Why Embody?
Written by Erica Lee, Informed by Neurobiology of Connection
*Tech process: I transcribe spoken word with a transcription app because I have more ease speaking than writing. Then I have AI edit for grammar, punctuation and spelling.
It’s ironic to me when people say, “get out of your head and into your body,” as if your head is not an integral part of your body. The point of “get out of your head” is thankfully not to sever your head and be a mindless, overly feeling pile of pudding. What embody means is to expand your awareness from not only the intelligence of your brain, but to the full-body experience of intelligence that inhabits every cell of your body. Every cell of your body indeed is a center point of intelligence.
Many of us have heard the sentiment that we only use a small percentage of our brain. My theory is that we use a very small percentage of our intelligence, the majority of which is not housed in our brain.
Historically, neuroscience has heavily centered on the brain as its primary point of study. This is like studying a tree but not the forest. There are neural receptors all throughout your body. Regardless of what you believe or don’t believe about who or what force created your body, it is awe-inspiring to really recognize the incredible design of our human design. Regardless of how intelligent artificial intelligence is or becomes, it still pales in comparison to the energy efficiency and precision of the human design’s data processing and response systems.
This intelligence is a primary resource in conflict transformation facilitation.
I want you to imagine for a moment that every skin cell on your body is removed. Now realize that even if that were so, you would still see your skin as it is, because that is how dense the neural receptors in your body are. These receptors are how we are able to literally feel ourselves from the inside-out. If you imagine your skin like 400-count Egyptian cotton sheets, the equivalent density of receptors would be like 3,700 by 3,700 count sheets in your skin — a level of detail that the eye cannot take in. This means that within all of these sites in your skin there are receptors that make you able to interpret ourselves, to literally feel ourselves from the inside out.
This is not hippy-dippy, woo-woo nonsense. This is some of the most astonishing science that I know. When we talk about engaging in practices of self-love and self-care, nothing has come close to encouraging me to care for myself as the realization of how profoundly exquisite our design is. There is clearly a natural intelligence at play here.
Neuroscientists have established that there are indeed several dozen sites within the body that can move autonomously from the brain. Yes. That means that places within your body don’t need the brain to dictate their movements. The brain can still influence them, but we are highly uneducated about the true nature of power.
The top-down model of power that we have all been socialized to believe is simply the nature of reality is a falsehood. The logic of top-down power as innate and “just how things work” is disproven within our bodies. Our bodies equally upload information from the bottom up — from the soles of our feet, through our pelvis, our digestive system, and our heart, more than from the brain alone. This understanding helps us embody the truth of our power and become a living disruption of falsehoods about power dynamics.
Taking time to feel yourself and the sense your body helps re-establish trust with your physical instincts. It also helps purify or cleanse your instincts, neutralizing unhealthy cravings or addictions. When this happens, your body becomes the most incredible satellite for giving and receiving information, which is pre-cognition. Before you think about it, the body knows its response. This is why knowing the language of the body and how to interpret it is essential. The body’s language is sensation. The body does not speak in thoughts.
The body’s nervous system responses are upstream from cognition, meaning they happen before signals reach the brain. Only when we are stressed out in states of fight, flight, freeze and fawn, the information highway that naturally flows from the heart to the head invert and begin moving from the head to the heart. This is a struggle we are caught in so habitually that we see it as the normal mode of operation. But in states of rest and digest or tend and befriend, where we are able to savor moments of sweetness, delight in pleasure, and gravitate toward what is healthy and charming to us, there are more signals being sent from the heart to the head. This validates the notion, “take the hero’s journey from head to heart”.
We know this is the natural order of things because all of our indicators of vitality increase when we are in these health producing states the majority of the time. We become healthier. We are more able to respond from our most evolved, wise, compassionate, honest, truthful, and complete selves.
Enjoy your body. You are the resource.
Reflection 1: What is your body trying to do right now?
Your body is not static. It is constantly mobilizing energy in response to your life. Stress, anxiety, excitement, anger: these are not just feelings to manage, they are movements that began and may not have finished.
When energy mobilizes and doesn’t discharge, it accumulates. It can feel like pressure, restlessness, tightness, buzzing—something unresolved beneath the surface. Human beings are the only mammals (yes, we may have a pre-frontal cortex but we also still have a tailbone) that can override the natural inclination to MOVE when these stress response trigger. A momma tiger with her cub does not become triggered and sit in it waiting to get into a therapy appointment, wondering what childhood trauma is being activated. She moves her body and discharges the energy that is naturally designed to protect her cubs. Unfortunately most humans are in such a stress response that the nervous system is caught in a perpetual state of stress, with compounding effects of a sedentary lifestyle. According to When Physicians Counsel About Stress: Results of a National Study, “the prevalence of stress in primary care is high; 60–80% of visits may have a stress-related component.44% of Americans report an increase in psychological stress over the past five years.Stress is associated with more office visits and disease.”
Instead of asking how to control or reduce the feeling, consider that your body may be asking for completion. You might not be able to yell at that person in the meeting like you want to but you can still discharge the energy with excusing yourself to the restroom to be able to shake off in the bathroom stall or simply even tilting your body to the side and crossing your legs can affirm to your body that you are responding to the activation. If you can’t actually fight, flee or freeze in the moment, tell your body (yes, talk to your living body) that you will take time within 24 hours to do some walking, shaking, dancing, yelling into a pillow, doing jumping jacks, making something with your hands, or another way to release the pent up energy. This is not so much a coping mechanism, but as a way of letting your body finish what it started. If the fight response flared up for example, your can’t actually hit that person in that staff meeting or yell at your client like your body might be telling you is warranted. Allow your body to make the movements it wanted to in the moment to complete the stress cycle. Particularly those who have a strong appeasement or “fawning” response to stress or power dynamics, there is a potential for stress to develop from trying to please or welcome interactions that do not serve one’s best interest or wellbeing. Trying to appease a power-dynamic or stress is a valid method of staying safe but can have health consequences such as autoimmune disorder, disproportionately affecting women and women of color. Take time to visit with mental health practitioners, holistic health providers and communication coaches to create authentic pathways of expressing your truth.
Reflection:
Where do you feel activation in your body right now?
If that energy could move or complete itself, what would it want to do? Make that/those move/ments now. What shifts?
Reflection 2: What is your emotion trying to tell you?
The body speaks in sensation, and emotion is part of that language. Every strong emotion can be understood as a messenger carrying information, not something to suppress, fix, or bypass.
At the same time, when you are overwhelmed or in shutdown, your system has limited capacity to process input. In these moments, less language can be supportive (say less). Instead of trying to think your way through, you might introduce sitting with space and rhythm: watching a sunset, noticing clouds move, listening to waves, humming, or gently tapping. These are not techniques for control, but ways to meet your body where it is. From that place, the messages of the body can become clearer.
Reflection:
What strong emotion has been present for you recently?
Where do you feel it? Name sensations. Sensations list here.
If that emotion were a trusted messenger, what might it be trying to show or tell you?
What is one step that you can take to respond to what this trusted messenger is telling you?
