EMBODIMENT
the body keeps the score
Dearest Seekers,
Having returned from much travel and preparing to embark on more, I’ve been deeply focused on being in my body — swimming, walking, Pilates, dancing, chanting — all as ways of staying present in my body and strong enough to weather this upside-down, rapidly changing world.
Following that same inner call — and perhaps yours too — Monday’s group (October 13th at 7.30pm) is about embodiment: staying in our bodies, going into the places where old energy is stored, and gently releasing it.
Over the years, I’ve trained in many modalities, and right now I’m embarking on my third — a transmission-based practice that I hope to share with you in early November before I leave again. Yet no matter what else I explore, I always return to breathwork. It’s one of the few truly somatic practices where people can release stored grief, pain, and trauma from deep inside the body.
Holding space for that release — as hard as it sometimes is — is something I deeply love, because I’ve experienced hours of that same cathartic letting go myself. As I near completion of my training to teach facilitators, my focus is on deepening the space I hold for you and creating even greater safety. Hopefully you’ll feel these subtle shifts in our sessions.
I often say that tears are alchemy. They are the sacred gift from the hurt as it leaves the body. There are so few tools that offer any kind of reward for what departs — and yet in breathwork, you can sense the body reclaiming its clarity as the old energies dissolve.
This is work I’ll stay with forever. And as I step into teaching facilitators how to guide others through this process, I feel such excitement for what’s coming. If this speaks to you, let me know and I’ll add you to the list for my first teacher training.
This particular session is about going deep into what’s buried — the grief, tension, and contraction that weigh us down. We’ll invite the body and psyche to reveal what may lie beneath the cranky shoulder or aching lower back. What is Spirit trying to show or say to you? How can you listen more closely?
As Bessel van der Kolk writes in The Body Keeps the Score:
“The body keeps the score. If the memory of trauma is encoded in the viscera, in heartbreaking and gut-wrenching sensations, in autoimmune disorders and skeletal/muscular problems, then healing requires finding ways to help the body learn that the danger has passed and to live in the reality of the present.”
And perhaps most importantly:
“Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.”
That’s what we create together in these sessions — safety. A space where the body can finally exhale and begin to release what it has carried for years, sometimes since before words.
Van der Kolk also reminds us,
“In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way their bodies interact with the world around them.”
Breathwork is one of the most direct and powerful ways to access that awareness.
And this:
“Our bodies are the texts that carry the memories, and therefore remembering is no longer an intellectual exercise but a visceral one.”
This is exactly what we do in breathwork — we enter through the body, not the mind. We meet the story where it’s held and let it unwind through breath, sound, movement, and feeling.
As the saying goes, the issues are in the tissues. Some of what we carry may come from times when we were non-verbal — yet the body remembers, and the body can release.
This is the practice for reaching those places — the unseen, the unfelt, the unspoken.
I hope to see you Monday.
With love,
Emma xxx