Written by: Kelsay Elizabeth Myers, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
There’s a lot of talk about what it means to be embodied these days. As a Somatic Movement Educator, the psychoeducation of embodied ways of knowing is a central part of my work, and I’m excited to see embodiment becoming a trend. But I’m also noticing a confusion in my communities and with some of my clients about what embodiment actually is and what it is for.
The confusion is understandable, especially in Western societies, because we are not taught how to be embodied. We are taught to use, abuse, or do things to our bodies. Trauma and violence to bodies is so common that many of us don’t even feel safe being in a body, so it is easier to escape, control, ignore, and even disconnect from our bodies.
I used to think even if no man could be an island, a woman could, and I was that woman. I was that island. I was an idea that believed it only needed more ideas to thrive. I was creating an image of myself in isolation: a wild and solitary mass of land with its own self-sustaining root system. And then, life happened! And when life happened, I learned that there is much more to it than the mind, and more importantly, I am so much more than my mind. In connecting to my body, my heart, and my soul, I became a whole person with deep, healthy relationships and a full life that is not lived in isolation.
Becoming embodied was the first part of my journey back to wholeness, a journey I was born into having been relinquished into the Korean international adoption system. The act of being relinquished was traumatic, and it cut off my cultural, ancestral, and physical roots. I was adopted by parents who were also living lives of their minds, and they instilled in me a love of books, ideas, and education but not one of bodily wisdom. Nor was my body mirrored in theirs physically, emotionally, or psychically, so my sense of myself as an island mind felt true in my younger years.
After a string of emotionally, psychically, and then sexually abusive relationships, I wanted my life to be different. I wanted to heal the holes this traumatic past had left in me that shattered my island illusion. I found myself dancing, and in dancing, I became conscious of my body, both of its physical form and its deeper expression. On the dance floor, I learned to listen to my body’s wants and needs and where they might be different than my mind’s. In one of my first dance classes, there was a moment the Open Floor teacher, Kathy Altman, asked us to imagine that we were a mountain and to feel what that was like. I felt such calm and stillness. I was grounded and centered within my very being. When I opened my eyes, the dance floor glowed a bright green like a sheen covering the room and everyone else on the dance floor, and I felt a tenderness around my heart also opening for the first time.
The difference between the island metaphor and the mountain one is what embodiment means for me. The island might resonate and ring true for some of you, and I tried to write it in a way that feels as engaging as it did for me when I was living it. But the mountain is a felt-sense experience that is full of color, depth, breath, and movement. It has a life of its own without me even trying to do anything to make it more engaging. Embodiment, the wisdom of the body, is just like that. It’s alive, full, and there without you having to do anything but notice it, give it some attention, and some movement.
Embodiment, however, is not just moving in some uniform way or practice you’re accustomed to doing, like various forms of exercising, because doing what you’re taught is not individual or unique to you. Embodiment is a relationship between you and your own body that is entered into through listening deeply to all the parts of yourself and allowing them to be as they are. Embodiment is the expression of who and what you stand for at your roots. It connects you to the world, to other people, and to whatever spiritual form you believe in. Being embodied can be many things, and what it is at its core is individual. So, what does embodiment mean for you?
I would love to hear from you. Feel free to email me at kelsay@dialogicalpersona.com with your thoughts, feelings and reactions. If you would like some support in exploring your own metaphors and embodiment, you can find out more about my coaching programs at my website www.dialogicalpersona.com and connect with me further on my social media accounts!
Kelsay Elizabeth Myers, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Kelsay is a professional writer, artist and registered somatic movement educator (RSME) with the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association. She is passionate about trauma healing and restoring connection to ancestral roots and wisdom for a fuller sense of self and creative expression. As an expressive arts coach and founder of Dialogical Persona Healing Arts, LLC, she helps people from all over the world that want freedom from inner blocks holding them back embody resources to transform their lives with soul-based expressive arts programs and courses. The mission of her work is to hold space for the full expression of a living, vibrant and multifaceted self through the embodied arts. She has trained with Tamalpa Institute in the Life/Art Process, Clean Language facilitation through The Academy for Soul-based Coaching and Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy approaches.
