Whoosh! You’re out of mommy’s tummy. That loud sound is you wailing. It’s cold. The lights are bright. Nothing separates “you” from “not-you,” body from world.

Fluids (and solids!) come out of Body! And mouth can take in so many things! There are fingers and toes! You can locomote! 

It’s a celebration to discover all that you can do in Body. It’s a frustration to discover all that you can’t. (Oh, how you wish you could fly.)

Slowly it dawns on you that there are others separate from you. Sometimes they come when you want. Sometimes they don’t.

Body feels good. Body feels bad. Body feels all sorts of things. 

When you don’t like something, Body gets tight and hard. When the right person holds you, Body lets go and melts.

This continues. Holding out. Holding in. Holding on.

Body changes so much! Suddenly you’re three feet tall. Then four and five. All hell breaks loose in puberty. Body was always erotic (before it was tamed), but now it is channeled toward certain people who turn that on in you. What to do?

Your inner world has become complex. What happened to the simple marvel of fingers and toes?

Sometimes it feels like Body controls you. Other times you control Body--or it’s impulses anyway.

You learn to live in Mind. That’s what others do. At first Body resists, but eventually it succumbs. You have a name and an identity. 

You must find your way. That’s what they say. And eventually you do. Sort of.

So much happens in a life. So much is asked and so much is given. There is great joy and great grief.

Decades pass. You go through a lot of stuff. Body ages.

It starts to feel like a job to take care of Body. Who will help?

Body is now an “it” rather than part of a seamless universe. 

What will happen when Body dies? Will you die? 

Who came up with this body idea anyway?

It’s probably way before your time, but the bathroom used to be called the lavatory. It’s had a lot of other names—the loo, the head, and many more.  For this piece the most fitting is using the term “head,” because I’m going to liken being locked in your thinking mind to being locked in the bathroom. 

I’m sure you’ve heard the idea that we spend too much time in our heads, but I want you to really feel how limiting this is. Imagine you were in a tornado and went to your bathroom as a presumed safer place and then got locked in there. It’s a better place to get stuck than some, but definitely has some disadvantages. It’s hard to sleep there, you can’t do yoga or exercise much. You may not have a window. But because of one device—your smart phone—you may forget about that and think you are connecting with the world. This is what it is like when we occupy only our head and disconnect from everything south of that.  

Sometimes when I am lying in my bed, I become aware that I am quite literally locked in my head. That’s where all the awareness and energy is. When we become aware of this, more options open up. Oh, I have legs! What is it like to feel the muscles between my ribs as I breathe? Can I feel my heart center? Can I feel the energy in the room? As has been said, we live in a castle and are locked in one room. We’re locked in the loo.

Coming home to the body is discovering more of the castle and more of life. When you are locked in the loo with your phone, you lose track of the fact that your virtual world is eclipsing this more alive moment. It is decreasing your sense of “presence” to about zero. 

This is the same any time you are lost in your thought stream. You are not here and now; you are there and then. 

The world we experience at such moments closes our access to the ways the body is designed to experience the world—our outer-facing and inner-facing sensing mechanisms. We were designed to touch and smell the beings around us, and for relationships to be experienced through all of our senses.

I want to help you come back to the rich world this body lives in. Coming home to the body is also coming home to the alive world around you and aspects of yourself you may have only heard about. Much more about that later.

We benefit physically, relationally, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually by increasing our level of embodiment. 

When you are more embodied:

• You take better care of your body on a daily basis. You are more likely to know when you are hungry or need to move, for example. People who are more disconnected from their bodies often have little awareness of simple body needs.

• It keeps you safer. When the body is being hurt, one automatic defense is to dissociate from the body, to cut off awareness of it and sometimes to feel as though we have left the body. This is an instinctual defense, although in most circumstances is not really a smart one. An animal will only do this when there is absolutely no other choice, like when it has been caught by a predator. But before that point, being in the body is an asset—it allows you to see, hear, smell what is around you and to react more quickly. When we’re cut off from the body, we become “spacy” and unaware, which isn’t a good thing when walking in the dark, driving, or even chopping vegetables. 

• When you are more here in the body, you are more present—to your relationships, your actions, your environment, and everything else. The body anchors us to the here and now, whereas the mind has us there and then. Feeling yourself in the body completes a connection, sort of like plugging in, so you can benefit from all the juice in the energetic field. Being more embodied also leaves you feeling and acting more empowered.

• Your body becomes a source of comfort. That may be a startling thought for people used to noticing the body only when there’s pain or some kind of dysfunction. When you consider the body as a source of comfort, what may first come to mind is ‘creature comforts’ like food, warmth, touch, but there’s a comfort possible on another level as well. The body is there to hold your emotional self--and all emotional selves need holding. We can feel our bodies as a source of support.

• When more embodied, you can benefit more from affection that comes your way. You are here for the good stuff. (You can also give more of the good stuff.)

• As you get turned on to being here in a body, your sensuality comes alive. Not just in physical relationships but in an awakening of the senses. This brings a “pop” to our perception. Things stand out, like how crisp and clear things look. We’re more awake to all our senses and thus more awake as we walk through life. 

• There’s more pleasure available. Not just surface sensory pleasures but a pleasure we may have felt as a young child. It is the pleasure of living in a body, of embodiment itself.

• There is more sense of self, especially if we think of self in multi-dimensional terms as I described. Research indicates that more interoceptive awareness (what you sense and feel when more in the body) creates a greater sense of well-being and a stronger, more grounded sense of self.  It helps us be more confident and care more about ourself. 

• You will have a more stable and more accurate body image because it will be informed by your actual physical being and not just a snapshot in your mind. 

• You are more anchored inside and less thrown around by what’s happening around you. You are also less concerned about other peoples’ opinions of you. (What a relief!) In highly stressful events, you can have more of a self-boundary and can be less reactive.

• A deeply embodied state can help others feel you, and help you feel them. 

• It supports your intuition and knowing. The body is valuable source of information about what’s going on, even what is coming. This is especially true for “kinesthetic learners,” but all of us can be more tuned in by being more embodied. 

• It is believed to raise your frequency and enhance your immune system on both the subtle and physical levels.  The physical body will feel lighter, ‘cleaner,’ more alive. 

• The body carries gifts for us, helping us connect with different qualities. For example, our legs help us feel our strength and self-support; inhabiting the pelvis help us feel our sexuality and gender; being in our chest can connect us with our heart, which leads to more emotional awareness, empathy, and compassion. 

Bonus: Psychotherapist Bruce Tift says that when you are more embodied, your neurosis has less room to multiply. Wouldn’t we all like that!