Embodied Practice
How Embodied Practice Actually Works
Your body stores experiences - trauma, stress, overwhelming emotions - in your muscles, nervous system, and tissues. This isn't metaphorical. When your natural responses (fight, flight, freeze) get interrupted or suppressed, that energy gets stuck in your body.
The anxiety you feel might be trapped fight energy that never got expressed. Chronic tension could be your system stuck in a protective state. Difficulty with boundaries might stem from a nervous system that learnt it wasn't safe to say no. Armouring in your pelvis might be years of saying yes when you meant no.
Embodied practice works with your body's actual responses to help process what's been held.
What We Actually Do
Breathwork - your breath affects your nervous system directly, helping shift between activated and calm states
Movement - allowing your body to complete interrupted responses, express what's been suppressed
Body awareness - learning to track sensations, tensions, and impulses as they arise
Vocal expression - sounds, sighs, allowing your voice to release what's held in your throat and chest
Boundary work - practising saying no, taking up space, protecting your energy
Touch practices - learning to touch yourself with presence, building relationship with your body (when appropriate and desired)
The work is gentle and titrated - small amounts at a time so your system doesn't get overwhelmed. We move between activation and calm (pendulation), building your nervous system's capacity to handle more over time.
Your Nervous System
Understanding how your nervous system works helps make sense of your responses:
When you feel safe and connected, you can think clearly, be creative, relate to others - this is where healing happens
When you feel threatened, you go into fight/flight - heart racing, muscles tense, ready for action
When you feel overwhelmed, you might shut down - numbness, disconnection, exhaustion
Most people cycle through these states unconsciously. Embodied practice helps you recognise what state you're in and gently guide yourself back to safety.
Your body can't relax, soften, or feel pleasure when your nervous system doesn't feel safe. This is why boundaries matter - they're not just psychological, they're physiological protection.
The Body Keeps the Score
Bessel van der Kolk's research showed that trauma lives in the body, not just the mind. When someone's told "stop crying" during something frightening, they learn to suppress natural responses. When you have to "keep it together" after something shocking, the fear gets frozen in your system.
This shows up as chronic tension, difficulty with emotions, problems with boundaries, anxiety, feeling stuck, disconnection from pleasure, numbness during sex, pain during intimacy, hypervigilance or fatigue.
Your body has an innate capacity to heal when given the right conditions - safety, awareness, gentle attention.
Armouring and De-armouring
Every time you say yes when you mean no, your body armours. Every time you push through pain instead of stopping, your tissues tighten to protect you. Every time you perform instead of feel, you disconnect a little more.
Armouring shows up as:
Numbness or loss of sensation (especially in the pelvis)
Pain during sex or touch
Chronic tension that won't release
Inability to receive pleasure
Dissociation during intimacy
De-armouring is the gentle, compassionate process of helping your body soften again. Not forcing, never pushing through, always at your body's pace. As armouring releases, sensation returns, pain decreases, and you can actually feel yourself again.
What Sessions Look Like
We work with what's present in your body right now. Sometimes that's tension, sometimes it's an emotion wanting to move, sometimes it's a pattern you keep noticing, sometimes it's numbness or armouring that needs gentle attention.
Sessions are typically an hour. We might use breathwork, movement, tracking sensations, vocal expression, boundary practices - whatever fits what you're working with.
This isn't about forcing anything or pushing through. It's about creating enough safety for your body to process what it's ready to process.
For Sensitive People
If you're sensitive, you probably absorbed not just your own emotions but everyone else's. Your nervous system might be constantly alert, scanning for others' needs whilst ignoring your own. You might have disconnected from your body to cope with feeling "too much."
Embodied practice helps you distinguish what's yours versus what you're picking up from others, strengthen your boundaries whilst keeping your sensitivity, and use your body's signals as guidance rather than overwhelm.
What You Get
Better ability to handle stress and activation
More capacity to feel emotions without being overwhelmed
Clearer boundaries and ability to say no
More alive in your body, more access to pleasure and sensation
Less chronic tension and pain
Ability to trust your gut feelings and body's knowing
Release of armouring and return of sensation
Safety to feel instead of perform
This isn't about transcending your body or becoming some ideal version of yourself. It's about being more present in the body you have, with all its wisdom and its scars. It's about coming down into your body - because the descent IS the spiritual work.