Body Control vs Body Wisdom

I spent a lot of years thinking I was embodied because I spent all day working with my body as a dancer and circus artist.

I had control and attunement to the muscles of my body and an ability to move and flow... and this is a super valuable and healthy thing...

But- there is also another kind of body wisdom that I was seriously underdeveloped in.

Somatic intelligence

Somatics is about feeling from the inside and being attuned to the subtle signals of the body, generally its an attunement to the nervous system and the signals of sensations.

Most people in the world are seriously underdeveloped in this area of intelligence because of our modern life focus on the external and appearance rather than feeling and intuition.

I remember my first ever coaching session, when the coach asked me where in my body I felt my disappointment and frustration. I was super confused. 'I feel... frustrated. I don't know where!'

Yes, but how do you know what frustration feels like? Where is it located? What is the felt sense of this emotion, and what does it want to say?

It took years to develop somatic intelligence to be able to attune to the subtle sensations within my body, to be able to pull apart the THOUGHT about an emotion from the EMBODIED EXPERIENCE of an emotion.

Now it's second nature that I am consistently attuned to the subtle shifts in my system... to notice the moments when I go from parasympathetic states into activation... to notice the contraction when there is a boundary and the opening when something feels right.

This is all part of embodied intuition - our ability to literally FEEL what is right for us, moment by moment.

Somatic intelligence allows us to be deeply in touch with the present moment through our body and to be able to expand our range of our emotional and energetic landscape.

And it's a whole other skill to body control.

Working on Somatic intelligence is essential to really heal trauma and to awaken the body fully. We need to learn the language of the body so we can be in an empowering relationship with ourselves, moment by moment.

Come learn these skills in Sensualist Essentials, my latest course ❤️