How to embody more of your soul
Happy 2025! Do you ever come up with a theme for your new year - a word that expresses what you want to focus on?
This year, my word is Embody. To bring more of who I truly am into myself so I deeply embody my inner authority and my leadership.
In the past, my lack of embodiment has been an annoying, nagging thing that I kept trying to fix. Now I see it as the human condition, and I have more patience and compassion for myself and others. I’ll explain…
What is embodiment & why aren’t we embodied?
Embodiment means your Soul is grounded into your body. This doesn’t happen as deeply as it naturally would be because we live in a chaotic world that traumatizes us repeatedly - creating tension and a lack of space within us.
A few pervasive sources of trauma: fetal trauma while swimming in our mother’s womb, trauma from the harshness of birthing in a hospital, focus on conformity at school, violence in the media, processed food, abuse, intergenerational trauma.
We wisely create coping mechanisms to never touch the depth of our pain - and being disembodied is a part of how we do this.
Signs that you’re not embodied
Unstable sense of self
If your sense of self isn’t anchored inside your body, it can change and fluctuate. You may be indecisive - easily swayed by other people’s opinions and ideas. Your state of being changes depending on your environment and the people you’re with.
Emotional reactivity
You get easily triggered and react instead of calmly responding when someone or something upsets you.
Lack of clarity & connection to gifts
It’s difficult to know the next step in your life. You feel blocked from contributing all you want to, from actualizing your mission
Lack of physical presence
You drop things, bump into things, aren’t aware of where you’ve left your keys, etc.
How do you become more embodied?
Practice nervous system regulation. Try a few minutes of a simple breathing technique where you allow your exhale to be longer than your inhale. Or pausing throughout your day to notice your inner state of being. This helps you slow down, stay in your center and be more present for yourself and others.
Love Yourself. How you talk to yourself, think about yourself and treat yourself matters. The more you allow Divine Love in, the more you heal the parts that Love hasn’t been able to reach.
Move. Dance, shake, walk. Often.
Do the foundational healing. Work compassionately with your inner children and other disassociated parts. Heal your mother and father wounds. Take a look at the intergenerational trauma you’ve inherited.
Pray and meditate. Expressing gratitude and asking for support, guidance, & healing from the Divine (what I like to call Mother-Father God) works. Meditation can be an opportunity to get out of your mind, connect with the sensations in your body, and receive guidance from your Higher Self.
Why is it important to become embodied?
Once you’re inside of your own body, you’re sovereign. There’s nothing outside of you that can influence you and change your state. That’s powerful.
The more of your Soul is present in your body, the more you connect with your subtle sense perception and your gifts.
And the added bonus is that the more you do your own healing, the more it ripples out to your Family System - to your ancestors and future generations.
If you’re feeling drawn to come up with your own theme and your goals for the new year and you want to be guided through a fun process to get there, check out Molly Maher’s Holiday Council.
One other recommendation… Many people, especially females, have a habit of disembodiment. If you’re like me and you felt unsafe in the womb and in infancy, you may have developed the Leaving Pattern. To stay safe, we learned to energetically disassociate. I highly recommend The 5 Personality Patterns by Steven Kessler to learn about the coping patterns we develop as children: Leaving, Merging, Enduring, Rigid and Aggressive.
Cacao, hapé (sacred tobacco) and other plant medicines are excellent allies for releasing trauma and patterns held in your physical body and light body so that you embody more of your soul. My husband Russ and I hold private retreats with an emphasis on connecting to yourself and to the sacred land here in Taos. We focus on integration during the retreat and afterward so that you bring all of the healing, insights and energetic shifts from your ceremonies into your life.