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John O’Donohue says:

“Our bodies know that they belong to life, to spirit. It’s our minds that make our lives so homeless.”

Most of us spend a huge part of our lives living from the neck up. Thinking about what needs to happen next, replaying what has already happened, worrying about things that may never happen, looking at our phones and moving from one thing to another. Our bodies are there carrying us through all of it, but often we are not really inside of them. We can eat without really tasting. Listen to someone while thinking about what we are going to say next. Walk outside without noticing the temperature of the air or the feeling of the ground beneath us. We can move through an entire day without ever really arriving in it. And I don’t think we always realise how much of our life we miss when we live this way.

What does it mean to be embodied?

Being embodied is not some huge, mystical state that we have to achieve. It can be incredibly simple. It is noticing when we are tired. Feeling when something inside of us tightens or softens. Recognising what drains us and what brings us alive. It is tasting our food, feeling the air on our skin and noticing the people who are actually here with us. It is being in our lives rather than always thinking about them.

Our bodies are speaking to us all the time, but they don’t speak through long explanations. They speak through sensation. Through warmth, heaviness, restlessness, openness, contraction and ease. The difficulty is that many of us have become so accustomed to overriding these messages that we barely hear them anymore. We push through tiredness. We fill every quiet space. We distract ourselves from anything that feels uncomfortable. And there are very understandable reasons why we do this. Sometimes being in the body does not feel easy. Sometimes there is grief, fear, anger or pain there, and we were never taught how to stay with those feelings. So we learnt to leave.

Coming home to the body is not about forcing ourselves to feel everything all at once. It is about rebuilding that relationship gently. Listening a little more closely. Respecting when the body says enough. Giving ourselves time.

How Yoga helps us come home

This is one of the things I love most about Yoga. Our practice gives us a space to step away from all the noise and begin listening again. We notice the breath. We feel the weight of the body. We become aware of the places where we are holding, resisting or trying too hard. Sometimes the practice feels peaceful and profound. Sometimes it feels messy, frustrating or even a little boring. But all of it is part of learning how to be present with our actual experience, rather than only wanting the parts that feel lovely. The mat becomes a place where we can practise being with ourselves. Not fixing ourselves. Not trying to transcend our humanness or become some better version of who we are. Just becoming more intimate with what is already here. Remembering that life is moving There is something about coming back into the body that also brings us closer to the truth of impermanence. Everything is changing. Our bodies change. Our lives change. The people around us change. Even the things that feel as though they will last forever are moving, slowly, into something else. That can sound like quite a heavy teaching, but I don’t actually think it is. I think it can wake us up to our lives. When we remember that none of this lasts forever, we might listen a little more closely when someone we love is speaking. We might notice the light coming through the window, the sound of the rain or the warmth of the sun on our skin. Not because we need to live with fear or urgency, but because we begin to recognise how precious it is to be here at all.

Embodied Presence is really about that. Coming out of the constant thinking, planning and rushing, and returning to the life that is already happening.

Coming back into relationship with our bodies.

Coming back into relationship with ourselves.

Coming home.