Conscious embodiment is a series of simple exercises to allow us to more skillful in our interaction in the world, especially when we're under pressure, in action or in relationship. It's based on a set of physical exercises which become easily rememberable metaphors for the unique way that each of us operates in the world. We can easily experience our habitual way of being in the world, which shows itself when we become stressed, and build our capacity for returning to a calm, centred state.
The major elements are:
- 4 part centring practice
- 3 centres of the body - Head, heart and hara
- 3 attentional states - dropped and open & ellipted.
4 part centring
The essence of the conscious embodiment practice is to re-centre ourselves when we recognise that we've not centred. We use a simple 4 part exercise that can be done in a few seconds. The basic steps are;
- Breathe down.
- Balance the field around yourself.
- Relax - use gravity to feel the weight of your jaw and shoulders.
- Ask your body what it would be like if there was just a little more of a quality in your being right now.
We use a number of physical activities to stimulate and therefore experience our habitual pattern and then practice the 4 part centring. As we practice centring, so we become more skillful at it and it takes less and less time. Very quickly it get down to taking just a few seconds, so can be done in the middle of a stressful situation (like when your boss arrives with some unexpected, urgent work!)
Overcoming our automatic response
Since childhood we have all developed an automatic and habitual pattern of relating to the world. This shows itself in habitual bodily postures. CE exercises allow us to experience and therefore learn to recognise these patterns and at that point we are able to make a conscious choice (rather than our usual automatic reponse)
For example, for myself, my habitual response is to hunker down slightly, lean forward, ground my feet on my heels, tense my shoulders, shorten my neck and stick my chin out very slightly. In this way I attempt to 'defend' myself and exert control over anything coming in. The only problem with this approach is that it's very tiring over a long period and doesn't work! Instead, when I recognise that I've slipped back into habit, I can now consciously go through the 4 part centring practice in just a few seconds, re-establish a sense of a vertical core, relax the breathing and breathe down, lengthen my solar plexus and back neck muscles and feel a greater sense of spaciousness and control of myself and less of a need to control the outer situation.
It's partly in the brain!
If we were to look at our responses from a neuro-biological point of view we can see that when we perceive some kind of threat or stress our fight or flight response is activated. This is not at a conscious level and will cause us to react in our habitual manner. We don't get a choice on whether this happens, but we do get a choice on how long we stay in this response. As soon as we notice it, we can go through the 4 part centring practice and return to our best selves! This is why we say we can't teach anyone to maintain centre constantly, but we can teach you how to return there. The more we practice returning there, the more sensitive we are to not being there - the more we notice when we're not our best selves and in realising this then we can do something about it.
