Part of me is always amused when people say that they don’t do yoga because they aren’t flexible enough.
As someone who has practiced yoga on and off for several years, I’ve come to understand it as a lesson in how to be with ourselves exactly as we are, while we gently expand and grow.
Flexibility in the body is a natural consequence of sitting with our resistance, day after day, while it gradually melts away and we learn how to bring patience and compassion to the moments in between.
If you don’t want to do yoga because it doesn’t interest you, that is an entirely valid choice.
However, if you do want to try it but you’re avoiding it because you think your body isn’t flexible enough then you’re kind of missing the point; flexibility is the journey, not the destination, and certainly not a prerequisite for starting.
I’ve noticed a similar phenomena within embodiment work.
I’ve coached many people who were attracted to the idea of connecting more deeply to their bodies, but were convinced that their current feelings of disconnection barred them from starting the work.
People have started their coaching sessions with me by apologising in advance for not knowing exactly what they were feeling in their bodies. They’ve told me that they are “hard to coach” or they are “afraid this just won’t work for them.”
They greatly desire to learn how to drop out of their over thinking minds and spend more time in their physical bodies. But they’re convinced that because they haven’t worked out how to do it all by themselves yet, they are a lost cause. Most seem to be afraid that I’m going to turn around and confirm that to them, throwing them out of a session if they share that they don’t really know how they are feeling, or feel confused by their inner world.
I’m going to let you in on a secret: People who feel totally disconnected from their bodies are my favourite people to work with. Because that’s how I started.
I vividly remember my first ever embodiment meditation. It was part of a discovery call for a programme about relationship anxiety with a fantastic organisation, Healing Embodied.
For years prior to this call I had meditated, practiced yoga, journalled and tried multiple forms of therapy. I thought I already had a pretty good grip of what was going on inside me.
But when the practitioner guided me through a somatic exercise and then asked me at the end what I had experienced my response was: “I have absolutely no idea what just happened in my body.”
This wasn't an exclamation of amazement. It was literal. I had no idea what feelings I had experienced. It was like someone was asking me to answer a question which was asked in a language I had never heard before.
In that moment I realised that I was entirely disconnected from my body. I had spent so many years trying to make myself feel a particular way that I had no idea what I was actually feeling right now.
At the hint of an uncomfortable sensation in my body my mind would immediately jump in to protect me, spending vast amounts of energy trying to solve an endless array of problems and orchestrate the perfect circumstances in my external experience. I had never slowed down to just feel what was happening for even a few seconds. I was continually running away from my internal world.
Needless to say I signed up to the course, and it was a life changing experience.
For the first time ever I learned how to just feel my feelings rather than explain them, change them, or make them into something other than they already were.
I gradually developed the skill of sitting with a sensation until a deeper knowing arose from it. I gained the patience required to listen to myself deeply and cultivate the space for my inner truths to reveal themselves to me.
I found out that the loudest, strongest sensations usually needed to be held and experienced to make space for the quieter voice of intuition that lay beneath. I learned that the thoughts that run through my mind when I’m experiencing a strong emotion usually aren’t factual, but that if I stay with it for long enough I’ll receive the message it’s trying to bring me.
I discovered that trying to rearrange my external world to get rid of uncomfortable feelings is an exhausting and fruitless endeavour, but that by bringing my conscious awareness to them they often passed on their own.
As I gradually built up my embodiment skills…
… the critical voice in my mind started to fall away.
… I felt more relaxed, peaceful and confident in my day to day life.
… I started taking more risks and doing things I had previously been scared to do (like driving for the first time in 10 years).
… I left my job, travelled and set up my own business, because I was no longer terrified of failure.
Seeing as I’m sharing secrets today, I’ll give you another one: I still experience anxiety. And sadness. And hopelessness. And fear.
But I also experience joy, and happiness, and excitement, and all kinds of positive emotions that had felt muted in my body for a long time.
Embodiment doesn’t stop us from being human. If anything it brings the wide spectrum of human experiences into even sharper focus.
The major difference is that nowadays I don’t spend 80% of my energy trying to avoid certain experiences. Instead they get to flow and I’m here for the ride. This frees up my energy to build the life I actually want, rather than avoid the one that I’m afraid of.
Time for secret number three. Except this one isn’t really a secret, because I want to tell everyone about it: Every single person who started off their session by apologising for the disconnection to their bodies came away having experienced themselves in a whole new way, and with new insights about their life.
The fear of “what if it just doesn’t work for me” has never, ever come true.
More often than not, people are surprised by how quickly their body starts to communicate with them, and they’re eager to learn more.
Most of them actually forget that they were worried about how it would go because they’re so excited about their new discoveries! When I remind them of their initial concerns their faces light up, as they realise their fears were only an illusion, designed to keep them safe from the possibility of disappointment.
I truly believe that if you are feeling drawn to embodiment work then it is the right path for you. That gentle tugging which leads you to read about it, think about it, listen to podcasts and click on the links over and over again, is pointing you toward a place where you can get to know yourself more deeply than you ever have before. And in my personal belief, that’s why we’re all here.
You will know when it’s time for you to take the plunge.
Just don’t let being a beginner stop you from starting. The perfect starting point is where you are right now. It always is.
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