What is Embodiment?
I define embodiment, generally, as how we know through the body and how we perceive or hold knowledge in an embodied way. It is our natural state of being, taking in information, and expression, but it’s also about what it means to us. Embodied knowledge becomes subjective experience—one’s individual, unique perspective—which is fluid and evolving.
We can look at different aspects of embodiment as a way to understand the complexity of our experiences. One way is considering the various sensory systems we have.
Exteroception—the five external senses like sight/vision, hearing/audition, taste/gustation, touch/tactility, and smell/olfaction
Interoception—our internal, visceral responses, especially related to emotion or memory
Proprioception—our sense of having a body and its relationship to space, our environment, or other bodies; our sense of being embodied—I like to refer to this as the body’s intuition
Kinesthesia—knowing and expressing through movement, sometimes included under the umbrella of proprioception
Vestibular sense—inner ear balance, relating to our sense of groundedness and equilibrium
Verbal sense—how we speak, intonate, the words we say; how and what we verbalize is like our own unique fingerprint
Mental/intellectual—thinking, conceptualizing, and imagining
None of these can be isolated or experienced singularly. For example, proprioception is often linked closely with vision and kinesthesia, and our thoughts about what occurs in the body might happen so quickly that it seems immediate. We hear something at the same time as we see it or feel it. To me, it feels like a natural synesthesia where various perceptions flow together, like a sensory orchestra. It’s a complex sensory system of taking in information and how we make sense of our reality, like channels of awareness. We use all channels in varying degrees, some more than others, and some more fluidly than others.
Each of these channels can be expressed through different planes of reality which makes things even more complex: the physical or more strictly biological expressions of the body, the emotional/sensory/psychological, or the ethereal plane of existence that can be described in myriad ways. My focus is more attuned to the sensory and emotive meaning of our lived reality—the middle realm of the complex sensory system—and what is often taken for granted. Though our lived reality of embodiment is rarely so clearly defined.
The idea of embodiment includes inhabiting the body, being in touch with one’s physical form in the moment, but also understanding the deeper, subtle aspects that hold personal meaning. The complex sensory system of the body is always on, and it always has something to say.
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