Why embodiment is so crucial in our times of overwhelm and disconnection from ourselves

We can operate from our heads in the distraction and busyness of life and have little regard for our bodies, and in this way we can self abandon and deny ourselves the very essence of being human and to inhabit a congruent internal world

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Embodiment is to live in the body, to pay attention to the body, to inhabit our bodies as we go about our business, day and night.

In this day and age we seem to be so disconnected from our bodies.

Life seems to be an ongoing process of distraction, we are available 24/7; we are busy, we are stressed, we are accountable 24/7 and in this way we can disconnect from our bodies, we can be focused on the external, on our duties and what we need to do, on our outcomes, outputs.

We can operate from our heads and have little regard for our bodies, and in this way we can self abandon.

We can just leave our bodies; we might feed them, water them, have sleep and get our rest from our sleep for our bodies and yet we may pay little regard to our bodies, what it really, really means to be human. To inhabit our bodies, fully to nourish and nurture our bodies. What might that mean, how might that feel.

In the process of living in our heads, in our minds, being busy all the time, being stressed, being preoccupied, thinking into the future, focusing on our targets, outputs, gains, our jobs, our commitments, our duties, our responsibilities, we again can abandon our bodies and live this life from the neck upwards rather than focus on anything neck down.  

We do this at our peril in my opinion. To live a disembodied life, a disconnected life means that we don’t experience life to the full; we are not paying attention to what’s going on in our internal world, and this is where life really is happening, in the internal world.

And if we’re not cultivating our own backyard, nourishing, nurturing ourselves, paying attention to the body’s needs, then we can be very disconnected, disengaged from our bodies and deny this internal existence to our peril.

This can mean that we can feel quite disconnected from life itself, from others, because the quality of our connection to ourselves surely predicates the quality of the lives we lead externally and with others.

For this reason I feel embodiment, even though it has a bad press, is key to a rich life, to an embodied life, to a full life.