By Kasia Sowińska

When I am embodied, I feel I am fully inhabiting my skin and my human experience. I am aware of my bodily sensations, pulsations, movements and feelings and I’m in connection with my surroundings.

Embodiment is our capacity to be present, simultaneously being aware of our inner landscape, the environment around us, and how we are experiencing them. It’s our capacity to slow down and listen to our direct felt experience. 

It might sound easy, but actually for many of us it’s challenging when we become disconnected from our body and its messages, due to our experiences and cultural conditioning. Leaving our bodily felt experience to disconnect from pain and overwhelm may be actually a good thing, designed to protect our system and to cope at the time of impact. It’s a normal response to traumatic events, shock and overbearing stress.

If numbing our bodily experience and disconnecting from our internal sensations and emotions become chronic, habitual patterns, it’s not ideal for our health and well-being in the long run. Reorienting to the home of our body helps us repair the impact of trauma, stress and overwhelm and to increase our sense of joy, aliveness and wellbeing.

By allowing ourselves to be more embodied, we become more attuned to the cues and messages from our inner sensory world and become more aware of our emotions, needs, boundaries, desires and the choices we are making. Our body is speaking to us constantly. When we learn to really ‘feel and hear’ our inner guidance system, we can use its wisdom to create a more authentic and fulfilled life.