Your embodied brain or body-brain is fundamental to how you experience, react, remember, think, form intentions, and act.

It contributes more to your whole intelligence than your head brain.

What’s the Embodied Brain

You may know it as the body-brain, embodied brain, embodied cognition, body-mind, or embodied mind. But, for our purposes, they’re the same.

While the brain and mind are not synonymous, the two terms are used interchangeably in common speech. A quick internet search will also reveal that the distinction between them blurs because of the numerous theories, models, and definitions held by various scientists, practitioners, and the general public.

For our purposes, we’re interested in the experience, memory, intelligence, and executive functioning held and flowing within the body and dynamically contributing to the creation of our whole mind and whole intelligence. (For more details on embodiment and why it’s so important, see my blogs Why Embodiment is Important For Self-Awareness and How Your Embodied Mind Shapes Your Life.)

3 Ways To Get to Know Your Body-Brain

1.  Link Your Posture to Your Thoughts

The Relationship Between Thoughts and Shape

Our perception and mood affect our posture and how we hold ourselves. These relationships are either innate or hard-wired through repetitive experiences.

In addition, thoughts influence our perception and mood. Therefore, they too shape our body’s responses. Interestingly, the reverse is true as well.

How we hold ourselves orients our mood and how we see the world, events, challenges, etc. This means we can cultivate desirable states of mind (confident, empowered, unavailable, etc) by assuming the associated shape or posture. For example, standing erect with shoulders back and head up.

Numerous studies have tested and to a large extent validated these relationships. If you’re not convinced, experiment for yourself. Assume a slumped posture and downward-facing gaze. Do you feel motivated to engage with others in the room? Does engaging while slouching and turning inward feel natural?

Now open your arms as if to embrace a long-lost friend. Instead of welcoming her, see how it feels to complain angrily while holding this shape. Does this feel awkward or incongruent?

These two examples illustrate how posture or how we orient our bodies influences how we feel, act, and think.

Embodied Thoughts, Posture, and Practice

Get to know your embodied brain in action. Throughout the week, notice whether your posture and shape correspond to how you want to show up in the world and how you want to engage in different circumstances. For example, if you’d like to exude confidence and hold your team’s attention while you speak, how might you use your posture to express this? An option is to be forward-facing, erect, open, and eyes on your team members.

Check-in with yourself from time to time. Notice the inconsistencies between your body and state of mind. Be mindful of your intentions and how your thoughts shape your mood and posture. In addition, note what happens when you make an adjustment and correct the inconsistencies.

If you make this a regular practice, you’ll learn a great deal about yourself through the intelligence of your embodied brain. And, you’ll create greater coherence within yourself.

2.  Explore Movement

Conscious movement is an excellent way to witness and learn how you embody your life in action. It enables you to track where you are in space as you move about (proprioception) and pick up vibrations from sounds, movement, and even the hairs on your skin (mechanosensation). You can also notice the subtle sense (felt sense) of the whole experience from inside yourself (interoception). You’ll become aware of how active, integrative, and intelligent your sensorimotor systems are.

You have countless ways to explore conscious movement. A few examples are yoga, dance, qigong, most martial arts, physical therapy, and even some psychotherapy (e.g., biofeedback and trauma therapy). All offer an opportunity for you to pay attention and become consciously aware of how you, through your body, sense, internationalize, and react to various experiences.

By participating in a conscious movement practice over time, you’ll be able to familiarize yourself with your body’s unique assessment of certain movements, bodily expressions, and experiences: both its receptiveness and resistance.

3.  Tap Into the Your Inside

The third method of getting familiar with your body-brain involves inner-relating. Essentially, you access embodied information by turning your attention toward the inside of your body. Using your ability to sense rather than think, notice subtle sensations and what is trying to get your attention – what stands out. The key is to be present. Be open, compassionate, curious, and nonjudgmental.

As you become aware of sensations, be with them and let them evolve and reveal their completeness and meaning at their own pace. Don’t think through the process. Sense into it.

You’ll find that sensations you pick up will tend to possess the qualities of restriction and discomfort or alternatively openness and scintillation. In other words, what your body wants you to avoid or embrace, respectfully.

With practice, you’ll be able to distinguish between so-called left-brain analytical thinking and right-brain embodied creativity and wisdom, appreciate their distinct gifts, and use both.

In Conclusion

Embodiment science is rapidly evolving its understanding of the structures involved in embodying, their function, and their applications. This science reveals some incredible insights into little-exploited human capacities.

You too can expand your knowledge and experience by regularly intentionally sensing your life from the inside and outside. When you practice, tapping into the inside and accessing your body-mind becomes easier and something you can do on the fly or in the moment. Guaranteed, the more you learn from the incredible embodied resources you have as your birthright, the more inclined you’ll be to use them and trust them.

For More Information or Assistance With Familiarizing Yourself With Your Embodied Brain, See:

• Personal Growth, Energy Healing, and Wellness Workshops. In particular:
  • Getting In Touch With the Body (introduction)
  • Living From the Inside Out (more advanced)
• FREE Guided Meditation Getting In Touch With the Inside
• Why Embodiment is Important For Self-Awareness
• How Your Embodied Mind Shapes Your Life
• Spiritual Life Coaching Sessions