Living with Embodied Awareness

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

— FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

I still remember the first day I stepped foot into a meditation center in East London back in 1984. I walked in clumsily, with my white mohawk, my gaudy post-punk disheveled attire, feeling out of place and not knowing what to expect. There I was, a figure of agitation, not comfortable in my own skin, restless and impatient. What I saw stopped me in my tracks. It wasn't as if anyone was doing anything special. People were simply going about their day: arranging books in a library, sweeping the meditation hall, and preparing flowers in the entrance way. However, what took my breath away was the quality of presence in which they moved. There was an air of grace or dignity in how they went about their activities. They exuded a sense of relaxed ease that was quite unfamiliar to me. I didn't quite know what it was, but I knew they were on to something, and I wanted to experience it myself.

The scene felt so ordinary I could have easily overlooked it. In retrospect, I realize that part of what I was witnessing was embodied presence. People who are at home in their own skin, who are connected to themselves and their physical experience, embody a sense of ease, groundedness, and connectedness. The appearance of my overcaffeinated, anxious, angry self in that meditation center was like a storm meeting a serene ocean. It has taken me many years to begin to grow my own way into that beautiful, embodied quality.

One of my favorite pastimes is to watch modern dance. I relish how trained dancers move in their bodies, turning their bodies into living dynamic sculptures. Their movements are artful expressions of living with mindful embodiment. It's as if their bodies are filled with presence, which of course they are. Even seeing a dancer simply walk across the stage can be spellbinding because of how present they are within their own skin. They are poetic reminders of how to move, live, and breathe with an embodied presence that is alive, graceful, and vibrantly here.

Of course, we don't have to be a trained dancer to discover this. Anyone can learn to inhabit the body with awareness. Right now, as you are reading, what do you sense in your body? Become awake to every physical sensation: of your skin against your clothing, of your body against your chair. Can you sense the warmth of your belly and feel moisture on your skin or the wetness of your eyes? With mindfulness, we can be present to our ever-changing inner landscape and its shifting tides. We can sense the fluid energy of the body, which can be experienced as vibration, tingling, expansion, contraction, spaciousness, or pulsing electricity. One of the mysteries of embodied attention is that as soon as we call to mind a particular part of our body, it comes alive with sensory stimuli.

Our bodies are a canvas upon which emotions, feelings, and moods are painted. Emotions are physiological phenomena; we feel them in the body. Right now, attune to the radio broadcast of your body's mood. Can you name what you are feeling? Can you feel the impressions that emotions make in your body? Take a few moments to become intimate with your heart's terrain and where you may feel particular emotions in your chest, belly, or other part of your body.

As well as being host to a whole panorama of beautiful feelings like joy, love, and awe, our bodies also contain emotions that are not so easy to be with, like anxiety and sadness. As much as our bodies can be a source of delight and pleasurable sensory experience, our bodies also hold painful and difficult sensations, which is why we so often tune out from our somatic landscape. However, even if what we feel is unpleasant, with mindfulness we can bring attention to it and stay curious, exploring whatever may not be easy to be...