Embodied Presencing
How do we access our wholeness in a world that teaches us as small children that some parts of us are bad and some parts are ok? How can we find connectedness when we feel incomplete within our own being, like something is missing? How can we feel a deep quiet, a safety and a trust in life when the world around us is in such chaos?
The Split
In Embodied Presencing we work with a concept that my teacher, Kim Lincoln, calls ‘the split.’ The split can be between body and mind, between masculine and feminine, between left and right, between humanness and enlightenment. But the number of ways that we split is infinite. Our culture sets us up from the beginning to separate from our wholeness.
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Sometimes we split off from parts of ourselves during traumatic events and encapsulate those pieces in order to make the trauma more bearable. Sometimes the split is between a part of us that is still unsure whether it is safe to exist and a part of ourselves that longs to step into a meaningful life. The split can be between the part of you that trusts your inner voice and the part of you that tells an old story that runs through your family lineage. We might split off from anger because we have a belief that anger is bad. We might split from our creativity because in 3rd grade a teacher told us that we were a terrible painter. There is no end to this list. I could go on forever.
This is a deeply humbling part of being human. But it is also a universal part of trying to navigate a human life in this part of world and this period of time. You are not alone in your separation. Next time you go to the grocery store, child’s school, dentist office, nearby park...look around. Every. single. person. is in their own version of the split. We are set up for this split, right from the beginning of life. For most of us, we are born in buildings, wear clothing, use furniture, all of which have the effect of separating us from nature. Many of us are trained by our caregivers to value intellect, to inhibit wild behaviors, to work hard to “succeed”. We learn we are valued and receive love by meeting certain social cues, expectations, or by being cute, or smart or funny. We conversely are shamed for getting angry, needing quiet time, expressing big energy. Science has declared that the mind is in the head. Religion has declared that the body is about sin. The study of anatomy randomly differentiates deeply integrated parts into separately named structures, proclaims their individual purposes, and in the process completely disregards their essential relatedness.
What is Embodied Presencing?
Addressing the Split.
Embodied Presencing is a way to begin to acknowledge this split within each of us. We bring our awareness into the body and allow the body to guide us to the places that are ready to be woven back together. We talk to the wisdom of the earth through the body. We talk to the brilliance of the mind through the sensations in the body. We access the deep wisdom of the subconscious mind by talking to the body. We start to notice the connections that exist and sustain us. We start to bring awake-ness to the deep separateness that unconsciously keeps us in old familiar patterns, making the same mistakes again and again. And we bring to all of it a deep Love.
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We bring a kind of curiosity, openness, trust that these cut off places are the doorways to our wholeness, to our meaningful lives, to our fulfillment as the beautiful human beings that we came into this world to become. We befriend our child selves. We reweave our split, thread by thread. We explore the inner world for the gems of wisdom that are waiting to illuminate our beings. And we find that the preciousness of our own existence has not been damaged by this journey, but made all the more beautiful.
Let’s save the world.
This work, I believe, is the grassroots effort that each of us can be contributing to this world in crisis. When we are in kind and loving connection with this most innocent human reflex to split from the things that we don’t know how to make sense of, when we commit ourselves to finding ways to love the unloveable within, we come to life and others with a new kind of compassion.
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We learn to hold that more than one thing can be true at the same time. We learn a kind of flexibility that opens us into curiosity and inquiry rather than an immediate reflex into resistance. We begin to see and trust the interconnectedness of things that may not initially seem related. We come to know that each being, ourselves included, has an important and unique mission to contribute to this world and we feel passionate about supporting the unfolding of that for each other. These are some of the necessary building blocks to repairing our collective split. We can each make this contribution to our world.
Start Now
Do you want to start working with the split right now? Here are a couple of videos to get you started.
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“The Four Directions” by Kim Lincoln
By presencing the four directions we are learning how to hold more than one thing at the same time. It allows our nervous system to begin to integrate what it initially thinks of as differences but that will soon show us are they are just parts of a larger spectrum.
“Managing Overwhelm”
A meditation to guide you towards meeting a big energy in your life, holding two things at once and stretching into more of your innate resilience. Watch Now ▶︎