#27 How the Practice of Embodiment Leads to Liberation

Do you ever find yourself toggling between different versions of you, depending on the setting? Some layers have to do with who you think you should be.  Other layers are about who you don’t want to be.  And then in between there are those layers of our most true self and the push-pull tension of giving expression to that.  If you are habitually presenting a curated version of yourself to the outside world, you may find that your inner fire starts to burn lower, and your voice becomes fainter until you are lost in these layers of self.

This episode is about how we can orient ourselves to living lives where we feel free to be ourselves without hiding behind masks or dressing ourselves up in prescribed roles.  

I share:

• How the skill of embodiment can free our self-expression and take us from standing with only one foot in our lives to being all in.
• Embracing the full spectrum of your authentic self.
• Making the shift from mental overdrive to feeling the aliveness in your body.
• Waking up your Wild Woman and freeing yourself from internal constraints.

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About Tertia

I am a certified feminine embodiment coach and embodiment teacher.

In my private coaching and online programs, I teach you to drop from your head into your body so you can take your nervous system out of survive into thrive, clearing the way for you to live a life that fills you with joy and be guided by your inner knowing instead of outside influence.

I trust you found this episode helpful! It would mean the world to me if you could leave the show a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and share it with your friends. That will help me reach more people. If you have any questions about this episode, I'd love to hear from you, send me a message via the links above.

Transcript

I want to kick us off today with a question. How self-expressed do you feel you are? On a scale of one to 10, with one being barely and 10 being fully, 100% there, how easy is it for you to be yourself? How comfortable do you feel in your own skin? How comfortable do you feel to speak up? I'm sure that you will agree with me on some days you may rate yourself higher than on other days. I know I do, and I believe it's because if we unpack what it means to be fully self-expressed, what it means to fully be yourself, you'll see that there are so many layers. Some layers have to do with who you think you should be based on what input you receive from the world around you. Other layers are about who you don't want to be and the guilt and the shame and the rejection that we silently walk around with inside us about all of those things about ourselves that we don't want to be.
So. And then in between there are all those layers of our most true self and the push pull tension of giving expression to that. So it makes total sense that on some days it is easier for you to be yourself than on others. So in today's episode, I want to chat about how we can orient ourselves to living lives where we feel free to be ourselves without hiding behind masks or dressing up and prescribed roles, and to be able to do this for more of the time. And so if you are someone who senses that there is a more truer version of you longing to step out of the shadows, then this episode is for you. Hi, and welcome to the Untamed and Embodied Show. I'm your host Tertia Riegler feminine embodiment coach, and here to help you cultivate a life of radiance, everyday pleasure and unapologetic self-expression.
Join me every week as I share how you can tap into your feminine flow so you can come home to yourself and live your life from a place of inner freedom and aliveness. So I want to take you back into my history a little bit, and I can remember there was a time where I felt like two different people. I was one person at work with my friends and my colleagues, and I was another person in my relationship at the time. And sometimes it was very difficult for me to even know who the real me was. And of course, we all have times like that in our lives where we show up in different ways and there are people in our lives that we are definitely more selective about how much of ourselves we make available. And that's a very valuable skillset to have. However, if you habitually present a curated version of yourself to the outside world, you may find that your inner fire starts to burn lower.
You begin to forget who you are and your voice becomes fainter until you are so lost in those layers of self-expression that I spoke of earlier. And when this happens, we move through the world as mere whispers of our expression. I have an image of a watered down version of a piece of art that's meant to be vibrant and rich in the full lustre of colours that are available. And so I want to share with you three ways how the skill of embodiment can help free our self-expression, can help us step out from beyond those masks and take us from standing with only one foot in our own lives to being all in. And I guess a good place to start with is to explain what do I mean with embodiment? This is a term that is widely used nowadays, and there are many different definitions.
There are also many different applications of embodiment. Embodiment as I use it in my work. And my definition of embodiment is I see it as being connected to your whole self. And when we are embodied, when we practise the art of embodiment, it gives us the ability to be with our feelings, to let those feelings move through us instead of being stuck inside of us. And this leads us to feeling more aliveness and also to experience more pleasure. Now, embodiment is definitely both an art and a practise. It's an art because it's deeply personal and intimate experience. And so I can't tell you what being embodied would feel like in your body. I can tell you what it feels like to me when I feel into what does embodiment feel like to me, it feels like a glove that fits just right when you put your hand into a glove and it is so comfortable around your fingers and the fit is just perfect.
That's what it feels like. Embodiment also feels to me like being cuddled up in a warm jacket that protects me from the blustery wind outside. And embodiment also reminds me of that sweet burst of decadence and delight when you bite into a grape as it bursts onto your tongue. Embodiment is also like that incredible rush and that vibrant shoot of aliveness that you experience on a very hot day when your body feels warm and maybe even heavy and you jump into a cold pool. And embodiment is also the way in which your heart cracks open when you look into the face of someone you love. Small children are absolutely beautiful examples of what embodiment looks like. You bet they are in full expression and full contact of their inner experience, and they let those feelings and emotions through, they let them move through them and out into the world without any filters.
And so we all have this skill of being embodied. We get born with a skill, but then we lose touch with this ability as we grow older. And the reason why this happens, the reason why we lose touch with this innate ability of being able to be embodied is that our own experiences, and these may be traumatic, they may not be traumatic. All of the experiences that we have in our life and the messages that we receive from our caregivers and from the society, and by the way, these messages don't always have to be expressed. They can also be implied. They can be those unwritten rules. All of these contribute to us losing touch with our truth. And by truth I mean the essence of the most true version of us, that unfiltered version who is at our centre. We receive these messages from the outside world, whether they are implied, they might be demonstrated, they might be expressed.
And these messages tell us that some feelings, certain thoughts, some types of emotions, some types of actions, these are not acceptable. They are improper. They are something that we should avoid having or feeling or doing or experiencing. And together with that many of the experiences that we have, which may include trauma, makes it very painful for us to relive as it were, the experiences. We don't want to feel our feelings. And again, this causes us to move away from that most truer version of us. And so this causes us then to fall into this habit of only offering a curated version of ourselves to the world. And perhaps you can get away with that if you really only want to show a certain part of yourself to the world. But there's a deeper problem that I see behind this, and that is not only do we offer this curated version of ourselves to the world, but that is also the I that we engage with.
We only engage with this curated version of ourselves so we move further and further away from our truth. I have some examples here of messages that I received as I was growing up, as I was making my way through my life and my life experiences. And perhaps you have received similar ones. Perhaps you received other ones. So some of the messages that I can remember quite clearly and that informed my view about myself and my place in the world was you are too emotional. That was one. There was another one that said Girls shouldn't get angry. There was another one that said, you should know your place. And then of course, one that I think many of us experience, if you love me, then you will do X, Y, and Z. So I'm wondering, what are some of the messages that you received? This is what I see happens.
We take these messages, we internalise them, and we shove these unwanted parts of us under a rug. These parts that aren't measuring up to whatever messages it is that we receive, we won't acknowledge them. And often we even feel ashamed that we are like this. Whatever this is. It becomes easier not to feel these undesirable sensations and feelings by simply avoiding feeling them where they live. And they live in our bodies, in our inner world at the root of us. And so I think you'll agree with me that keeping these locked away, avoiding feeling these things, keeping those parts of us shoved under a rug where we hope that nobody will see them, it takes a lot of energy to keep those parts of ourselves locked away in the shadows. And a lot of times this is very unconscious. We don't even know that we are doing this, but we can see the result of this in our actions because it'll always play out.
Putting something under a rug does not make it go away. So an example of such actions that play out unconsciously is when we have the same pattern always playing out in our lives or when we habitually find ourselves in situations where we feel disempowered or we feel helpless, or we constantly are feeling stuck. And so this is how I want to explain to you the cost of keeping those parts of us shoved under the rug in the shadows as it were. You can imagine that our full self, that fullest expression of ourselves that gets animated by our life force energy and our life force, it's like an ocean with powerful waves. And these waves fuel the way that we show up in our lives and all of those things that get locked away in the shadows, all of those things that we shove under the carpet of our consciousness, those feelings, those emotions, those memories, those ways of being, they become like icebergs that affect the flow of this ocean.
And as I'm speaking to you now, I have this image of photos that I've seen because I've never been there myself. But photos of the South Pole where you can see these huge blocks of ice that can be so large that sometimes they completely obscure the water. And so the practise of embodiment is the best way that I know of to enter these shadowy realms, to enter into this icy water so that we can begin to dissolve some of the ice blocks in order to create more flow, in order to free our life force energy. And so I want to share with you here three ways in which embodiment can lead to this type of liberation. And the very first one is that embodiment expands your range. So if you would go to a piano concert, you won't expect the pianist to only play the same three notes over and over.
That would be incredibly boring. And I don't know nothing about playing a piano, but I do know that a beautiful arrangement of music can evoke these incredible vistas inside of me. It can take me very high and it can also drop me down into these deep tender notes within myself. And if I had to only listen to three notes over and over and over, what a pity that would be. Now one of the messages that we receive in our hyper-masculine world is that we are too much of something or not enough of something else. We adopt this narrative as our truth. We see through the feedback that we get, that we are rewarded for playing certain roles more than playing other roles. We see that playing certain notes are more preferred and are more accepted and are more wanted than playing other notes. And so the notes that are rewarded are notes like always being available, notes like not to stand out too much, notes to not ask for too much, and notes that are definitely not demanding in any way, shape or form.
And so I know this is very metaphorical, but take a moment here and reflect on which notes do you play most often. Which notes do you play most often? So how does this translate to our lives? And I mentioned this already. It means that we live as curated versions of ourselves. We only show those parts that are agreeable, but in the process, we move further and further away from our true essence and we lose touch with ourselves. We only stand with one foot in our own lives. Now practising embodiment helps you to expand your range. Keeping with a piano analogy, what it means is that you begin to discover new notes in yourself that you might not even have been aware of. And also the notes that you know have but that have been stuck. They are released to again, form part of the symphony.
You move from playing only a few notes to creating a masterpiece. You go all in. And so this brings us to the second point. You discover more aliveness in your body. Now, for many of us, our lives demand a lot of mental eurythmics. We spend a lot of time in our heads whether it's for planning or solving or organising or analysing or keeping tabs on all the things that need to be done and trying to make sense of things. And this is very useful. But now you may even find that you become so used to being in your head that it's really hard to stop thinking about things. And I know that so many women that I speak to have this as one of the struggles that they battle with is they can't stop thinking about things. They're really used to being stuck in their heads and very difficult for them to get out of their heads as it were.
Now, something that's interesting to nurture is all of your energy is getting pulled up into your mind when we tend to spend a lot of time in our heads because energy flows, we are attention goes. And if we are using our mental capacity or our mental faculties to take care of things, then of course it's going to be a lot of energy that is being used in there. But it also means that the focus shifts to the top of our body, to our head, maybe our neck, perhaps even our shoulders. And then you're not really present to anything below that. And while there's a lot going on in your mind, it also means that you're not feeling much of yourself anywhere else. A way to easily explain this or even see it in your own life is if you have ever sat in front of a computer or if you have been immersed in some kind of work task at your desk and the time goes by, you forget to eat.
And when you then eventually stand up, you realise how stiff your body is because you haven't moved, you haven't really felt your body, and that's all good and well, sometimes we need to get things done. But the challenge that we face as women in this world is this kind of way of living, of taking our energy and really using the energy only in the top part of our bodies means that we are not sensitive to the current of aliveness in our bodies. We lose touch with a fire in our bellies. And so practising embodiment lets us become more sensitive to our bodies and we begin to feel more alive. We are able to develop the skill of shifting between our mind and our body. One is not necessarily better than the other. This is not what I'm saying, but we want to have the choice.
We want to have the choice to really focus and use our mental faculties when we need to, but also we want the choice to be able to drop into our bodies, to experience the aliveness that is there to really stoke that fire in our bellies. And as we do this, as we feel more alive, as we learn how to drop back into our bodies, into our hips, into our pelvic space, our essential selves wake up, our essential selves wake up as we dive deeper into these sacred chambers and we can begin to name our desires. And here's the thing in the feeling and the naming of our desires, we can find in ourselves the courage and the means to begin to live that into the world. Which brings me to my final point, and that is that embodiment wakes up our wild woman and it brings our soul home.
Now, what I love most about the modality of feminine embodiment of which I'm a coach, is that it centres vulnerability and feminine flow. Embodiment supports us to become sensitive to our inner landscape. It supports us to come into intimate relationship with ourselves, with what we are feeling, and we can let that move through us. Embodiment allows our souls to come home, those parts of ourselves that have been fragmented and scattered and through the patriarchy, which is not only limited to men, but the patriarchal soup that we all live in, that is in our d n a, has scattered our souls. It has taken us away from our wild essence, our connection to our cyclical nature, our connection to our feminine gifts of wisdom and magnetism and creativity, and the ability to experience deep pleasure. The world will have us believe that the answers that we are looking for can be found out there some way.
If we just look hard enough, if we just try hard enough, if we really just apply ourselves, we will find the answers that we are looking for. The practise of embodiment wakes up a wild woman. It dissolves these internal scaffoldings that has tamed us, that binds us, that keeps us constricted and limited. And it frees us to be fiercely and fully unapologetically ourselves to love and embrace all parts of who we are so that we can bring our soul home, so that we can come back into wholeness. And just for a moment feel into this, if you are in right relationship with yourself, if you remove the filters that don't serve you, you don't need to remove all filters. We are still in a society that demands some sort of filter system, right? However, if you remove those filters that bind you and that keep you tame and that keep you in your place, how would your world change?
How would your world and your life change if you could begin to orient to your inner wisdom? That is the gift of the wild woman, is that we can live our lives from our truth and from our own wisdom without needing to look out there for the answers. We can ask out there for some support and input, absolutely. But at the end of the day, our sovereignty and our self agency lies within and so traversing through these shadowy realms, we collect all parts of ourselves that we rejected. And as we come into wholeness with ourselves, we find those hidden diamonds in our shadows. We become rooted in self-trust in our enoughness and in our self-agency, and we allow for our fullest self to be felt, to be heard, to be expressed. We go both feet in. And so a final question before we end this episode is reflecting on what I just shared now, how rooted in your enoughness are you?
How rooted in your untamed wildness and your sovereignty of enoughness are you? Your liberation can be found in the depth of your being and the way they is through embodiment. Embodiment allows us to release that life force energy that may be constricted by the roles that we play or the ways that we don't show up for ourselves in our own lives.