Embodiment
Page 16
“No other person has had a bigger impact reclaiming “embodiment” for the mainstream as Mark Walsh. In his new book, Mark compassionately shares embodiment with a disembodied world, in a way that is pithy, personal, and profoundly relatable. Mark makes embodiment as accessible as reaching around and grabbing your own ass with both hands. I say get this book and cop a feel!”
– Miles Kessler, meditation teacher, aikido sensei, director of The Integral Dojo
“Mark has established himself as a significant player in the world of embodied movement, and in this book we can understand why. Part autobiography, part discourse, he uses his life to illustrate how we become fragmented and how we can become whole again. Through poetry, bullet points and streams of consciousness he provokes, implores, and cajoles us to move, feel and respond fully to life.”
– Peter Blackaby, yoga teacher, author of “Intelligent Yoga”
“Mark Walsh’s work is a recognition of the body as the site of being, and an extremely well-articulated guide to how to reconnect to the body. Mark’s work has provided an invaluable guideline to how to generalise insights from physical practice to life in general that has been incredibly valuable for my own work. I had been friends with Mark for years before I attended his course, I knew him as an irreverent, confrontational, light-hearted and brilliant character; but discovered his teaching was far more powerful than I expected. I am super grateful for my friendship with Mark and the deeply enlightening work he is sharing with the world.”
– Rafe Kelley, founder of Evolve Move Play
Our times are wild, wonderful, weird and warped. We are both the luckiest people who have ever lived and the most alienated, confused and overwhelmed. A “consensus trance” dumbs us down, but we can awaken from it in many ways. None is more immediate and tangible than awakening from the pervasive illusion that has so many lost in thought, imagining the body radically separate from consciousness and all that is sacred. Mark Walsh recognized this as an enormous opportunity, and he has seized upon it with zeal, gusto and wide-ranging intelligence. In Embodiment, he gives voice to a joyous, angry, sensual war-cry – the body ferociously reclaiming its primacy in a disembodied world.
– Terry Patten, author, “A New Republic of the Heart”,
co-author “Integral Life Practice”
1 A meal of many small dishes found in Spain.
2 Could also potentially be called “flow”.
3 Credit to my Russian embodiment colleague Tonya Osipova for the idea for this list.
4 The philosophy of being.
5 Credit to embodiment teacher and author Francis Briers for the term “brain taxi”.
6 Credit to the BMC KLC community in North Carolina for the one.
7 Somatics also somewhat confusingly refers to a specific school of therapeutic bodywork developed by Thomas Hanna.
8 See the appendix on mindfulness for more on this.
9 Referring to forms of dance done with conscious awareness, as a kind of moving meditation. E.g. 5Rhythms, Movement Medicine and Open Floor.
10 Includes Feldenkrais and The Alexander Technique, which are two very influential early embodiment forms.
11 Google Kelly Mullan, who has done a PhD on this. Though we see some things differently, she’s done a lot of great research on the topic, as has Martha Eddy.
12 Coloured larger version of this image and other images available at www.theembodimentbook.com, and a bonus chapter can also be found there.
13 Such as Bonnie Bainbridge-Cohen’s Bodymind Centring, Dylan Newcomb’s Uzazu, or my own work.
14 Credit to John Vervaeke for the term “ecology of practices”.
15 This also relates to the embodied intelligence model previously introduced (see p.34).
16 Credit to Wendy Palmer for this method.
17 Wheelchair users can apply the exact same principle, too.
18 Credit: Paul Linden.
19 Credit to Systema teacher Matt Hill for this one.
20 Cuddy has had replication issues with proving the physiological basis of her work, but replications do show that people taking such poses both feel and are perceived as more confident.
21 Inspired by the work of Richard Strozzi Heckler.
22 While usually it’s essential for partners in embodied training to willingly participate, simply seeing someone as human and noticing them and yourself interacting is ethical and allowable, in my opinion!
23 See John Vervaeke’s work on ways of knowing, as well as the neuroscience of types of learning.
24 Credit: George Leonard and other aikido teachers inspired some of this.
25 Credit to yoga teacher, Gary Carter, for predating my use of the term “movement movement”.
26 Count the number of times the word “practice” (noun) / “practise” (verb) is used in this book to understand its importance for embodiment!
27 I’m not sure of the origin of this phrase, though it was used as a mindfulness book title by Jon Kabat-Zinn. It sums up the inescapable nature of embodiment nicely, though.
28 demo’d by Daria Walsh for those who are curious by the way.
29 Note: “fold” in FFFF is also sometimes called flop, and other variations of “F’s” exit in some systems, such as “friend” and “fawn”.
30 These are the kinds of “pen and paper” personality tests common in business
31 See Portia Nelson’s excellent “Hole” poem for another useful perspective on traps on the path.
32 A state of psychological stability, undisturbed by emotional pushing and pulling. Credit to Shinzen Young for this pairing.
33 Search “Mark Walsh 4 Elements” on YouTube for visual demonstrations.
34 But please don’t hear that I’m devaluing the kink scene, which in fact can be an exceptional place to learn about boundaries, consent and embodiment, if done consciously. The kink world was actually well ahead of the rest of us in many regards.
35 See also the EFC website for more tips, videos and free resources for coaches. https://embodiedfacilitator.com/
36 Much embodied work follows the Western tradition of working with an aversive (FFF) response, but fails to recognise the grasping/craving response, which is very similar, but triggered by what we like! Surprisingly, these two responses are very similar physiologically. Buddhism of course works with both aversion and craving.
37 Trickily neither verbal nor non-verbal indicators of consent can be fully trusted as many people have been conditioned to try and please irrespective of their actual wishes. I teach students to err on the side of caution however and take a maybe (e.g. when someone says yes but flinches) as a no. The key thing is really that facilitators are consent aware and tuned into an ethic of consent, not that a rigid rule is applied.
38 The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence – a UK governmental organisation that assess treatments for public funding.
39 This could be a good definition of an embodied approach to leadership in fact!
40 This piece is a condensed version of a free e-book available on the EFC site https://embodiedfacilitator.com/shop.
41 Jonathan Haidt is excellent on this topic.
42 Credit: This piece is influenced by ontological linguistics, which I encountered through both The Newfield Network and the Strozzi Institute.
43 One of the earliest Western somatic approaches that works with posture and how we do whatever we do.
44 From the Hebrew word “Ashkenaz”, referring to Germany, and a member of the Jews who lived in the Rhineland valley and in neighbouring France before their migration eastward to Slavic lands.
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