Embodiment as Remembering, Resistance, and Liberation

Earlier this year I felt it clearly: I was not able to continue my work without rooting it into something I could truly commit to. The idea of "personal development” lost meaning to me. With everything going on in the world, I couldn't continue repressing the political/activist parts of myself. That is when I came across the practice of "politicized somatics” and everything slowly started falling into place.

Lately I’ve been sitting with a question that has brought both tears and confusion: what am I committed to? What do I want to do with this one precious life?

For a long time, every time I tried to answer, nothing would come. I felt blank, as though the answer was missing in me. And yet, during a recent somatic centering practice (Strozzi Institute lineage), something simple and raw surfaced with quiet emotion behind it:

I am committed to living. To showing up for this Life.

At first, this answer felt almost too simple, too vague. But as I listened to others reflect on their own commitments, I realized something was stirring deeper in me. When Prentis Hemphill spoke about their commitment to the work of embodiment - and how the disconnection from body and feeling has allowed systems of oppression to thrive - something clicked.

I began to see more clearly: the work of embodiment isn’t only about feeling free or more alive in our personal lives, though that is a necessary step one. It is about remembering and reclaiming what has been taken from us. These systems that we live in - systems of violence, oppression, extraction - depend on us being disconnected from our bodies, from the earth, and from each other. If we were truly in touch with the fullness of our aliveness, we would never agree to continue as we are.

So when we practice embodiment, we’re not just engaging in personal healing. We are participating in collective resistance.

To breathe, to feel, to move, to live from the wisdom of our bodies is to loosen the grip of these systems. It is to say: I will not be numbed, I will not be disconnected, I will not forget.

Centuries ago, this work might not have been necessary. Living in communion with the earth and with one another was once the natural state of things. But because we were forced to forget - because that connection was severed - this is now work we must actively reclaim.

And I feel, even if it hasn’t fully landed in me yet, that this is why I do what I do. Why I hold space for embodiment, why I return to the body again and again. It is both the most intimate commitment - to truly show up for this life - and the most political one: to rebuild the connections that patriarchy, white supremacy, and colonialism tore away from us. 

Embodiment is remembering.

Embodiment is resistance.

Embodiment is liberation.