A Staying Close to Self That's a Multitude

Embodiment as horizontal and vertical relationality

What is this mysterious being, this being embodied. Where does it live? Where I can meet it? What breadcrumbs do I need to stumble upon to find that, looking back, I’ve been following an embodied pathway? Where does that pathway even lead?

Is embodiment a being all its own, animated, of teeth and fur, or of branch and roots, or of rock layers forged of the remains of those that came before? Or is embodiment the innate being-ness of being in this human body; a being-ness made manifest within these fluid, so-called-edges of this body, a being-ness walking us through our days: us doing the washing up, us putting out the bins, us taking a hot bath?

Can we really be disembodied? What would that even look like? There have certainly been times I’ve felt disembodied, many days where physical pain or challenging emotions or destabilising experiences or nervous system dysregulation felt like they ejected me from myself. Isn’t embodiment our innate state of being? We are body-encompassed creatures, after all. Yet, if it’s possible to feel ejected, to feel far from ourselves, then the opposite is possible too: staying close to ourselves.

Being a body-encompassed creature in a physical universe

Staying close to myself has become one of my most treasured compasses. The more I stay close to myself, the more my experience of life (and myself) is that of being expansive¹. Concurrently, the further I move from myself, the more I experience life (and myself) as being contracting². I notice this the other way too: the more I stay with what’s expansive, the closer I am with myself; the more I stay with what’s contracting, the further I am from myself.³

Often, I see embodiment being described as this staying close to self. But when I investigate, I find instead that embodiment is often actually describing what I think of as intimacy with sensory, somatic, and physiological aliveness. Meaning, the act and practice of paying attention to our experience of being a body-encompassed creature existing in a physical universe. A state of being that brings us information about what’s happening within internal and external landscapes. A state of being that also means we can relate and respond to what we discover is happening in internal and external landscapes (from listening to our gut feelings, noticing and investigating our emotional responses, having thoughts about things, and acting on creative impulses, to paying attention to how we feel when we walk barefoot on the Earth or the sound of the birds in the park.)

Furthermore, this understanding of embodiment holds that we can utilise our discoveries to change our lived experiences. We can choose to take a cold shower because it might improve how we physically and mentally feel as we move through our day and it might bring us long-term health benefits. We can choose to examine our feelings and responses and beliefs, to learn our own biases and blindspots and what beliefs we’ve adopted as opposed to developed for ourselves, so that we can see situations differently. We can choose to develop a daily practice where we choose to override immediate information, like choosing to go for a run each day even when our body is tired and aching because we want to feel more energised each day and running each day makes us feel more energised.

This framing of embodiment as intimacy with sensory, somatic, physiological aliveness is reflected in this definition by Karden Rabin: ‘Embodiment: verb // The act of expanding one’s self awareness to include the felt experience of the body, such as sensory, sensational, emotional and physical experiences, and incorporating that information into one’s overall conception and conduct of themselves, their identity, beliefs, behaviors, and ways of being. // Using embodiment, she was able to realize that her short tempered outburst had nothing to do with her child asking for more snacks, but because she felt physically trapped and overwhelmed.’

It makes sense, then, when meeting embodiment practices initiated or recommended by coaches, facilitators, and so on, there is often a focus on two layers of embodiment: being intimate with our experience, and then potentially changing our experience through internal or external direction.

While I hold intimacy with sensory, somatic, and physiological aliveness as an important and wonderful state of being, embodiment - and staying close to self - has unfolded in a different way for me. The closest I can come to an understanding of what it means to truly access our capacity for embodiment is intimacy with internal⁴ and external⁵ landscapes that are as much of the horizontal⁶ as they are of the vertical⁷.

A universe of relationality

I have discovered that, for me, an embodiment arises within me that is a deep curiosity about internal and external landscapes just as they are while also recognising that each moment, each experience, each piece of information gathered is firmly enmeshed in relationship because we are firmly enmeshed in relationship. We are formed and forged by relationship. Our internal and external landscapes are continuously rearranged by and in relationship. And these relationships are both horizontal and vertical.

In the definition of embodiment by Karden Rabin, there is no recognition of the depth of relationship we exist within. In the example Rabin shares, the outburst ‘had nothing to do with her child asking for more snacks’. Yet, her response is happening in relationship with and to her child. Her response is also holding the horizontal and holding the vertical: place, environment, other relationships, the local, the global, ancestral lines, possible futures, and so on.

When we become insatiably curious about our internal and external landscapes just as they are, recognising these landscapes being both of the horizontal and of the vertical, we find that there is a universe of relationships to discover in every single lived experience. Staying close to ourselves opens us up to include so much more than just us.

My body doesn’t want a daily practice

Another of the treasures that staying close to myself brings is that the lived question of embodiment changes from ‘how might I connect with and improve my lived experience as a body-encompassed creature existing in a physical universe?’ into ‘what naturally activates the closer I am to myself?’ An activation that arises naturally from this intimacy with internal and external landscapes that are as much of the horizontal as they are of the vertical is a completely different country from noticing our experience and then changing it through internal or external directive. I want to dwell in the first.

Like the long-learned knowing that my body doesn’t want a daily practice. My body is as Mary Oliver holds our bodies: soft, refusing to repent, loving what it loves⁸. My body wants me to be in deep relationship with internal and external landscapes, feeling into my yes and no with attention and trust. Today, a yes to the sharp, forceful, awakening onslaught of a cold shower, a yes to the triggering of physiological stimulation that brings me into one kind of health. Today, a no; a no that brings me into another kind of health.

I’ve tried and tried to forge a daily practice out of my body with willpower and determination and authority, but my body (quite rightly) rebels. Instead, internal activation rises up within my body unforced. It’s kind. It’s easeful. My closeness to self becomes a tuning fork attuned to every cellular rearrangement, every movement of internal and external information, attuned to an activation that is responsive and attuned.

My body knows where home lives. Where rest lives. Where safety lives. Where expansion lives. Where wildness lives. Where seasonality lives. Where grief lives. Where ritual lives. Where celebration lives. Where love lives. Where movement lives, and stillness. My body materialises my work, knows where my attention should be placed, pulls me towards relationships saturated in generosity. My body feels the call of Dartmoor, of the Jurassic coast, of the mountains of Wales. My body knows the relationships that it can settle into, that become a shared container of attentive care. My body - soft, unrepentant, uncrawling - is curious, activated, activating. But only when ready. Only when the activation arises naturally.

Staying close to ourselves as ecological beings

The way I see embodiment practised and spoken of, I now see as intimacy with sensory, somatic, physiological aliveness. Whereas I now understand embodiment as intimacy with internal and external landscapes that are as much of the horizontal as they are of the vertical.

The first framing is a singular experience. We might ask ourselves: What am I feeling? What am I experiencing? How might I adjust my experience through deeper breathing, mindfulness, attentiveness, daily practice? The second framing holds the understanding that internal and external landscapes are irrevocably relational. Here, embodiment is the understanding that every experience, feeling, or mood is of the horizontal (everything that is taking place now) as well as being of the vertical (all that we carry from the past and all that we carry into the future).

To be intimate with internal and external landscapes as they are is to intimate with ourselves as ecological beings. A staying close to self that is ecological.

As an embodied facilitator, I understand my role as embodying the deep intimacy, the always insatiable curiosity, I hold with my internal and external landscapes, with myself as an ecological being. If I can hold this intimacy with internal and external landscapes that are as much of the horizontal as they are of the vertical in the room, then maybe each of us can start to become more intimate with our own internal and external landscapes too. Together, we can explore what we’re bringing into a situation or experience that’s beyond the obvious gaze; and through that discovery, we can become more intimate with ourselves at the same time that we gain a better understanding of what’s happening in the social field.

As my understanding of embodiment has evolved, and as I have settled into my way of facilitating, I now see each group I work with or am a member of as a constellation: a grouping that we give form to that, for as long as we group, has its own particular shape. A grouping that isn’t a truly separate body, even when it feels like it is. A story of edges we’re co-creating (much like an organisation’s edges) that, when examined, we find don’t exist.

Instead, we find something much more fascinating and alive: relationality, and all the ways we are relational.

1. I experience expansiveness when interactions and experiences spark things like creativity, deepening, grounding, imagining, relating, awareness, and discovery: a new idea, a new breadcrumb to follow, a new friendship to nurture, someone’s work to pay attention to, an organisation that now inspires me, being emotionally responsive instead of reactive, feeling safe in someone’s presence, relational connections saturated in welcome, value, care, and love, being in connection with my wildness, seasonality, grief, and communal being-ness, and so on.

2. I experience contraction when interactions and experiences spark things like overwhelm, nervous system dysregulation, painful self-consciousness, shut down: pushing at life with my timelines and forgetting deeper time, ignoring my gut instinct, being emotionally reactive, when I feel shame-full, spending time trying to work out another’s or a group’s actions, reactions, intentions, or needs, relational connections saturated in lack of ownership of actions, emotional reactivity, or unexamined emotions that are directed onto others, and so on.

3. It’s funny to write that the closer I stay to myself, the more life expands. I notice a fear that it will be misconstrued, that I see myself as individual, isolated, complete, when instead I experience myself and everything else as formed of relationship, forged in relationship: edgeless, intricately braided, an interbeing. And yet, for me, it’s an embodied knowledge that the more I know myself as fluid and edgeless and informed by relationship, the more I solidify as me.

4. With internal landscapes being everything within the imagined edges of the body: thoughts, feelings, sensations, information, response to external stimuli.

5. With external landscapes being everything without the imagined edges of the body, i.e. our external landscapes.

6. With horizontal being what’s unfolding now: place, neighbourhood, every single relationship, the more-than-human, the other-than-human, the local, the regional, the bio-regional, the global, the laws of physics, and so on.

7. With vertical being what has unfolded before and might unfold after: all that we carry from the past and all that we carry into the future, such as ancestry, histories, possible futures, future descendants, and deeper time.

8. I was going to directly quote from Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, but her site shares that her work is not in the public commons and no part of it can be reproduced without permission.