TO YOUR HEALTH
Embodiment: The Bridge Between Mental Health and Physical Rehabilitation
BY NYLE MACFARLANE, MS, OTR/L
I had a client say to me recently “Nyle, if I am going to work with you, I need you to acknowledge that the mind and the body are the same thing.” It was at that moment I realized the ways in which I have minimized the impact of the mind in my teaching. I work with mental health therapists, coaches, healers, and body - workers who are interested in learning embodiment tools both for themselves and for their clients. The bulk of my teaching focuses on how to bypass the analytical brain, in order to connect to our intui- tive body. Western civilization values logic and reason above intuition and heart-led action, so my job is to deconstruct the emphasis that we place on the mind in order to interpret the wisdom of the body. I specialize in embodiment , which is our natural state of being when the mind, body, spirit, and soul operate as a unified whole. Em - bodiment is a fluctuating state of consciousness that allows our pres - ence to exist in two or more places simultaneously; both within our physical body and within the subtle energy fields that make up the larger template of our human experience. My approach to embodi - ment is the direct result of my own personal healing journey, com- bined with over a decade of training in how the body stores and releas- es trauma, emotion, and memory. Despite the compartmentalization I use when I am teaching, the truth is nothing is separate. The human skin is composed of seven layers, but it is simply known as your skin. Seven energetic layers ex- tend beyond your physical body to make up your subtle energy bodies. Each one contains the entire timeline of your emotional, mental, spir- itual, and collective body, but it is simply known as your Self. In 2020, humanity experienced one of the most significant global traumas in our lifetime. While we all sat in our houses watching the news, our anxieties were triggered by a pandemic that forced many of us to look at the ways in which our lives were not working. In those moments, we became acutely aware of how each one of us has an impact on the larger Collective. Our society has a better understanding of how interconnected we all are, yet we still struggle with feeling disconnected from our own identity and intuitive self. This feeling, our disembodiment, separates us, even when it is evident we are anything but. I believe the key to connection is to develop a relationship with our internal senses first, which will naturally result in an expansion of our outer awareness. In the immortal words of ancient Greek author Hermes Trismegis - tus, “As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul.” Embodiment Versus Disembodiment Embodiment is a tool for making sense of the world. Learning em- bodiment helps us to heighten our interoception , which is our abili- ty to sense the state of our internal organs and systems; as well as our proprioception , which is our awareness of our body’s position in space. Embodiment teaches us how to read our own body like a map, which helps us to pinpoint what feels painful or off-putting, and where the adverse stimuli originates. Embodiment teaches us to recognize when we are out of balance and then gives us tools for coming back to our center. When we are connected to our embodied self, we become a channel for all that occurs both within and outside of our physical environment. We become a beacon for our own truth. If embodiment sounds like a superpower, it is and it isn’t. Embod - iment is our natural state, but it is not something we are necessarily
born with. Disembodiment happens to almost all of us as a result of trauma and/or physical or emotional pain. Oftentimes, we experience these traumas in childhood; and they can happen even earlier, like during your birth or in-utero. Sometimes we carry our trauma in our DNA where it is awakened by our parents and caregivers who model it to us in our upbringing. Disembodiment happens when our energy bodies are disorganized and distant from our physical body. It results in an inability to perceive information from the environment accu- rately in order to create an adaptive response quickly and efficiently. Furthermore, disembodiment happens because parts of our mem- ory become buried in our subconscious self so our minds do not have to play that moment on repeat. The problem is, those memories get buried in the physical tissue of our body and become cellular memory. Now, your body is stuck in that moment and it is signaling to your autonomic nervous system (or ANS) that you are in danger. Your ANS then releases certain neuropeptides that tell your body to run, fight, hide, play dead, etc. After some time, this neuromotor feedback loop begins to exhaust your ANS. The only way to cope is to dim the switch so you don’t have to feel this part of your body anymore. This is when we wish our mind and body maybe weren’t so connected, yes? Mind-Body Treatment Methods The good news is researchers in the field of mental health have created some modalities to help us get out of this feedback loop. In 1994, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist named Stephen Porges devel - oped the Polyvagal Theory, which analyzes the implications the 10 th cranial nerve, known as the vagus nerve or “wandering nerve”, has on our body’s state of regulation. The vagus nerve innervates most of the internal organ systems affected by stress, including our lungs, heart, and stomach. While most of our cranial nerves send signals from our brain to our body, the vagus nerve is special. It sends 90% of its signals from the body to the brain, in order to regulate our social and emo- tional states (Rosenberg, 2018). The Polyvagal Theory contributed to our understanding of the mind/body connection by emphasizing this
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PATHWAYS—Summer 22—9
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