Currently, in our culture, there is little value placed on 'embodiment.' That is not entirely surprising. For one thing, it is difficult to commodify, and thus not quantifiable. It requires in-depth exploration, in a culture that values quick satisfaction. Also, I think embodiment as a way of being is a dangerous prospect for the powers that be, because an embodied person is difficult to control. Embodiment makes it difficult to override intuitive cues and live outside of alignment, so hypnotic tactics become less effective. This is part of what I love about the work of guiding people to embodiment / awakening experiences... the revolutionary aspect.
Embodiment is a buzzword miss-used by the self-help community and a few other fringe communities, though it is impossible to say what they think it means. Some people take it to mean 'a better version of X or Y.' As in, less conceptual, more experiential. For instance, embodied lovemaking or embodied dance.
What embodiment is, what it means, and what it makes possible can only be discovered experientially.
For most, before it is experienced, it needs to be taken on faith that it is something worth pursuing. I have pieced together a process that leads to greater embodiment in 99% of clients, the Budden Process. But, in order to take the leap, one would have to believe me, or the past clients who have given their testimonials, or some other source.
My radical solution involves using the client's body as their own field of awareness and orchestrating constellations of sensations that are inescapable. I then coach around the perception of these sensations, and support in emotional processing. The results is always a deeper connection to life, through the body, than ever before. The true result is more vitality, more aliveness, more joy, and, perhaps most importantly, enhanced leadership of self and others. Awakening. The time it takes to translate intention to reality shortens, to paraphrase Werner Erhard. As Carl Rogers put it, we increasingly become 'architect of self'; a deliberate creative force, rather than a passive, reactive force.
How I Found my Legs
I felt my own legs for the first time when I was thirty years old, doing a similar type of work. A practitioner was touching the edges of my calves, while asking me questions about what I felt, and my history. When I sat up, I looked down, and for the first time, I was connected to what I saw. I felt the flow down through my toes. My feet appeared radiant, in a way that was difficult to describe. It was a mystical experience. Tears of joy filled my eyes. Because, where there had been incompleteness before, there was now a sense of wholeness.
What was amazing was that I'd never even realized that I had not been connected to my legs. Consciousness was limited in them one moment, and the next moment, they were full again. I'd been acutely aware of was the tendency toward 'emptiness' and depression generally. I thought it was the product of the way my mind had been working, or perhaps biochemistry. It wasn't. At least not entirely.
Had I felt incomplete because I had disconnected from parts of myself, literally?
I'll go into why people disconnect from their lower half in other posts. Suffice it to say that trauma brings energy up in the body, and sweeps the legs out from under us, as Peter Levine puts it.
Orchestrating Awakenings
This process of my legs coming online was something of an awakening. For me, awakening and embodiment are confluent. Embodiment is the expansion of awareness, and awareness trickles into the unknown corners of the somatic space.
When I say that I offer experiences of embodiment, I use the term 'embodiment' as an experience that is perennially unfolding, which implies that only so much can be demonstrated in a given time span, no matter how long it is (some sessions I've done have taken four hours).
I think I have created one of the most profound introductions to embodiment that exists. I'm humble about it, in the sense that I stumbled upon it (or it stumbled upon me). I've also diligently worked to refine it.
For years, I used these Budden Process sessions as forays into the unconscious, and laboratories of the human experience. What I discovered was that, where embodiment begins, linear reasoning ends, and whatever is bound up in the system shows up. Old unconscious belief systems, pre-conscious memories, archetypal memories, oceans of sadness, etc. They do not show up like images, but the body often regresses entirely into where it was. Time dissolves. This is why a trigger can throw you backward in time, to when you were 5 years old, facing down a bully or a parent.
One does not tread lightly into the somatic space. The unfolding is so vast, so ineffable, that it easily and effortlessly topples all we thought we knew. In the clearing, anything is possible. The sense of self expands.
If staggering possibilities overwhelm you, you are in the wrong place.
In Truth,
Steven Budden
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