Embodied Transformation
This phrase speaks to me from my own experience.
I first began practicing yoga in the late 90's. Slowly I became more aware how yoga affected me. It wasn't a supple body or sense of calm, it was more like a revelation of what my physical body was capable of and how this positively affected my mind. At the start as I dipped my toe in, I realised that just 10 minutes of yoga in the morning gave me a feeling of well being the whole day long.
In the early 2000's I began having Psychotherapy, it was the therapists who used a mind body approach that came along on my path. They encouraged me to sense into a situation, an old story or experience. Yes! I said I can feel it, perhaps it was a tightening in the throat as I remembered how my voice had been stunted in my teenage years.
I realised that the practices I was drawn to Kripalu Yoga in which I certified as a teacher in 2003, Focusing and Movement Shiatsu They all have something in common, there is permission to remain with what is there, not to judge, to explore and maybe to invite what is needed.
From there the phrase Embodied Transformation encompasses my own transformation and when working with others. As Eugene Gendlin discovered when the feeling or thought was grounded in a Felt Sense , there was more opportunity for any change to become embodied.
Embodiment isn’t about sitting in the head and paying attention to the part of you we call the body—it’s about fully inhabiting the intelligence of the body and attuning to the world through it. ( Philip Shepherd)