You might be thinking, “What does Embodied Connections mean?” In its simplest form, Embodied Connections is founded in a strong dedication to creating, improving, and fostering healthy relationships. We are surrounded by relationships and they are unavoidable. We have relationships with ourselves, our family members, co-workers, community members, strangers…and the list goes on. Whether it be a stranger or our partner, we have choice in how we relate and interact with each person. When we show up in relationship, we are made up of many components including our body and its sensations, our cognition, and our feelings and emotions.
Many times in our highly cognitive and busy world, we dissociate from our bodies or just completely disregard them. We are walking, talking, thinking, and texting heads! When was the last time you checked in with your body? Perhaps when it was causing you pain? When was the last time you acknowledged it is something more than the vessel that gets you from point A to point B? For most of us, we have lost touch with our bodies.
Why is this a problem? The short answer is that it leaves us falling short when we try to fully show up in our relationships. We have become unaware and unbalanced of our body’s reactions and how they can inform us of what is happening on a deeper level. When we are disconnected from our bodies, we run the risk of becoming disconnected from ourselves and our partner/s. We also run the risk of over-riding the cues and clues that our bodies give us through our subtle (or not so subtle) sensations.
Here is a simple and common example of this: Have you ever had to make a decision and you had a “gut feeling” that it wasn’t a good idea? Maybe it was an awkward sensation in your stomach, or the fact that it made you cringe every time you thought about it? For whatever reason, you successfully talked yourself into it. In the battle of cognition (thinking) vs. body (or gut) your cognition triumphed. Only later to realize it would have served you more to listen to your gut. As it turns out, your “gut feeling” is a real thing! Your stomach has an incredible amount of nerve cells in it, so much so that in neuroscience, it is often called your “fourth brain.” It really can inform you of something that goes against your best interest. We can become better listeners of our body`s wisdom if we make the time to do so.
If our bodies have the ability to inform us, why not learn the language of the body? The body has its own wisdom. THIS is what Embodied Connections is all about, a reconnecting to ourselves in a way that explores and expands how we know ourselves as a whole and how we can bring our whole selves into relationship. It is integrating for the first time, or re-integrating, a holistic approach for feeling more alive, better knowing yourself and your partner, and creating healthier relationships.
Embodied Connections 