Fundamentals
“Your body is the ground metaphor of your life, the expression of your existence. It is your Bible, your encyclopaedia, your life story.” – Gabrielle Roth
“The human body is not an instrument to be used, but a realm of ones being to be experienced, explored and thereby educated” – Thomas Hanna
“A body isn’t a thing to put a brain in, a body is the part of the brain that also does movement” – Mark Walsh
“Mr Duffy lived a short distance form his body” – James Joyce
“If information were enough, Wikipedia would have solved the worlds problems” – Mark Walsh
“Few of us have lost our minds, but most of us have long ago lost out bodies” – Ken Wilber
“Embodiment is the way we are. It is how we do. The purpose of our bodies – specifically our posture, movement, tension and bodily awareness patterns is not just functional in terms of what transports the head around effectively, but is a partial solidification of a set of habits we call ourselves. The way we hold the body, move around, attend and intend through the body, is a way of managing and expressing who we are. The unconscious self, and potentially the consciously created self, is visceral. Our shaping is as much a solidification of past conditions and a way of shaping the future based on these, as an appropriate response to the present. Our physical form is our perceptual, cognitive, emotional, inspirational, relational and behavioural lens – it is how we see, think, feel, create, relate and act. How we move is how we are, and we literally “lean” towards one life or another. Embodiment is not just inhabitation – being aware of the body (implying a separate something that is aware of the body as “it”) but being aware AS a body – the body as I. Becoming conscious of our usually unconscious personal shaping, developing a range of options in this regard, and having the freedom of choice as a result, is what “embodiment” means to me. More poetically, when awareness and embodiment entwine, the body turns from a prison to a question – a question of spirit, of love and of meaning. More concisely, and in the fullest sense: embodiment is the subjective aspect of the body. If this is all been a bit verbose – “how we do” and “the way we are” are as good a definitions as any.” – Mark Walsh
“We sing before we talk, we dance before we walk” – P. Grendrad
“We dance first. Think later. That’s the natural order. – Beckett
Awareness
“Have an in-body experience” – Lynne Forest
“The body is primarily mental. The mind is primarily physical.” – Paul Linden
“No awareness = no choice: Awareness = freedom” – Mark Walsh
“The body is anchored in the here and now while the mind travels to the past and future” – The Buddha
Movement
“Movement is what we are, not something we do” – Emilie Conrad
“We are human movings not human beings” – Mark Walsh
“We are the only animal that can chose how to move” – Dylan Newcombe
“Nothing changes until something moves” – Einstein
“A man should be well danced as well as well-read” – ?
“If you want to move your mind, move. If you want to move someone move. If you want to move the world – move!” – Eiffel
“Move how you choose to be, stand how you choose to live” – Mark Walsh
“Move how you want to feel, move what you want to say, move how you choose to be!” – Mark Walsh
Self-management
“We are the first system we must learn to manage” – Stuart Heller
“If you want to help someone – get yourself together”- Wendy Palmer
Rhythm
“Of what is the body made? It is made of emptiness and rhythm. At the heart of the world there is no solidity, there is only dance…” – George Leonard
“To everything there is a season…a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to reap that which has been planted” – Ecclesiastes 3:2, The Bible
“At the heart of each of us, whatever our imperfections, there exists a silent pulse of perfect rhythm, a complex of wave forms and resonances, which is absolutely individual and unique, and yet which connects us to everything in the universe.” – George Leonard
Change
“Hands are the heart’s landscape” – Pope John Paul II
“My particular bodily form, my particular body feeling, is testimony to my particular character, my particular way of behaving, both psychologically and physically.” – Stanley Keleman
“Power without love is brutality. Love without power is ineffective.” – Paul Linden
“Anatomy is destiny” – Freud
“The body is a bureaucracy of habit” – Heller
“All the terrible things we do to ourselves and others from alcoholism to character assignation to abuse to murder come from one cause: the inability to stay present with an uncomfortable feeling in the body and seek short-term relief.” – inspired by Pemma Chodron
Reading Bodies
“Small children and animals know your mood before you do” – Wendy Palmer
“The body never lies” “the body says what words cannot” – Martha Graham
“Become body language literate” – Mark Walsh
“We move though space like we move though life” – Stuart Heller
Practice
“The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton” – Montalembert
“The body learns through exaggeration and contrast” – Wendy Palmer
“Knowledge is only a rumour into it is in the muscle” – New Guinea Proverb
“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” – Mary Oliver
“The purpose of today’s training is to defeat yesterday’s understanding” – sword master Musashi
”Take what you do seriously but don’t take yourself seriously” – Terry Ezra Shihan
“You can’t change the mind with the mind alone, or we’d all be enlightened” – Wendy Palmer
The Body and The Unconscious
“Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there stands a mighty commander, an unknown wise man— he is called Self. He lives in your body, he is your body. There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom. ” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with” – CG Jung
Body Spirituality
“Your body is a temple of the holy spirit” – Corinthians 6:19-20
“Christ has no body but yours” – St Teresa, christian mystic
“Open thy hand and know that thou art love” – Jesus
“The soul loves the body” – Master Eckhart, christian mystic
“God is closer to man than his jugular vein” – The Koran (50:16)
“This body of ours is a temple of the Divine” – Katha Upanishad, Hindu tradition
“The body is anchored in the here and now while the mind travels to the past and future” – The Buddha
“Relying upon the boat of a human body, free yourself from the great river of suffering”- Shantideva (Buddhust tradition
“Values are visceral “ – Mark Walsh
“To feel yourself, move: to feel God, be still” – Mark Walsh
“The way we treat our bodies, each other and the planet are the same” – Mark Walsh
“The flesh of ourselves and the flesh of the world” – Richard Strozzi Heckler
“The one symbol of God is man, every man. God Himself created man in His image . . . . Jewish tradition insisted that not only man’s soul but also his body is symbolic of God.” – AJ Heschel, (Jewish tradition)
Misc.
“Get involved and get evolved” – Dylan Newcombe
“Corporations need to be reincorporated into the corpus, this is commonsensual” – Mark Walsh
“To touch is to be touched”- Stuart Heller
“Play like dreams serves the function of self realisation” – Winnecott (psychoanalyst)
“We are social relational animals only via the body. Minds are discerning, bodies are connecting.” Mark Walsh
“A relaxed aware bodymind is the conductor of creativity” – Mark Walsh
Check out some of our videos on Embodiment
And here are a couple of articles
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