The Embodiment Toolkit

5 Essential Practices for Feeling Alive in Your Body (with playlist)

“I want to come home to my body, but I don’t know how; I don’t even know what it means”. I hear some version of this nearly every day. After 15 years of practicing embodiment, I’m finally writing down the how of it.

I spent decades as an organized, together mom of four. I managed a suburban household mostly on my own. I structured my business so I could work while my kids were in school and be a mom while they were at home. Nothing mattered more to me than being a great mom and I threw myself into the role.

And something was still missing. I was anxious a lot of the time. I was disconnected from big emotions, from important parts of me. I craved a sense of aliveness and radiance, of depth, of really living, and didn’t know how to find it. I mostly thought it was just this phase of life.

I tried therapy, self-help workshops, personal growth books. I even talked to my ob/gyn. I understood why I overgave in my family, I learned why I self-abandoned to keep the peace in my relationship, and I gained insight into why I tended to disappear into the needs of my kids and my then-husband. But even though I understood these things, I still couldn’t explain why I felt so blah, so disconnected, so numb.

Here’s what I know now. Insight matters, but it’s incomplete. When you’ve experienced trauma, your body is likely running patterns that insight can’t reach. These patterns were established in your nervous system long before you had language.

Your body has a language of its own, and it’s made of sensation. Tightness, heat, constriction, the long exhale. For decades I’d been trying to heal myself in a language my body couldn’t hear. I didn’t know there was another one.

Discovering embodiment was like a light bulb turning on in a dark room. And even though it ran counter to literally everything I’d ever been taught, it felt true in my body. It didn’t just feel true, it felt delicious. It felt like coming home. And what I came to realize was, it was coming home. It was coming home to a part of me I’d left behind decades earlier, to be more pleasing to everyone else. I’d hidden her beneath layers of conditioning from external forces, and layers of armor I’d put up to keep from feeling my anger, my rage, my sadness.

In the service of being the mom, wife, daughter, sister, and friend I thought I had to be, I’d disconnected from most of what was true about me.

Embodiment taught me to come back. I learned that being a good mom and a good person doesn’t have to mean shutting down whole parts of myself or sacrificing myself. I can be a wonderful mom and still feel angry sometimes. I can be happy in my life and still feel grief for an old wound to my younger self. I can let anxiety be there and deliver its message, instead of shoving it away. Best of all, I’m allowed to feel good in my body, to let my body nourish me.

These embodiment practices are how you begin to learn to come home to yourself. I’ve also included a playlist, which is the soundtrack for one of the practices.

What you’ll learn:

• You’ll learn to land in the present moment and feel real safety in your body, even when your mind won’t stop spinning.

• You’ll learn to receive pleasure without rushing past it.

• You’ll learn to bring breath and attention back into the parts of your body you’ve gone numb to.

• You’ll learn to let your body move the way she wants to, allowing stuck emotions to move and reconnecting with parts you may have disconnected from.

• You’ll learn to feel a grounding and aliveness that rises from inside you and spills over.

The more you practice, the more grounded, alive, and magnetic you’ll feel.

Each of these practices takes around five to ten minutes, though you can stay longer if you want to. I’m including a playlist so you can go deeper as you feel ready.

When your body learns it’s safe, things begin to shift. Safety is the foundation for a regulated nervous system, a nervous system that can stop bracing and let go of layers of trauma responses. Pleasure is a signal to your nervous system that you’re safe, that it can let go. You start to trust your inner knowing, rather than trying to override what you know with your mind, even when it goes against what everyone else says. And you start feeling grounded, magnetic, and alive in your own skin.

I know this because I lived it. Embodiment helped me to reconnect with myself and build my inner safety and self-trust. As a result, I felt strong enough and sovereign enough to walk away from the parts of life that weren’t working and build a life that’s true to me. It helped me release old patterns and dynamics that weren’t serving me, because I finally felt safe enough in my body to do so. And it helped me know I am allowed, I have permission, to be my full, whole, radiant self, with no apologies, no disclaimers, no shrinking.

A few things before you start:

These practices are designed to be done alone, when you have privacy, at your own pace. There’s no right or wrong way to do them. What matters is how it feels, not how it looks. You might feel a lot, or you might not, and both are normal.

Try one practice at a time, then take a day or two to integrate the experience. Let it land in your body. Let your body get used to being noticed again, by you, before you ask anything more of her. You’re expanding yourself with these practices, so go slowly and gently.

Practice 1: Orienting to the Present Moment

The practice:

Find a place where you won’t be interrupted for ten minutes. Sit comfortably, spine tall, eyes open.

Slowly, let your gaze move around the room. Let your eyes go where they’re drawn; to a patch of light, the corner of a window, the texture of a wall. Let them rest somewhere that feels pleasant, and stay there a moment longer than feels necessary.

Now notice your breath. Then, slowly, let one exhale leave through your mouth like a sigh, the kind you make when you finally sit down at the end of a long day.

Place one hand on your heart and one on your belly. Feel the weight and warmth of your own hands. Feel your chest and belly rise and fall against them.

Say these words to yourself: Right now, in this room, I am safe.

Stay for a few breaths, until something in you settles even one degree.

Below I’m sharing four more practices (and a playlist) that I use with my one-on-one clients to start coming home to your body and trusting what it tells you. Become a paid subscriber to get started.