Embodiment. We hear that word more and more frequently nowadays. And there’s a good reason for it.

Have you ever seen or talked to someone, who mentioned they did like 29 ayahuasca ceremonies, yet they still seem to be quite confused and divided in the way they live their lives? That’s realization/insight without embodiment and integration.

That happens to all of us, to varying degrees. When it does, we tend to stay in the realm of the mind, of beliefs and concepts. We may talk about truth, without actually living it. That’s the difference between a spiritual teenager and a spiritual master. The master speaks not from his mind, but from the space of Presence. He doesn’t have a sense of being right or knowing about something. Truth speaks through the master, who simply surrenders to Divine intelligence.

Embodiment mostly happen in daily life, through a committed practice of feeling emotions and sensations (somatic awareness), instead of thinking. A daily yoga or meditation practice helps. Movement and dance helps. Taking a few moments at work to breathe and feel your emotions when stressed helps.

It’s all about feeling.

Our current culture, especially in the west, have put the mind on a pedestal and have denied and almost forgot about feelings. That’s a big reason why we’re in such a mess. We have used our mind to rationalize, criticize, and deny emotions. We have disconnected from our hearts.

There’s a simple reason this has happened. We’ve experienced difficult things in the past, so painful that we went up in our heads, in order to avoid the intensity of emotional pain. However, when we keep living like this, the pressure accumulates, causing stress, and often leads to illness. We have to practice to come back to our bodies, to re-embody. When we do that, we may feel old pain, and old memories may resurface. We may want to find a therapist or some kind of support to help us in this process. But eventually, we release the old pain, and as we do so, there’s less and less pressure and stress. We can again start to experience a range of emotions that we forgot existed, like joy, awe and wonder, excitement, love, etc.