by Mark Walsh
• Do you have awareness of, and education in, diversity and inclusion issues? Note: this does not mean fully taking on the current West Coast/far-left/postmodern view and language, but to have considered these issues and spent time developing one’s understanding for different group’s challenges and needs.
• Can we really teach embodiment well from a sense of lack and scarcity? Are you copyrighting and trademarking to fence off a small corner of this field? Are we really so poor as to just protect our little piece of the pie?
On the last point: we have to make a living of course and I appreciate it isn’t always easy. However, there are now ways to have your cake and share it too. By giving, we get. Modern marketing and spiritual wisdom are surprisingly aligned. The internet can scale our skills and offer much to people for free. Peer-to-peer is the future. Empowering students and putting this work out there benefits us all.
I have just “open sourced” the Embodied Yoga Principles system meaning that anyone can use it, which I see as both a stand for a desirable way of living, and also just common sense and good business, in a age where nothing can be controlled anyway, and where profit comes from letting good ideas spread.
THERE IS NO AUTHORITY IN EMBODIMENT
There is no authority in embodiment.
The embodied fields access truth through direct experience only. That’s it.
What such and such important teacher said is at best a guide (yeah, me included). Lineages and traditions are pointers, but frankly a lot of them are full of crap. Giving authority to a guru is disempowering, dangerous and misses the core method of any embodied field. Status doesn’t matter.
A practice being old (“ancient teaching” my arse) or brand new, isn’t relevant.
How many years you’ve made the same mistake over and over again isn’t relevant.
Whether a practice comes from another supposedly more “spiritual” culture isn’t relevant. Stop with the fucking Sanskrit, Japanese, Tibetan, etc. You’re just adding a layer of complication. Again, it’s just status claiming.
Put your bloody brain scan images away too. Neuroscience doesn’t prove shit; it just describes it another way (that isn’t helpful for embodied practice). Focusing on what “science says” reeks of insecurity (and it’s very likely you’re not qualified, anyway).
Now, I don’t want to suggest a kind of obnoxious, teenage postmodernism in all this. It’s not “just my opinion”, and there are differing experience levels. I am, however, making a case for experiential learning, being the centre of embodied arts.
FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS
The following are a few extras that could be considered “advanced” considerations for those already deeply into this work. Skip it if newer to embodiment, or come back to it in a few years if you like.
EMBODIED CONTEXTS
Here’s something that’s usually not considered when connecting with people across the globe virtually: the differing embodied contexts we’re physically in create a disconnect. I had this insight talking to a friend in Goa yesterday. I felt the difference between tropical India and rainy Brighton as a subtle barrier between us.
While reading this, you’re in a different place and a different time to me. This means that there are different forces working on you now than on me. Your context is different, so you’re different. We don’t have a shared embodied substrate to help smooth the differences between us. It’s really quite strange and humans didn’t evolve for it.
DON’T LISTEN TO YOUR BODY – AKA THE BODY ALWAYS LIES
As an embodiment teacher, I’ve been encouraging people to get in touch with their bodily selves, and therefore their values, compassion and intuition, for years. Recently however, I’ve started to hear people say that their reason for doing some piece of bullshit or another, was because they, “listened to their bodies”.
While the body can be a source of deep wisdom, its primary response to any situation is conditioned craving and aversion: basically being a jerk. Greed, fear and anger tend to be what we tune into in the first instance and being pushed around by these forces isn’t so great. Without the ability to self-regulate and listen deeper than the fight-flight-freeze (FFF) response, well…you’re just being bossed around by your inner toddler. Well done, hippie.
It’s also just a great excuse. When I asked a social justice princess why she engaged in some obnoxious behaviour recently, or when someone else I know broke a promise and I challenged them on it, their responses that they, “listened to their bodies”, was a great fucking get-out clause. You can’t really reason with that, right? There’s no discussion because there’s no logic or further evidence needed. It’s like a new, “God says I’m right”.
So, listen to your body, yes – but with great care. It’s easy to fool yourself or to use the body as a scapegoat for shitty decisions, if not.
THE NEW BARONS OF TRAUMA
When I started learning about trauma, it was an unusual thing to be aware of in embodied communities. I’d come across the realities of it when doing humanitarian work in various war zones, so had become interested in it personally. My main mentor, Paul Linden, happened to specialise in this field too. His work with aikido is pioneering and still not mainstream in martial arts.
Trauma used to be something of a fringe interest, frankly. About ten years ago, I started sharing basics with groups I worked with, such as aid workers, soldiers and coaches. It seemed a huge blind spot. This took me to such places as Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Ukraine. When I started working with yoga teachers, the general lack of trauma awareness shocked me – in particular, the disempowering “guru knows best” culture and the utter lack of consent for intrusive adjustments. Since then though, things have changed.
Celebrity trauma teachers however now pull in the crowds and £££€€€$$$s. Where “trauma sensitive” was once a polite request for professionals to increase their awareness and apply some basic consideration, more recently it’s become a tyranny. This, combined with the diabolical “safe space” culture coming out of US universities (#triggered), makes me worry about where things are going.
Now, sensitivity is weaponised as a form of control, and victimhood is seen a virtue, if not a religion41. Being a “sensitive” teacher has gone beyond what UK law would call “making reasonable adjustments”, to avoiding all activities that could be potentially upsetting for someone. Assuming basic grown-up resilience now makes you a bad person. Damaged people stalk the world acting as hurt tyrants. I feel sorry for them and hope they get help, but I won’t be dictated to by them.
For many, the concept of “trauma” has spread to include merely being upset. Emotional “safety” is demanded. What the hell does that even mean? Where it means that a teacher shouldn’t abuse or discriminate, then great, I’m with you 100%. However, it’s started to mean that nobody can have an unpleasant emotion at any time. It’s started to become synonymous with “offended” (another word used to control), and it’s becoming a way to criticise all but the most egg-shell-walking teachers. I had a complaint once that there was a mirror in a training room I was using and I was called “trauma insensitive” for not covering it. Now, mirrors in a room aren’t ideal from an embodiment perspective, but is it seriously that big a deal? If someone is literally scared of their own reflection, maybe they should be in 1-1 therapy and not in an educational environment for professionals! I assume basic adult robustness – this is reasonable.
There will no doubt be hysterical cries of “horrible mean man!” in response to this piece, also I’m not looking for sympathy here as that isn’t a currency mature adults trade in. I’m not competing in the Sacred Victim Olympics. I do however understand trauma a little, both personally and professionally. I’d argue that the culture of making traumatised people almost holy, and insisting on unreasonable accommodation, doesn’t help anyone. Also, when I work with people in genuinely unsafe environments, they have very little time for those co-opting these concepts and using them for social pres
tige and point scoring, which is the heart of this matter. A return to common sense, please!
CAN WE BE TOO PRESENT?
Language is how we coordinate action over time and space, rather than through our embodiment. Language is how we get shit done, and while it always has an embodied component (we can be predisposed to “lean” towards “yes” or “no” for example) it is also more than this. Bodily mindfulness in the moment is not enough to be a functioning adult, so we should be a little cautious of embracing embodiment as the one complete answer to everything!
Embodiment and mindfulness enthusiasts need to work with linguistics because an obsession with the present moment can make people really bad at making commitments (promises of future action), declarations, keeping commitments (honour your word, hippie!) and generally organising stuff with other people. “Go with the flow” can be very low integrity, and the present moment can be a kind of comfortable trap, after a while.42
SLOW VERSUS FAST BODYMIND LEARNING
There are two roads to embodied learning: the long slow road and the short fast road. Both have pros and cons. As I was practicing aikido yet again last night (it’s been 20+ years), I was reflecting on the beauty and depth of this long-term relationship, as well as the incredible ineffectual illogic of it!
The slow road is traditional embodied learning, like studying a Japanese martial art or a classic yoga form. You practise for many years, without explanation and little or no cultural or individual adaptation, and just randomly have insights (which you aren’t given space to process). There’s no explicit attempt to transfer the skills you learn into your daily life; the idea is that you just do enough of it and it becomes part of you. This type of practice isn’t particularly goal driven and you pick it up mostly intuitively.
The advantages of this way of learning are that it’s deep (working at the level of being), free flowing (which leads to unexpected wisdom), richly embedded in a heritage that’s part of the learning, and requires surrender and patience. The disadvantages are that you can waste a lot of time, be abused, deepen neuroses by picking the wrong practice in the first place, confuse the package for the essence, as it’s all mixed up, and sometimes never get the life transfer (we all know the black-belt and flexible yogi arseholes).
The fast track means working very consciously around a clear aim, with modern teaching methods adapted to fit a particular group. In this way for example, I can teach a business group centring in 30–40 minutes, as opposed to the learning being embedded in years of aikido training. Very few people do this well yet, but it’s emerging as an alternative to the long slow road.
The main advantage of the fast track method is that it works! It’s practical. People today are busy, and rapid skill learning is extremely helpful to them. Real life transfer is often better with this method, as cultural trappings are stripped away and bridges to daily living are consciously built. This method avoids the sin of wasting people’s precious time. Clarity of language and method is central here.
A disadvantage is that it may be somewhat shallow; the focused, goal-led nature means that the random fluctuations and confusions of a broader practise (often where the real gold lies) are missed. Another disadvantage of this method is that people may not value what is so accessible and clear. Climbing a mountain to meet a meditation guru and downloading an app in two minutes each lead to a very different practice commitment! Equally there is little community immersion, which is how a lot of the implicit lessons are socially “caught” in traditional learning. People learn from contact with people, even if that learning is not conscious.
Combining both is, of course, possible and wise. It’s best done with a bit of integral, non-fundamentalist guidance in choosing one or two core, committed, old-school practices, supplemented with modern skills work to enhance and supplement them. One or two centres of excellence for embodied learning like this are now emerging – see for example Mile’s Kessler’s Integral Aikido Dojo in Tel Aviv. It’s a dream of mine to create a centre where multiple traditional arts are taught with a modern embodied slant. In the meantime, educating students in this approach so that they can engage intelligently in whatever they do, is also effective.
PERCEPTUAL EMPATHY
Moods
It’s obvious to most of us that we empathise with other people and can “catch” their moods. If you’ve ever, say, sat next to that angry guy on the train or been “infected” by the joy of children, you know that.
This effect is a part of how teaching yoga (or whatever) through demonstrating, works too. Watching a teacher actually primes your body for the movements, as you’re mimicking them on a micro-level. Likewise, gentle physical strokes can serve as adjustments by merely “suggesting” direction to our bodies.
Moving objects
We can also catch embodied “instructions” from moving objects. We map pretty much anything onto ourselves, actually. We “taste” the world this way. The motion of whatever we see, or even just imagine, shapes us. For some nice examples, watch a plane take off, a waterfall cascade, or a cloud dissolve and feel this. This effect can be used deliberately.
Alexander Technique43 teacher Bruce Fertman has done this by subtly opening our posture through looking at spheres moving like cogs. My local Alexander teacher Mark Claireaux does it by asking me to look at arrows on a picture. Paul Linden uses this effect in martial arts too; a high level aikidoka can unbalance you with empathy! I sometimes use it when I teach yoga; the gentle, natural quality of movement it can lead to is more desirable than the grosser “doing”.
Shapes
In fact, we can all be seen as a subtle set of intentional directions. This is one way to look at character. So, it’s more accurate to say our personality is a movement set that can be interfered with by other vectors (classic Paul Linden again). We’re also subtly “instructed” by the shapes of our environments. Expansive views expand us, high ceilinged cathedrals ennoble us, straight lines and yoga mats cage us, and curves soften us. The places we live in enter us and influence our manner of being. Shapes shape us.
How do you find movements and environments influence you?
MORE PERSONAL MOMENTS
Embodiment is by definition deep and personal, and perhaps a few more stories from my own life will help illustrate some key ideas in this book. Here are a few more snapshots and personal moments to conclude.
LOSE STRONG
– On the way to Poland, April 2017
People keep telling me to be strong. They mean the best of course, and I’d like to reply in a few ways.
The first is that I am strong and have worked on it. Thanks for the reminder. Twenty years of aikido, meditation, yoga, sobriety; volunteering with traumatised soldiers, kids, persecuted gay people; and generally staring at life’s rougher side – wasn’t for a fucking laugh. Neither the muscles nor the praise matter. What matters is being strong enough to speak at your father’s funeral, or to make sure the work that you love doesn’t suffer when you suffer. What matters is being strong enough to let your wife see you cry and let her be the big spoon for a while. Strength is spitting gratitude in the face of pain, humour in the face of despair, and celebration in the face of loss. This is strength. This is the muscle to build.
Another reply is: Please let me be weak now. That’s if “strong” means having to be always on top of my shit, not feeling and not grieving; if it means denying the reality of heartbreak and the gift of deep mourning. Fuck you, if being strong means some loss-denying, positive thinking abomination. Life is about the shadows too, you sigh-puking, eye-contact-raping, white-wearing, spiritual by-passing motherfuckers. And fuck you, if being strong means some dictated, masculine ideal of invulnerability. Let me be weak for once. I’ve tested my courage and proven my worth. The salt in these tears doesn’t answer to erectile insecurity.
Lastly, I’d reply that none of us are strong alone. As I’ve taught to aid workers in a dozen hellholes, we’re inter-resilient. “I” is never, ever strong.
“We” is strong. The myth of the lone, rugged individual in tough times just causes more suffering. In this spirit, I also deeply appreciate all the messages of support since my father died and the inter-strength of the remaining family. Special muscular hug to Polish Pete, who I was a live-in aikido student with, and who just lost his young wife Kasia to cancer. We slept on the floor, ate cheap food, had cold showers and were beaten senseless every night. Good times. Now these are bad times, and while we ain’t quite as young, lean or mean now, we’re still warriors. “This is what we trained for”, he just said to me. Respect.
See you at her funeral, brother.
A KISS
I kiss all of her with all of me
I taste
The salt of her blood, sweat and tears
Between her legs
I kiss the body, with the body, as a body
A gentle respite for a cracked heart
Awareness bringing sweetness to this insulting march
I kiss all of her with all of me
Pleasure bringing life, bringing us home
To
One body
AS I TRAVEL HOME FROM MOSCOW…
– Moscow, December 2017
Many of us have felt like we don’t matter. That we’re not wanted. That we don’t have a right to even exist. That we have no safe home.
Even with my confidence and bravado, this is true for me at times. For students with abuse histories and difficult personal backgrounds, it’s usually true, and it’s certainly present for people from persecuted groups. I was deeply touched last night when a member of the LGBTQ+ embodiment training in Moscow commented that the greatest gift of practise was simply to be. This is not a given for many people.