Experiencing My Body

My journey to radical embodiment

My entire life has been a classroom for learning how to be embodied. From severe anxiety, to body dysmorphia, to a decade of yoga—all of life’s experiences have been teaching me to come back to myself to experience myself.

I remember back in jr. high my mom told me and my friends that our bodies are a temple. This resonated only in the sense of understanding that I should be choosy about who I share my body with. At the time, I didn’t realize the deeper embodied truth my mother was imparting on me. The body is the conduit for experience. To feel, to emote, to sensationalize, to come back to inner sovereignty and inner truth is the whole point.

It took me over a decade to actually understand her message… and a few more years to integrate it. It wasn’t until my mid-20s that I realized I wasn’t embodied. I never understood that I was living a disconnected life. I thought it was normal to be living fully from the head—I was always celebrated for how smart I was. Brainy, nose in a book, everything related to school and learning came easily.

Yet, I lost the openness of my heart—closed off, shrouded in thorns, and thick with armor from years of protection. I ignored the sensations in my body—why feel when feeling is uncomfortable. I was a disassociated mess, but at least I could think myself through any situation if I jumped to action before my anxiety became too debilitating, in which, I was then forced to sit with the sensations of the body.

Alan Watts offers this gem: “Man only suffers because he takes seriously what the gods created for fun.”

Identification with the mind is what I believe makes us so serious about life (read more about ego and attachment here). Creating a hierarchy within self, where the most important inputs and experiences happen within the mind is a recipe for disassociation.

Lila is a Buddhist concept that means playing in the illusion. My interpretation of this concept is a childlike wonder about life that enables you to play with life and play out the individuated aspects of your journey. The amount of play, both childlike and as if in a video game, are associated with your level of dimensional perception. Meaning, you know you are playing in the illusion and your level of play matches your understanding of the illusion.

Radical embodiment is the path to Lila. For through embodiment, we enter a world of sensation, we become sensual beings. Not just in the sexual sense—although, that is beneficially enhanced—rather, everything we do has an edge of sensation that is recognized and enjoyed. Even the unpleasant becomes sensational because we learn to feel into it.

Upon reflection, I see that my life has always been leading me here. I see my bigger life purpose, my soul purpose, intertwined with embodiment. In one aspect, this has been realized through the yogic path—I am a dedicated practitioner and teacher, and I live by the philosophy, applying the eight limbs to daily life. But, this has also revealed itself through understanding larger patterns at play within the human experience, whether that’s the alchemical process or hero’s journey or the intrinsic exploration of self.

Living this path has been a rollercoaster. I’ve learned to revel in both the highs and lows because they are all on the spectrum of the human experience. This is what we came here to experience!

It’s also led me to deeper experiences with consciousness, plant medicine, and an interest in the occult and taboo.

Before we get deeper into my journey with experiencing my body, I think it’s important to recognize the effects being disconnected from the body has on the system and soul.

How Does a Lack of Embodiment Play Out?

The clearest example in my lived experience is related to emotions and learning to physically feel what I’m feeling in order to alchemize the energy. Feeling emotions is integral to the healing and integration process, but it’s not always fun. In fact, it can be super scary when the body doesn’t feel like it’s safe to feel certain emotions, such as sadness and rage.

If the body doesn’t feel safe to feel, programming will kick in to either suppress or disassociate from the emotional charge. This programming happens for so many reasons: society says it’s unacceptable to express certain emotions, your family ostracized or punished you for feeling certain emotions, you were taught that certain emotions are bad, etc.

You know what’s crazy? I was raised in a very loving and supportive household and I still struggled with rage from a very young age until my early 20s. Why? I don’t know for certain, maybe it’s a part of my karmic path. But I do know that for years I didn’t feel my emotions unless they were intensely heightened states, like debilitating anxiety and rage. I only felt my emotions when I was extremely angry or anxious.

I believe part of this was because I was sooooo disconnected from my body. Some subconscious part of me was actively suppressing all emotions. The good and the bad. I was always living in my head and my body didn’t feel safe to feel… because when I did feel, it was uncontrollable and perceived as negative.

Through embodiment practices, you start to create safety in the body. Then it feels okay to embrace the sensation in the moment, realizing that this is the best thing to do to fully process the emotion. By feeling it fully (and not getting down on myself for not feeling my best) I accept the energy for what it is and enable it to transmute through me vs. getting stuck (which creates bigger emotional reactions down the road).

Feeling emotions—the good, bad, ugly, and blissful—is integral to the human experience. Bypassing your emotions creates residual stickiness in the body, making heightened and uncontrollable emotional displays common.

So how did I grow from always anxious to inner calm?

The Journey of Yoga

It all started with yoga—yoga changed my life. It was the first practice that taught me to be in my body. I fell into the practice while in college. Not being dramatic here, those were some of the worst years of my life. I was so incredibly anxious—to the point where I wasn’t able to breathe.

Yoga started our really hard, like, really really hard. I struggled to be still, to embrace being uncomfortable in a posture. I constantly looked around the room, comparing myself to others and getting wrapped up in how I thought others perceived me. My outward attention was so persistent that after a couple classes, I forced myself to start practicing with my eyes closed. This quieted my comparative thoughts, but made my intrusive thoughts that much louder. My practice stayed like this for years.

In 2019, I decided it was time to change my life. There were so many things going downhill—bad relationship, burnout from career, and an overall feeling of disinterest in life. I decided it was time to be serious about my health, because at least that was something I could put energy into. I was so tired of being unhappy with how I looked.

This was an active battle since I was a teen. Growing up in the aughts and early teens, I think we can all agree how toxic the media was in regard to the female body. From magazines to Tumblr, ultra skinny was vogue and anything will curves was considered overweight. I’m not kidding. I’ve never been overweight, yet until recent years, I’ve never been comfortable in my body, always thinking I was too big, too curvy.

Gratefully, standards change, and all shapes are now in… or at least more accepted. But this doesn’t erase the conditioning and voice that was always telling me that to be accepted I needed to be smaller.

And in 2019, I finally cracked through all the body dysmorphia that plagued me for years. More than physical changes, this was the year I started mending the relationship with my body. I stopped being so mean—I didn’t have the capacity to hate myself any longer, I realized it was time to start treating my body like the powerful vessel it is that carries me through this life. This was the year I learned to flow. It was less of a struggle to get into postures. I was feeling more and thinking less and less.

Everything came full circle in 2021 when I decided to pursue yoga teacher training, which forever changed my practice. I discovered Astanga and fell in love. This lineage taught me the nuanced movements of each posture, what muscles were meant to be activated, and minute tweaks to deepen poses. This in-the-field experience combined with the textbook knowledge of anatomy and the purpose of postures granted me the opportunity to be fully embodied for the first time. I finally felt every nuanced movement. The way I walked changed, the way I entered a room changed, the way I held the space around me changed. I found full command over the entirety of me, which increased my perception of everything around me.

Integrating Feeling All the Things

Coinciding with my yoga journey was a deeper wave of emotional suppression. Yoga found me because I was anxious. Things got a little better after college, then real life seemed to crash on me. I was eternally burned out. And all I desired was numbness. Fortunate in the moment, I found it. Yet, this state stuck around for years. I remember desiring to feel so bad… just something. I wanted to love, to be excited… even to be angry or upset. All I could find was the occasionally tear for my own woe is me story. Even these tears were stifled in emotionally unavailable relationships.

I believe we consciously and unconsciously attract. The people around you have a huge impact on your mental-emotional state and outlook on life… especially romantic relationships. In order for me to really come back to me, I had to leave a very unhealthy relationship. I was miserable and this relationship was the catalyst for me numbing out. I then found a fun relationship, and I couldn’t feel anything. I desperately wanted to, but it was all blah. And as it turns out, this relationship also wasn’t the healthiest. We were both dealing with different forms of addiction and there was a lot of emotional suppression happening. Leaving this relationship coincided with yoga teacher training, and birthed me choosing me for the first time in my life.

Finally, I learned to love emotions again. First, I started feeling, not just big things, but little things too. This came with an enhanced ability to regulate myself (thanks again, yoga). I would feel the big things, but I wouldn’t be swept out to sea with them. I could sit with the emotion, observe its presence in my body, and let it run its course.

I was soon finding gratitude for all emotions because I could access them once again. This led me to appreciating both the highs and lows, because feeling it all is so much better than feeling nothing. I even found myself being grateful for heartbreak, because it showed me how much love was possible.

Living in the Present Moment

The ability to feel my emotions taught me to be present. And, another layer of embodiment was revealed.

I learned to move my consciousness from my head to my heart, to really really be in my body. I have an entire discussion on the benefits of experiencing heart consciousness here.

Then I started to revel in the present moment. What is possibly more exciting than being here now? I frequently ask myself what is missing from this moment that is making me wish I was somewhere else, doing something else. The answer is usually nothing… my brain is just seeking distraction via thoughts.

This led to learning to find pleasure in every moment. This is different from seeking pleasure—which I have also been trapped in. Rather, to find the pleasure is to feel the sensations of the body and surrender: the sunlight kissing your skin and spreading warmth to your core, tingles in your feet from sitting cross-legged for too long, your hair brushing your shoulder and tickling your nose, the flutter of your heart when you’re about to speak in front of a group. I could go on and on and on and on. Even in unpleasurable moments, where does it feel overwhelming and where can you hang out at your edge to find enjoyment?

The lesson of finding my edge was presented to me one evening on a very high dose of psilocybin. I took too much; during the first four hours, I was just tripping. While it was visually enjoyable, I was disappointed. It lacked the meaning and realizations I was seeking from the medicine journey (my prior experience was full of beautiful realizations surrounding how I could open my heart to connection).

Then, everything changed. I was in so much pain and discomfort and all sensations became overwhelming. I realized that I couldn’t just exit the experience—the only way was through. I wanted to be anywhere else, but I couldn’t leave, I had to sit with it.

And in that, I learned to hold myself and find comfort in just being. There was no need to freak out, it wouldn’t change anything. So I just held myself and comforted myself. And came back to the sensations I felt within my body, it gave me something to focus on. And I needed the physical stimulation to focus, or I would be lost to the overwhelming experience (IYKYK).

Most people would consider this a “bad trip” but it was so beautiful because I chose to surrender to the lesson I needed (not wanted). I learned I am fucking resilient, I trust myself to hold myself in any situation, I always choose how I react, I can be thrown off the edge and climb back simply to sit and observe my edge.

Now, I lovingly greet my edge. When I find myself in physical pain or discomfort, I come back to myself and explore the sensation. Where can I find enjoyment or wonder just for that fact that I’m feeling sensation? Where can I surrender deeper into the experience? Where can I let go of the stories and expectations of an experience to sit in full presence?

Ayahuasca and Activation of Priestess Energy

On the topic of psychedelics, I spent part of my summer in Peru to sit with Ayahuasca. She greeted me like an old friend, coming on gentle, like a shiver down the spine. I had many profound moments that I plan on sharing at a later date, but what is really relevant to this article and embodiment, was her in my face activation of my priestess energy.

My second ceremony was intensely sacred. I pulled two cards beforehand and both of them were to the tune of reveling in the beauty and reveries of how far I’ve come. This ceremony was definitely a reflection of that. I was hit with profound reverence over and over again. Everything about it had me weeping or dancing in joy, but the most profound was the way I kept blessing myself, my body, my feet…

I was reminded that my body is so sacred. I’m so grateful that this is my vessel that carries me through life. My body is truly the microcosm of Mother Earth and the cosmos. I am another manifestation of her. I treat my body in reverence as the temple that it is. I walk through life deeply cherishing my vessel—in every moment. My body is the temple I have the privilege to call home.

The only option is to treat myself with sacredness, recognizing that the way I treat myself is the way I treat everything. I now hold myself in such reverence, that everything that comes into my consciousness is also held in sacredness.

This is the secret of priestess energy. This is what creates devotion, for not many hold themselves as a temple, let alone expand that reverence to also hold others.

Similarly, I also felt the embodiment of the wise woman. I know that I am already her—age doesn’t matter. Through the icaros (healing songs sung during ceremony), I was told I am the medicine. Not only for me, but for all others too. My simple presence is medicine when I let myself shine fully and be perceived by others. By giving permission to be my full self, I give others permission to embody themselves fully and without judgement in my presence.

Next Level Energetic Experiences

It took me a long time to realize that consciousness is expressed through physical embodiment. Maybe that sounds like a duh. But I realized that I can access altered states of consciousness through being in my body, rather than trying to escape it.

This is where the topic of embodiment merges with spiritual expansion. I’ve written about this in relation to enlightenment before, to reiterate:

We are incarnated to fully experience the human experience. While we are here for our soul’s evolution, our soul evolves by experiencing. Experiencing the experiences so deeply it’s both painful and blissful. This means falling deeply and irrevocably in love… with self, with others, with nature, with that which you train your eyes on. This is living life to the fullest, living the path of the heart.

Life itself is the psychedelic experience. There’s no need to search outside ourselves for anything, we contain the universe within ourselves. Life is the game we are playing, so play it to the fullest with an open heart. This is the taste of enlightenment we are all seeking, this is accessing the bliss state.

We are meant to be so deeply human. We are meant to experience the full spectrum that all of life has to offer. We are meant to fall in love with, and be deluded by, the melodrama of life, and then transcend it to embody the creator we were born to be.

Embodiment has enabled me to have next level (and sober) energetic experiences with consciousness. I have many lived experiences of the energy within me feeling like a lava lamp. Consciousness bouncing around in dizzying spins, expanding beyond my edges to merge will the all.

The body is a direct source connection. Feeling into the body enables us to reach altered states of conscious simply by being. I offer the experience I had at my first proper kundalini class. It was one of the most surreal embodied energetic experiences I’ve had.

There I was sitting in a class full of people and all of a sudden, I lost the border of my body. Sitting in total stillness, I started to flow with the energy in the room. I was not moving, yet there was a strong current spiraling through me and the room. I could physically feel the energy all around and had the realization that I was holding the whole room in my consciousness—the concentrated energy of others were pinpoints of light surrounding my physical body. I was playing in the energy.

When I got home, I jotted down the following:

To be so present, so fully in the moment. Embodied in self. Feeling self totally. Your awareness begins to expand. All senses are heightened and felt acutely throughout the body. You can sense the energy around you, behind you. You feel the current of the energy and flow with it. There’s notable resistance when you try to hold still against the energetic flow. But total stillness is required. The heartbeat and breath lead. Stillness of mind, thoughts are on full presence and sense of the moment.

This passage was a “download” moment of being able to explain how to access a state of expanded consciousness. It takes total embodiment in stillness and total presence in the now. Letting go of the mind to tune deeply into the heart with the breath as an anchor.

Embodiment: Co-Creator of Life

This attitude toward embodiment has grown to proliferate everything in my life.

Take the way I dress as an example: I believe clothes are decorations on the holy temple that is your body. I dress in reverence and as if preparing for the worship of life. I adorn myself with clothing and jewelry, infusing sacred energy into my garments simply by being intentional when choosing an outfit. One of my favorite “uniforms” is an oversized graphic tee and biker shorts… even in my most casual presentation of self, I still carry the energy of intention. It doesn’t matter what I walk out of the house wearing, the process in which I chose the decoration carries the creative energy of my being.

After spending so much time learning to be physically in my body, I learned that was just what could be seen on the surface of embodiment. The bulk of the iceberg of embodiment is energetic in how you experience yourself experiencing life.

Embodiment makes experiencing life more beautiful. To feel your life force energy so innately, pulsing through your being, animating every move… You can’t help but to live in reverence when you choose to live in tune with the cycles of your body, the cycles of nature.

This level of presence and connection to self, is always available, but seems to be hidden away, just out of sight. It takes some work to access. Life often requires us to flow outward, focusing on the world around us at the sacrifice of our internal universe. But the internal is begging to be realized and acknowledged. For it’s through the internal that we access our greatest gifts, dreams, and desires.

This may seem a little counterintuitive. On one hand, embodiment is all about experiencing the senses to fully experience all life has to offer. This dimension of perception is outward focused, as our senses are receptors of the physical. Yet, on a deeper level, this is how we access the present moment through states of bliss. On the other hand, it’s feeling into the body, exploring your internal world to be fully present with the energy that’s flowing through you. This is how you access and revel in the bliss of the moment.

Life has been gentle to me, but it has also forged me through the fire of my soul. Offered me wisdom through experience and deep understanding of the connection of everything. A big aspect of embodiment is the realization of value and worthiness in being. Simply, I feel worthy of being. I ask what would the most extraordinary version of myself do in the moment? Then, I carry that energy with me.

Life is a ceremony. Embodiment teaches us to see the sacredness in everything. Like drinking a cappuccino in the morning, set with intention by blessing the land that grew the beans and the hands that prepared the drink.

Announcement!

If you would like to explore embodiment further, connect with me on Instagram @SoulfulMadi. This is where I post about yoga classes, embodiment workshops, women’s retreats, and more!

I’m also excited to announce that Aligned, the sensual and sexual embodiment retreat I’m hosting this winter with Lillian and Amy, is fully booked! This definitely won’t be the last retreat we host. If this is something of interest, please follow @untamed.untethered for new retreat and workshop announcements!