The Embodied Path: Three Crucial Components Of An Effective Embodiment Routine
I imagine the collective body as the energetic consciousness of the earthbody, which includes all living beings. It is the body-felt connectedess among people, profoundly related to the source of our humanity.
Janet Adler, mother of Authentic Movement and author of Intimacy In Emptiness: An Evolution Of Embodied Consciousness
Unveiling The Power Of Embodiment
For those committed to the healing journey, embracing the embodied path is essential.
In this article we’ll explore the significance of embodiment in your personal growth journey, addressing life’s universal imperative to become an embodied human and the transformative effects it will have on your body and life.
From alleviating physical and emotional pain to enhancing physical, psychological and spiritual flexibility, insight, and life flow, embodiment holds the potential to unlock a deeper connection to your purpose and greater life satisfaction.
With my embodiment online course as a template, we’ll uncover the essential components of a sustainable embodiment routine, including body connection, movement, breath, and mindful awareness.
If you’re seeking to break free from stuckness in your body and life, and cultivate a more profound connection to your soul purpose, this article is required reading.
Keep reading to discover the profound impact of the embodied path on your overall well-being.
What Does It Mean To Be Embodied Vs. Dis-Embodied?
Here’s a video I made on how to speed your healing with a simple, sustainable embodiment routine:
If you get your edification in the form of audio podcasts listen below or look for the BioSoul Integration Podcast and this episode wherever you listen to your podcasts:
Folks in my private and online practices often wonder what they can do between sessions to help their healing process move faster.
The answer is: anything they can do to speed their embodiment.
But what does embodiment actually mean?
And how will being embodied speed the healing journey?
In order to understand what it means to be embodied and the effect it will have, we need to start by discussing how we get dis-embodied in the first place.
How We Get Dis-Embodied
It begins in the womb, around two to four weeks after conception, when our primal brain (the foundational layer of our nervous system) comes online.
The primal brain is sensitive the the energetic field and it tunes into the people around us, sensing the way that people have judged and disconnected from certain aspects of themselves.
As we rely on them for survival, we unconsciously and automatically adopt the same survival programming.
Creating these programs involves a process where we label parts of ourselves as unsafe to feel, deeming it unacceptable to experience or express the energy of those parts.
Consequently, we wall off and push away important aspects of our being, withdrawing awareness from them, ultimately failing to embody them.
Problems Caused By A Lack Of Embodiment
It actually requires an inordinate amount of energy and resources to stay seperated in ourselves in this way because life is constantly urging us to evolve—pushing us to feel, include and express more of ourselves.
It’s this resistance to our evolution that is the source of tension in our bodies and being, our limited emotional expression and our fixed perspectives regarding what the world is and who we are in relationship to it.
The consequences are significant, ranging from physical pain and illness to emotional challenges, but ultimately hindering our ability to share our gifts and live our purpose.
The Effect Of Embodiment Practices
Embodiment, then, involves the practice of directing our attention to our bodies and allowing ourselves to consciously experience the sensations within.
Picture it as a workout for your awareness muscles—a conscious effort to strengthen our capacity to connect with, and stay in contact with, neglected parts of ourselves.
Leaning into awareness and attention and connecting with our bodies in this way has the all important effect of softening the resistance that our systems are running in the background, thus reducing the friction to life’s inherent evolving force and lubricating our forward movement on the path.
Softening The Resistance
The effect of softening the resistance is to allow life to change us according to its divine plan.
When we’re not waisting so much vital energy on fighting againt life, it creates and efficiency and flow on every level of our lives—we work in conjunction with life instead of against it.
It speeds the process of our evolution, and on top of that it results in less tension, reduced pain and increased emotional, physical, and spiritual flexibility.
Furthermore we gain insights, we feel more in the flow, it’s easier to make decisions, easier to express ourselves fully, we have a better understanding of our needs and an ability to communicate them, leading to better relationships, and the positive benefits go on and on.
Resistance Is Futile, Anyway
And in any case, life’s push to get us to embody and express our true selves and live our purpose is more powerful than our resistance.
The more we resist the more painful it is.
As kind of a side note, we’re not getting off the planet with the resistance intact.
My wife, who used to be a hospice chaplain, has pointed out the way that people struggle when the end gets near due to the accumulated resistance in their system.
The transition from body back into spirit will purify us of our resistance before we leave.
That’s why it’s a good idea to do as much work as possible to soften that resistance before that faithful day so life doesn’t have to squeeze it out of us.
3 Things Every Effective Embodiment Routine Will Include…
1) Breath And Movement
When it comes to embodying your soul’s gifts and essence, your embodiment routine needs a few key elements to be effective.
It may seem obvious but, it has to involve your body.
When our nervous system activates survival patterns, it shuts breath down to certain parts of the spine and it walls off energy with muscle tension.
This is because if we breathe into an area and we can move it we can experience the energy there.
But when a survival pattern is activated, our nervous system has decided that it’s not safe for us to experience the energy associated with certain parts of us.
So it walls it off with tension and shuts breath down to those areas so it can’t be experienced, essentially cancelling out our awareness of part of our body and being.
That’s why any embodiment routine that’s worth anything will involve breath and movement to reanimate awareness of energies and aspects of our personality that have been marginalized.
2) Mindful Awareness Practices
As mentioned, when survival patterns are triggered, certain parts of ourselves and their energies become hidden and we lose our ability to be aware.
After years of not using that awareness, like an unused muscle, it becomes weak.
However, mindfulness practices are like exercises that build awareness and attention strength.
They cultivate our attentional abilities so we can engage more fully with each present moment experience.
When the muscles of attention are underdeveloped, we can feel easily overwhelmed by the myriad of thoughts, sensations and emotions that we encounter in life.
Often it’s something that we’re unaware of that makes it painful.
But by strengthening these awareness muscles through regular mindfulness practice, we gain greater capacity to focus on and cope with whatever arises in the here and now.
It was a big turning point in my life when I discovered mindfulness awareness practices through a teacher named Shinzen Young, and I highly recommend his work.
He simplifies thousands of years of mindfulness practices, making it convenient and accessible to beginners and adepts alike.
You can explore his work in the book The Science of Enlightenment.
3) Sustainability
What’s the point of doing positive things for yourself if you can’t sustain them for any length of time?
For any transformative practice, sustainability is non-negotiable.
Often, when we decide to make changes, we tend to take on more than we can handle.
We might have a tendency to dive into extensive workout plans or commit to hours of daily meditation or take on some drastic dietary change, only to find it challenging to maintain, and we eventually fall back into our old habits.
Rather than opting for intense and time-consuming programs, it’s crucial to choose a sustainable approach.
The key is to bite off smaller, manageable chunks that we can consistently tackle day in and day out.
The secret sauce of sustainability is made up of simplicity, accessibility, convenience and flexibilty.
Simple And Accessible
For a practice to be sustainable, simplicity and accessibility are key.
An embodiment routine should be easy to learn and easy to fit into your life.
It should be something that anyone, irrespective of their experience with movement and meditation practices, or fitness level, can easily pick up.
Convenient And Flexible
A successful practice should be convenient and seamlessly integrating into your lifestyle.
Whether you have just five minutes to spare or want to immerse yourself for hours, you should be able to adapt your practicte to your schedule.
This flexibility should also cater to various levels of awareness.
Whether you’re a beginner starting out in meditation, yoga, or spiritual awakening, or someone well into their journey, the practice should accommodate all stages of growth.
Incidentally, I believe I’ve created an online course that accomplishes all of the above.
Exploring the Embodied Path: A Peek Into My Online Course
I want to tell you a bit about my online course called “The Embodied Path Online Course: Eight Steps to Expressing Your Soul’s Essence, Purpose, and Calling.”
As the name suggests, there are eight basic exercises that are at the heart of the course.
The structure involves six simple yoga poses.
But these aren’t intense strengthening poses.
While it’s important to build core strength, we often forget the need to also cultivate deep relaxation as part of the process of embodiment.
These poses are based on that idea.
When the nervous system is in defense mode, strengthening exercises can create more protective armor.
Instead, the focus is on gentle movements, promoting ease and relaxation in specific parts of the body that are connected to our survival brain.
Six Exercises To Connect With Six Important Parts Of The Spine
Our body is a complicated system, and the spine, made up of different parts, plays a crucial role in containing various aspects of our being.
When our system goes into a defensive mode, tensions build up in different areas.
These areas, linked to specific themes, appear in both our bodies and lives.
I’ve explored each segment of the spine in greater detail, examining the energies and themes associated with them in a comprehensive blog post entitled, “The 6 Parts Of The Spine And The Spiritual Significance Of Each, Revealed.”
Let’s explore various points along our spine, each holding unique significance in our journey towards self-discovery.
Coccyx
This area is integral to understanding our intrinsic self-worth.
Sacrum
The sacrum plays a crucial role in recognizing who we are and understanding our life’s purpose.
Low Back
The low back is all about vulnerability and safety.
Heart
The heart serves as the central hub for integrating all other aspects of ourselves.
Bottom Of The Neck
This region houses the part of us that discerns what feels true and right.
It also aligns us with our soul’s calling and passions.
Top Of The Neck
The top of the neck is associated with trust and control.
One Yogic Exercise For Embodiment
This yogic exercise is strategically crafted to set chi in motion.
Chi, often referred to as life force energy, is a subset of the energy that animates everything in the universe.
Engaging in exercises that activate chi is akin to amplifying the very intelligence that breathes life into our bodies.
This activation allows the intelligence of the universe to flow harmoniously through our spine and consciousness.
Guided Embodiment Mindfulness Practices
You may wonder why meditation is important.
Allow me to share an analogy that sheds light on its importance.
As we do the practices previously discussed, it stirs things up.
Through regular practice, we disrupt long-held survival patterns and the connections formed in our bodies and minds over time.
Picture a pile of scattered iron filings.
When a magnet is introduced the iron filings all align with the magnetic field created by the magnet.
Similarly, amidst the thoughts, tensions and emotions that have gotten stirred up through the practices, meditation then allows those parts of us to align with source.
This process acts as a type of rewiring.
Therefore, meditation is a crucial part of the embodiment process.
The Embodied Path Online Course Perks
Incidentally there are some bonuses that come with the online course.
You’ll get a personalized one-on-one, online session of the coaching/energy work that I do with people so you can have a direct experience of lifelong limiting patterns being reprogrammed in real time.
You’ll get access to a twice-weekly support group, providing ongoing assistance.
There’s also an exclusive Facebook group.
As a cherry on top, you’ll receive a complimentary PDF copy of my book, “If It Didn’t Hurt: How to Resolve Your Pain and Discover Your Life Purpose,” which will serve as an invaluable resource on your soul embodiment path.
Conclusion: Unlocking Your Potential Through The Embodied Path
The journey to fully embody your soul’s gifts and essence is a worthwhile endeavor.
The benefits are numerous: from reducing pain and enhancing flexibility on physical, mental, and emotional levels to gaining profound spiritual insights into the workings of the world and your life.
This process empowers you to make decisions with greater ease and articulate your truth in various aspects of your life, be it in relationships or at work.
Moreover, the soul embodiment path allows you to deepen connections—with yourself, nature, and source.
Ultimately, it’s a pathway to unlocking your unique gifts and fulfilling your purpose on this planet.
I look forward to helping you express more life,
Dr. Jay
About the Author Dr. Jay Uecker
Dr. Jay Uecker is the founder of the BioSoul Integration Center near Boulder, Colorado where he's been practicing for over 20 years. He’s an author, chiropractor, healer, and online soul integration coach who weaves Network Spinal Analysis, intuitive Parts Work, Brainspotting, SomatoRespiratory Integration, and body-centered awareness practices into his own technique, which he calls BioSoul Integration. His work helps people release unconscious resistance stored in the nervous system so they can embody their soul’s gifts and express their purpose more fully. Dr. Jay offers group healing sessions and one-on-one care, both in-person and online. He also offers a self-paced online course and a growing collection of transformational books. For a limited time, claim your FREE copy of If It Didn't Hurt: How to Resolve Your Pain and Discover Your Life Purpose.
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