’s really a dance between sensing and welcoming, sensing and welcoming until I can work through to a place of letting go.
  • In centering prayer, I have found embodiment to be a good substitution for a sacred word. At times my sacred word engages my thoughts (or intellectual center) too heavily, which is the antithesis of how it’s designed to function. Yet substituting this word for the simple act of sensing my feet often brings my awareness back home.
  • If I have time for a yoga session, I might end with a bit of yoga Nidra or just sensing my atmosphere as I lay in the finishing savasana pose.
  • Attention can be brought to bear with any manual labor task. Folding laundry, doing dishes, hoeing weeds, or painting a room can be opportunities to sense what your body is doing, to bring focus to the energy, and even perhaps to be taught something spiritual in relation to the task. Cynthia Bourgeault tells how learning to float in water on her back taught her what true surrender feels like. A friend has pointed out that many times in my writing a physical task leads to a greater understanding or wisdom underneath.

The crux of embodiment is really finding ways to be fully present. Embodiment is a doorway to presence. Sensing your body can bring you more fully into the here and now, awaken you to what is. Embodiment can be employed throughout the day. Sensing your feet can happen while washing dishes or sitting at a desk. Don’t wait to understand a practice fully before diving in. That is the beauty of embodiment. It invites participation and there’s not a “wrong” way to do it.

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