Imagine ... Unlocking the Wisdom of the Body and Embodying Mindfulness.

Since early 2025, Imagine Mindfulness has offered a new mindfulness course, Unlocking the Wisdom of the Body (previously called Mindfulness Embodied). In this letter, I would like to share a little more about how I understand “Embodiment”, and what role it plays in the world of mindfulness. One way to think about Embodiment is imagining yourself performing in a theater production and reaching that moment where the remembered lines and the nervousness and the audience itself disappear and what is left is the pure “fully being in the role”. In that moment, one doesn’t need to think about how it is to be that particular character, one IS that. However, this ability to fully embody a character also plays out in daily life. Take a moment and think about all the roles you are playing. Perhaps you are an employee, or a manager at work, then a parent, partner at home, a friend, a sibling, an engaged activist, the coffee lover that makes time to talk to the barista, the list goes on. Can you see that you might be different in each instance? It doesn’t matter how small or big this difference is, only notice that it is somewhat different. Perhaps you slip into this role like into a cozy glove, click, and here you are … embodied.

Or think back at something you have been learning about, and perhaps you found that at a certain point it sort of unfolded suddenly into your lap and you just knew how it worked. There was most likely a certain time frame preceding that, the practising part where there was you practicing and the thing being practiced. When embodiment happens, there is no distinction between those two, there is only the fluid movement of being one with the knowing of it. In the same way, when mindfulness practice becomes embodied, there is no longer an active component of “practising”, one becomes the mindfulness itself. It can last short or long, it can become a regular way to be, or can disappear for a while. I have experienced all the above. What connects all of those is this sense of “falling in” and being it, not doing it.

With this understanding, what does it mean then to have an embodied mindfulness practice? What is the felt difference between mindfulness and embodied mindfulness - if any? This is definitely highly personal, so answers are in a way limitless. My teacher Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen says that it is not easy to understand the experience before experiencing it. Sometimes there is an experience without the understanding, sometimes we can put words on it, sometimes not. What is clear, is that for any practice to become embodied, it is impossible to be able to just understand it cognitively without the bodily experience. In my personal experience, there is a different layer of understanding when embodiment happens. I write specifically “happens” because one cannot really do anything about it. It is about being -and in a way falling into it. Only when I’m in it do I know and can I say: this is what I have been reading about, hearing about, practicing to do.

Can you recall a moment of embodiment? How did it feel? How and when did you know? If this hasn’t happened in your practice yet, please don’t take it as a sign of lack of experience or something that has to be achieved. We are doing ourselves a great disservice by creating “should's” and comparisons, the world being already full of it, so I would love to leave it outside the mindfulness field. Take it as a piece of information, a type of experience, and with this in your mind, when it happens you will know. You will most likely know on some level anyway, here the offering is to have a label for it. 

If you want to explore this topic more with me, join one of the the Wisdom of the Body (Mindfulness Embodied) courses that will be scheduled throughout the year. More info here.

• Barbora

  
  

(Lead Instructor and President of Imagine's Board of Director)