by Mark Walsh
1. Dating
This is the stage where you try different arts, get advice and introductions from friends, and generally “flirt” with different practices.
Stage risks: missing this stage and “moving in” too soon, or doing this forever, so not getting the benefits of further stages.
2. Initial commitment
You can’t just “play the field” forever if you wish to get the real benefits from anything, you need to commit to it at some point. I’d recommend for at least three months several times a week if possible, to really get a good taste. It’s best to either not start or to at least see this period out into stage 5.
Stage risks: doing this stage too early or not at all
3. The “honeymoon”
The first bit is easy, as you’re motivated with a goal in mind (but don’t really know what you’re doing). Most people actually go too hard at this stage, due to enthusiasm, so some guidance is helpful. You don’t need pleasure or discipline at this stage, which may feel like it’ll last forever.
Stage risks: injury/overwhelm from enthusiasm + ignorance
4. The dip
After 3–4 weeks, life gets in the way, habits reassert themselves and the initial drive wears off. This is a danger period for quitting too soon and where three things are needed:
a) You need to remember the bigger picture of what you’re doing and hold this firmly in mind. “Discipline is remembering what you love”.
b) You need to find pleasure in the PROCESS, before satisfaction in outcomes is forthcoming. Enjoyment is 100% your friend and people simply never continue practices they don’t like! Pleasure is a NECESSITY.
c) You need social support (e.g. a gym buddy) or a coach. We’re social animals and this really helps maintain practice, especially for more relational people. Public declarations to impose social pressure at this stage may also be helpful!
Stage risks: quitting
5. Results!
After 8–12 weeks, changes show, people start to notice and the change is more self-sustaining. If you stop before this point you’ve wasted your time. There are however always micro dips (plateaus and down days), so discipline and pleasure are still essential to maintain. Keep some focus here or have reminder rituals, as momentum alone is not to be relied upon.
Stage risks: premature celebration and loss of effort
6. Habit
At this stage things get easier, but … any practice will also have a slow, near imperceptible, but steady reduction in results, as your homeostatic mechanisms kick in, as well as reduction in motivation correspondingly over time. At this stage, there’s normally a creep towards less effort and a kind of comfortable mediocrity that gradually reduces results. Usually every 5–6 months a “boost” is needed, like attending an inspiring seminar, and changes need to be made to enliven the practice and keep it fresh. You are now “married”, and Friday night sex gets boring unless you mix it up.
Stage risks: stagnation
7. Identity
In time, a practice will become part of your identity. This is natural and makes it more easily sustainable, as it’s not just what you do: it is you. This can take 1–2 years. At this stage the risks are losing track of why you’re doing it at all and it becoming a meaningless ritual, or even not realising it’s no longer the right practice for you. People can get very attached to their practices and not realise they are focusing on the
finger pointing at the moon not the moon itself, to steal a phrase.
Stage risks: not quitting/attachment
8. Zen Mastery
There is a freshness and simplicity on the other side of complexity and habit. At this stage the practice itself is simply a vehicle, and becomes fully alive, spontaneous and rewarding. The danger of doing many different practices is never reaching this “deep well”. Note: anyone who thinks they’re at this stage, isn’t ;-)24
HOPE, ENCOURAGEMENT AND HARD TRUTHS
THINGS TO REMEMBER
• You can do this
• It matters
• I love you for even trying
HOPE
I am a super “heady”, ex-addict, embodiment idiot. I had depression, PTSD and still have a bad attitude, let’s face it. However, I ended up benefitting deeply from embodiment, teaching it and writing this book on the topic. If I can make this journey, then so can you. There is hope.
Do not insult yourself with the cold comfort of pessimism, or enjoy the cheap pleasures of cynicism.
ANOTHER HOPEFUL THOUGHT
Empathy is bodily, not a thought. Most people who appear stupid or even evil to us, have simply lost touch with themselves, and this state is not permanent.
NEVER WASTED
No moment coming back to the body is wasted
There is no end and you’ve started already
You can’t be bad at this
…And did I mention that I love you for even trying?
Please continue
YOU ALREADY KNOW THIS
It’s already happening and you already know this: the “movement movement”25 is afoot! The reason that the ideas in this book likely make sense, despite my disordered and sloppy writing, is that you already know them. Embodied understanding is in your bones. It’s your birthright and actually it’s blindingly obvious. I have made a career of reminding people, perhaps, or clarifying some small mix-ups, but make no mistake: there is nothing that’s mine in this book. Every time you take a breath, your body knows that it knows.
As the world seems to spiral into disembodied madness, we also see a powerful return to feel reemerged. It’s easy to call mindfulness apps or commercial yoga classes shallow, and there are indeed risks in what could be gateways becoming travesties. However, the popularity of these things point to the beginning of the end for the cognocentric, hyper-cerebral world view. The re-enchanting, re-embodying of the world has already begun…and may even be inevitable. Embodiment is a birthright that is reemerging, sometimes clumsily or even painfully yes, but being reborn none the less. The revolution has started.
A VISION OF AN EMBODIED WORLD
I can imagine a world where bodymind or embodiment education is a normal part of growing up, where embodied systems such as yoga, martial arts, meditation, trauma release…are taught as standard in schools, and everyone has access to the benefits of them. A world where everyone, not just an elite who can decode the jargon and afford the fees, is able to return home to their bodies. I can imagine a world where doctors prescribe yoga and nature connection, where teachers meditate daily with children, and where businesses have their own dojos. Actually, I can easily imagine all these things, as they are already happening, in some places, at least.
Do not allow this to seem strange. Remember that once, most people couldn’t read and write, except for an elite caste. Now most can. Today, most people aren’t yet somatically “literate”, but this need not be the case. Dare to envision a world where embodiment is not exceptional, where the extraordinary has become commonplace, where our special tools are taught as basic foundations for living.
An embodied world would be a much better world for reasons that I hope are becoming clear. I imagine this world because it’s possible and because I’m feeling low today and need to perhaps. There are many things the world needs, and there is no one solution to the challenges that we face, but I know that a reunion with the body is part of a healthier picture. It feels worth dedicating myself to. When I imagine the IMPOSSIBILITY of war for deeply feeling people, or the IMPOSSIBILITY of child abuse for the empathic, or the IMPOSSIBILITY of environmental destruction for the connected…well, then I smile and get back to work.
EMBODIMENT IS CLOSE AT HAND
In an aikido class just across town, the sensei whom I’ve known for fifteen-plus years was teaching about “centre”. His teachings were closely aligned with those I recently witnessed at an exotically packaged retreat in the Colorado mountains halfway across the world. The irony struck me of running around the planet
to be told the same stuff as by my old friend up the road past the fish and chip shop. The local aikido was far more accessible than any I found in Tokyo, too, albeit in somewhat less appealing surroundings and without the sexy foreign trappings. But the basics of breath, posture, movement and listening are always enchanting.
I don’t listen to my local teacher, and pack my bags again for another trip.
I rarely make it to the classes of some of Brighton’s world class yoga teachers, one of whom is literally teaching in the next street along. And they all have quite small groups here. Similarly, I myself attract far bigger crowds of students in Moscow than in London, and my colleague Vilya from there is given an exotic status here! “Prophets have no honour in their hometowns”, and all that. What does this mean for the home of embodiment I wonder?
Taking this deeper: embodiment, of course, is the most obvious and most literally “at hand” thing there is. We’re running around manically looking for our jugular veins! We’re taking hundreds of exotic, distracting new lovers, not realising that it’s our wife of deep self that we really love. Trying to find “out there” what’s “in here”, trying to solve an inner problem with an external solution (close to a definition of addiction by the way). We’re all a bit foolish aren’t we? Maybe it’s time to just smile, breathe, hug the wife, and do the class in my own home.
HOW EMBODIMENT HAS ENRICHED MY LIFE PERSONALLY
Writing about embodiment can seem abstract, so this piece is about the more personal benefits of embodied training, just from my own personal perspective. This work has brought massive benefits to my own life over twenty+ years. Likewise, I often hear positive things from my students that aren’t related to their professional learnings. For example, recently a Norwegian student told me that the Embodied Facilitator Course (EFC) saved his marriage.
Here are some of the ways embodied training has enriched my own life outside of the professional context in which I use it daily:
Trauma and addiction recovery
I might as well dive in at the deep-end. Embodiment from my first explorations of the martial art of aikido to the present day has been a journey of healing. Embodied practices has helped me overcome trauma and has been an integral part of my sobriety journey over the years. For example, the self-regulation skills of centring are very, very useful when this ability is damaged from trauma and addiction.
Learning how to rest
Self-care did not come easily to me, but embodied practice has taught me a kinder, gentler way of treating myself. While I still burn brightly, I can now take rest and enjoy my life all the more as a result! I see many students take this journey too, as pushing too hard seems a sickness of our times.
Intimacy
Embodiment helps us connect, first to ourselves and as a result we can connect more deeply with others. I’m sure the profundity of my intimate relationships and friendships has been hugely enhanced by embodied training. Honestly, I couldn’t imagine being married without it.
Finding purpose
Staying true to my values and deeper “calling” has been a result of tuning into myself through these practices. With students, I also see people align to what really matters to them through the body. The ways purpose enhances one’s life are huge, and this impacts on many of the other areas mentioned.
Helping me run a business
Embodiment not only is my business, but it also helps me run that business. From skills around staying motivated and focused, to managing stress levels, to uses in marketing and sales, embodiment is a huge business help.
Makes me sexier
There’s no doubt about it, getting in your body makes you sexier (if not modest). I joke to students that this is an unpleasant side effect of practices and often hear things like, “My wife likes what this course is doing to me”.
Immunity to consumerism
We live in wonderful, but also sick times. Coming back home to the body gives a certain immunity to the madness of disconnection and consumerism that drives the modern world. Embodiment is a radical act that is also deeply linked to my politics and social change activities outside of paid work.
For the hard times
To paraphrase the late great Zen teacher Michael Stone, “Practise today, as you literally have no idea how life will call on you to serve tomorrow.” I have certainly found that when the shit really hit the fan in my family (for example, my niece being born with a life-threatening condition, or when giving the eulogy at my father’s funeral), I was bloody glad I had embodied practices to support me. During the challenge of managing an extended, painful forced separation from my Ukrainian wife due to visa issues, I was glad I could both cry fully and get my shit together for the next call with our lawyer.
Great friends
The greatest gift embodiment has given me is not work superpowers or kick-arse resilience; it’s the people it has put me into community with. We see this on the Embodied Facilitator Course, and it’s something people are often pleasantly surprised by. Embodied training has given me life-long friends, amazing colleagues I don’t mind working with for 14 hours a day; and of course the beautiful, wise wife who started as my interpreter in Ukraine (with whom I am now happily living in the UK).
THE BODY CAN REMIND US OF A FEW IMPORTANT THINGS
• What we actually care about
• That we’re not alone
• That we love
• That we’re part of nature
• Of God
• And through all that…that we’re alive and that we’re not things.
THE PRACTICE PARADOX
There is nothing to get right and nothing to do. And if you don’t practise, you won’t get anywhere with this.
A good response to this paradox is to smile and get your mat/cushion out, then to smile again at your audacity.
THE HERO’S JOURNEY
The hero’s journey of the modern age is prioritising feeling, learning and self-care over escapism and addiction. Nobody “has time” for meditation, nature, reading or yoga. The heroic make time; they prioritise, sacrifice and stay up late / get up early. That’s it. If you want easy solutions, look elsewhere.
SIMPLE, NOT EASY
The good news is that embodied practice is simple; the bad news is that it’s not easy. I think you actually know both of these facts in your bones, though. If not, wait until the quick fixes and weekend workshops have failed you, then come back to practise26.
RADICAL SOMATIC RESPONSIBILITY
You’re mostly your fault. Admit it.
When people complain about their bodies and emotions, they tend to miss the central fact: true accidents aside, they’re usually the cause of what they’re complaining about!
When someone says: “I have a bad neck” for example, what they actually mean is “I bad my neck”. It was their use that caused the problem – at least, the majority of the time. Sure, there may have been less direct causes, like them learning a movement pattern from society or whatever, but they still moved their neck that way.
Emotions are also bodily actions that we do, as my teacher Paul Linden has pointed out. You didn’t get angry as a passive victim of circumstance. You do anger in the body. Emotions are unconscious choices, but choices, nonetheless. People getting offended is another example of this. No, you did offended, and that doesn’t buy you any rights.
This is critical, because until responsibility is placed back firmly where it belongs, no change is possible. We must first admit that we alone are doing something. Only then are we in a position to stop it and choose another way.
A new definition of kindness
A radical insistence on responsibility need not be without heart. It doesn’t require a moral tone, and less direct causes can also be considered. Likewise, it doesn’t absolve us of kindness as a moral imperative. It is not victim blaming. Our own behaviour and the society we create are important conditions surrounding the inner somatic choices people make.
A new definition of
kindness might include creating the best possible conditions for people to acknowledge their own responsibility. Increasingly, I come across victim creation and even celebration, often as part of politically correct dogma. This is one of the most vicious things a person can do, because it robs people of the possibility of change. Real kindness looks at people straight and says: “How can I help you change what you’re doing?”
Feel free to be triggered. That’s you, too.
SOME SPECIFIC APPLICATIONS
Embodied training can be applied to anything, as “wherever we go, there we are”27. The body is always present, always involved, and therefore embodiment is useful in all contexts. I have applied the work to everything from corporate team building to resilience training in war zones. Aside from my “bread and butter” work with coaches and yogis, I have worked with street-kids, politicians, senior police officers, lawyers, bankers, soldiers, TV stars, tech geeks, angry chefs, abuse survivors, single mums, opera house wig makers…I could go on! Actually, I always take jobs with novel groups just to check embodiment can help all kinds of people, but I’m running out of new groups these days! I’m also aware that much of this little book could seem a bit abstract, so here are some examples of specific applications of the work to help you. Browse whichever are relevant to you personally and skip the rest. Feel free to share them widely, especially the sections on peace and trauma which I sincerely hope spread to become common knowledge as soon as possible, for all our sakes.