The Importance of Embodied Relating

A few years ago I was asked to speak at an event at Gorton Monastery in Manchester - thirty minutes to explore what embodiment actually means in practice.

After much pondering about what I could share with only 20 minutes, I decided to use the common experience of 'shaking someone's hand' as an exploration of Embodied Relating.

I asked people to shake hands with someone - just as they normally would. Then I took them through exercises to wake up their whole body, and then to focus specifically on inhabiting one arm, one hand. They shook hands again, this time from that place of being present.

The responses were immediate and varied. Some people felt sadness surface. Others experienced anger, warmth, love, a letting go of tension they hadn't known they were holding. Others felt anxiety or fear. A few blanked out entirely. Some walked away.

All of this from a handshake.

What is Embodiment?

Embodiment is a term used to describe our capacity to be in contact with our own feelings, sensations, impulses and thoughts. Embodied relating is what happens when we bring that quality of presence into connection with another person. The depth of internal connection determines the depth of external connection.

The degree to which we are embodied is, I think, the degree to which we are alive. To be disembodied is to be cut off - from feelings, from physical sensation, from the here-and-now experience of being, in the moment, and in contact with what is actually happening. It also cuts us off from our wisdom. Our ability to sense ourselves and others, physically and emotionally, and the information we need to make good choices.

Shortly after this event, whilst writing about this experience of sharing embodiment and embodied relationship, I found these words from Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (1976):

You can eat without tasting; it is not difficult.
You can touch someone without touching;
it is not difficult;
We are already doing it.

You shake hands with someone without touching him
because to touch, you have to come to your hand,
you have to move to your hand.
You have to become your fingers and your palm, 
as if you, your soul, has come to the hand.
Only then can you touch.

You can take someone’s hand in your hand and withdraw.
You can withdraw; then the dead hand is there. 
​It appears to be touching but it is not touching.

This isn't only about handshakes or physical contact. It's about the quality of attention we bring to everything.

So, maybe, right now… bring attention to your hand. Inhabit it. Be there. And from that place - feel the world around you.