What are embodiment practices?

Joanna Pustilnik
Nov 26
2 min read

I defined embodiment in this blog post, but it's learning how to be in a body, befriending it, instead of just having a body, or controlling it.

Feminine Embodiment Practices

Embodiment practices can help cultivate the switch from us (the thinking and judging us) to us (the whole body and inner self and soul experience) which integrates our somatic world (how emotions feel in our body and our understanding of why and how as well as nervous system awareness of what lives in us- our histories and inherited burdens.)

This somatic world is rich with insight, feeling, pleasure, love- it takes us out of the bubble of our own minds and into the delight of fully living as a feeling and loving being, seeped in awe.

Practice is needed here, though, because we are used to living top down, in our heads only. We need to learn to shift gears, and the allowing and permission for this is sometimes hard to find. We are highjacked by the business of life, and many of us find it difficult or even indulgent to allow ourselves the break from the masculine doing to the feminine being.

Embodiment practices include:

meditation- but this is only a start- to slow the mind and notice the inner world
All forms of awareness and tracking
Breath
Sounds we desire to make
Movement- all types- but especially movements that liberate frozen tension
The marriage of breath, awareness, movement, and sound- the 4 pillars of embodiment
Attention to interceptive needs of the body- hunger and fullness and pain and urges and needs
Softening and welcoming of what comes up with curiosity and not judgement
The allowing of permission to succumb to being and not doing
Shifting into noticing the body reactions to emotions and welcoming them
Attention and permission for pleasure and authentic desires
The value-aligned movement in the world that brings forth the manifestation of these noticed and somatic needs

These practices can take some time to become open to and allow. There are inner saboteurs that awaken and try to hold us back from feeling- as it can feel unsafe to be in the body fully or to be fully alive and fully in authentic power.

Inner Saboteurs that disconnect us from our body include:

fear of being fully seen
fear of failure
maladaptive perfectionism
self-doubt
frozen tension or shame/pain locked in our body
malnutrition or disordered eating voices
body image distress
trauma
obligations externally
nervous system dysregulation
anxiety or depression
other mental illness
OCD
low self-worth

It can take some time and focused work, but it starts with the awareness that you are disconnected from your body coupled with the desire to move more into your life fully. It's possible- I'm here to help.