Embodied Awareness

Come home to the wisdom of the body. In a world that constantly pulls our attention outwards in multiple directions at speed, many people spend their days living entirely up in their heads. We think, analyse, plan, forecast, anticipate, and solve problems. Getting lost in thought and carried away with wherever our thoughts take us. Often into worrying and ruminating, without noticing what is happening within our bodies. This article explores embodied awareness and life long health and wellbeing.

Embodied awareness is the practice of listening to the body. Not with our ears, but listening inwardly through our felt sense, the feeling part of the brain. Bringing gentle and non-judgemental attention to our present moment physical sensory experience. To consciously step aside from the cognitive brain that dominates our lives. To travel beneath our thoughts, internal narration and stories we tell ourselves, to return to the body. A body that is continuously communicating with us via physical sensations, posture, breathing, and how we move.

Embodied awareness is a way of reconnecting the mind and body, to understand that they are not separate systems but different expressions of the same living experience. To become aware of our internal world, how we are feeling, how we are breathing, and where we are holding tension and disharmony.

The Body Knows Before the Mind

Think about when you last felt anxious or worried. It is likely that your body knew long before your mind caught up with how you were feeling. Your jaw may have clenched, or your stomach tightened and felt knotted up. Perhaps your shoulders tensed and raised up by yours ears causing you muscle pain. Or maybe your breathing changed and you took shallower and quicker breaths, making you feel more stressed. The body responds first.

As modern humans we have evolved to ignore these physical signals, which disconnects us from our body. Pushing through tiredness, ignoring physical tension, dismissing discomfort, and suppressing uncomfortable emotions, all as something to deal with later. Treating the body like a machine that purely carries us around. Over time this disconnect can leave us feeling stressed, exhausted, lethargic, run down, and not like ourselves at all. We may become more reactive, less tolerant, and less compassionate. Our bodies may experience more physical pain, inflammation, heaviness, and fatigue.

Embodied awareness invites us to reverse this process, to return to a more natural state of being. As the body notices stress before the conscious mind does, we can learn to recognise the early signs and see them as something that requires our attention, something to tune into, and to respond with grace. So that stress, overwhelm, hyper-vigilance, anxiousness, worry and emotional disharmony don’t grow into bigger more deep rooted problems.

Why Embodied Awareness Matters

When we learn to notice what is happening within our bodies, we gain the opportunity to respond rather than react. Instead of being controlled by the overriding physical and mental symptoms of stress, frustration, or anxiety, we can become aware of the physical sensations that prelude those states. Like having an early warning signal, that creates space to pause, acknowledge, breathe, ground and then respond from a calm and centred position.

Research increasingly supports what many traditional healing systems have taught for centuries: that greater awareness of body sensations is associated with improved emotional regulation, resilience, wellbeing, empathy, and interpersonal connection. Simply put, when we become more aware of ourselves, we tend to navigate life more smoothly.

The Body as a Gateway to Health

Health is often thought of purely in physical terms e.g. strength or aerobic training etc. Yet true holistic health involves the integration of mind and body, including everything physical, physiological, and the quality of physical life, along with psychological, emotional and spiritual health. Or as the Taoists describe it as “health, happiness, vitality and longevity”.

Emotional experiences can show up in the body. In a difficult moment, you may notice anxiety as tightness in the chest, worry as a knot in the stomach, grief as a heaviness throughout the body, or anger as heat, tension, and pressure in the muscles.

When we suppress those emotions rather than feeling, acknowledging, expressing and processing them, those emotions don't leave us. Instead they stay within our mind and rumble around in the depths of our subconscious. And if difficult emotions and experiences are not fully processed, the body holds onto them deeply within the muscles and membranes, guarding against perceived future risk. Stress, emotional pain, and trauma can become stored as patterns of tension, disharmony and dysfunction within the muscles, connective tissues, and central nervous system. Over time, this can have a negative impact on how we feel physically, emotionally, and mentally.

By bringing gentle awareness to the sensations in our body, we create an opportunity to listen to what the body is communicating. Rather than pushing discomfort away, we learn to stay present with it and sit with whatever that feels like. We sense into the body, to feel how we are in that present moment without reaction or judgement. As awareness develops, and you begin to acknowledge and understand what they body is saying, you can begin to release long held unconscious tension, suppressed emotions and unresolved experiences.  This creates space to feel more at ease, more balanced, and a deeper sense of connection with authentic ourselves.

This is not about analysing every sensation or becoming overly focused on specific emotions, specific situations, or specific physical symptoms. Instead, it is about developing a compassionate relationship with your own experiences and how they may be held within the body. The body becomes less of an object to micro manage and more like a dear friend to look after through the ebb and flow of life. To feel into your body as it is and signalling to the body it is safe to let go.

Embodied awareness supports health because it helps us tune into the body's natural feedback systems. We become better at recognising when we need rest, movement, nourishment, self development, or recovery. We can learn to identify stress patterns before they become chronic and develop a greater sensitivity to what supports or undermines our wellbeing. Learning to release what is binding us it a great skill to develop at any stage of life. The aim is to live gracefully within our unique and ever changing baseline, to develop adaptive resilience as we age and grow.

Embodied Awareness in Tai Chi and Qigong

In my opinion as a teacher, Tai Chi and Qigong are among the most effective practices for cultivating embodied awareness. The Soma Dao Qigong syllabus is my favourite playground for deeply exploring embodied awareness through somatic movement. Read more about Qigong as a somatic movement practice here. If you are looking for a teacher to help develop embodied awareness in your Tai Chi and Qigong training , then please get in touch with me here.

A core part of these ancient practices help us to slow down and pay attention to our internal being. Rather than forcing movement, forcing shapes, forcing results and so on, students learn to feel into the body movements through different principles. Attention is directed towards whole body connection, posture and alignment, elasticity and fluidity, relaxation and softening, grounding and centredness, balance and stability, and sensations and interactions. Feeling into every muscle, membrane and joint in your body as you move slowly and breathe deeply. To observe and guide the body with self compassion to a place of ease, acceptance, and release.

We also develop the cultivated skill of moving the body without creating additional stress. By not over extending the joints, being awkward and stiff, or all up in our heads. Embodied awareness helps us learn about the unique blueprint of our body on any given day. Like an ongoing diagnostic. Enabling us to exercise within our physical baseline, and avoiding extremes, injury and the boom and bust cycle. What you are trying to avoid in embodiment movement training is to mimic the stress / fight or flight response in your movements, which is harder than you think!

As your movements become slower, more mindful, and more led through felt sense, it is easier to notice areas of physical tension and bindings that would normally remain hidden. We begin to sense where we habitually hold inappropriate physical tension, where pain resides, and where our physical boundaries are. This gives us insight into how we can subtly adapt our movements to become more efficient, relaxed and natural. To release and let go of what binds us. Over time we can re-wire habitual movement patterns that guard our previous experiences. To come home to a neutral body.

The caveat is that the skill of embodied awareness time, patience, attention and openness. It’s definitely not suited to the quick fix mindset in the modern world. Can you simply be in your body for the sake of being in your body? Without the anticipatory mind taking over? Instead, just feeling what it is like to move, feel, listen and breathe.

It’s All Connected

In Tai Chi and Qigong, practitioners often speak of developing "song" or “fang song”, which is one of the main principles. It roughly translates to conscious relaxation, a relaxed alertness where the body is connected and at ease in motion. To use the minimum amount of muscular strength to perform a movement, without being loose and floppy. This principle cannot be achieved through thinking alone. It evolves through body awareness, repetition, and years of noticing tension and releasing tension practice. Over time, with patience and humility, you can learn to truly relax the body in your Tai Chi and Qigong practice.

As the mind and body are connected this gradually extends to your daily life. You may notice you are more calm, relaxed, grounded, centred, clear headed and present. You are in your body and not up in your head all of the time. You may find that you begin to soften within adversity when faced with difficult situations in daily life, to respond rather than react. To stand in the centre of your hurricane, whilst not being moved by everything going on around you.

Read more about the principle of fang song here, and discover the depth of this cultivated relaxation skill.

Read more about the mind and body connection in Tai Chi and Qigong, in my article called “deception training”.