We Are All Embodied Beings
by K. Studd (2019)
Embodiment is a current buzz word (at least in English) these days. And many workshops, programs and classes promise participants to become “embodied”. I believe I understand the sentiment however; we are all already embodied beings by the fact that we exist as human being-bodies. Our bodies are both the content and containers of each of us. We live in them and through them. We construct ourselves through our body-being, through sensing and moving. Our understanding of the world is fundamentally an embodied experience. Even our capacity for abstract thinking originates in our physical engagement with the world through the actions of our physical form.
We start our lives as an undifferentiated whole, a state of “being”. Then as we grow and develop, we differentiate our “self” from “other”. In this process we move from a state of “being”, into a state of “doing”. And we then begin the ongoing process of becoming ourselves as we negotiate the reality of our physical experience. This is the process of moving through the world as we both cope with and master our environment. Through this process we differentiate ourselves and in essence create ourselves through the choices we make as we engage with the world. These choices are the choices of our physical embodiment – the expression of our presence in the world. Becoming aware of our moving selves allows choices that can best support us, as we act and interact in the life-journey we each are endowed with as embodied beings.