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The Age of Embodiment

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Embodiment has a way of choosing us. Perhaps it’s the goddess who decides to awken our bodies. Or maybe it’s a return to what we’ve already known.

I never had plans to be an embodiment coach. In fact I had absolutely no idea that was even a career option (or set of values, or skills) that I could choose for the first 2+ decades of my life.

Yet we cannot deny the rise in hunger & popularity of the embodied, somatic arts.

“Individual heart breaks connects us to the collective heart ache that binds us”

Kate Leiper

Today on the podcast I come together with four Feminine Embodiment Coaches, from different corners of the globe, to explore how they came to the embodied arts.

Why did it awaken for them?
How do they notice it awakening for their clients?

And what does it mean for us to choose embodiment back?

Extending a warm welcome to Emily Grace Smith, Sarah Laverty, Kate Leiper  & Rachael Haylock who join me on the podcast today.

In this rich roundtable discussion, we explore:

  • Finding a safe space in your body when the world outside doesn’t feel safe
  • Define embodiment & explore it’s approach to life, transformation & healing
  • Grief and how individual heartbreak can connect us to collective heart ache
  • Career change & women navigating change towards their callings in life
  • Embodiment as a modality not interested in fixing or solving you
  • Activism, change & emboidment work as liberation

Resources

Transcript

(This transcript is generated by AI so might not be perfect)

Jenna Ward (00:00:00):

Why are more and more humans awakening to the world, the set of values, the modality, and the way of operating, which is embodiment. During my time in this industry, I have seen the popularity and the remembering of this way of operating, having and experiencing a huge resurgence. And it’s not that we are learning these skills for the first time. For many of us, the curiosity, the word, the awakening is not coming about because of really sophisticated marketing. It’s happening in most part. I observe quite spontaneously from within. And so in this round table, we are discussing the age of embodiment. We speak with four feminine embodiment coaches about their awakening to the embodied arts and what they’re noticing with their clients and in their communities around this somatic resurgence.

(00:01:12):

And a very warm welcome to this round table discussion with a whole heap of fabulous, embodied humans and practitioners, many of whom have studied with us, work and trained with us in the feminine embodiment coaching certification, many of whom have beautiful flourishing bodies of work of their own out in the world. We’re going to start this round table exploring the age of embodiment with just some intros so you can get to know the wisdom and the richness and the people in the room. So I’ll happily go first, very briefly. I’m Jenna Ward. I’m the hostess for this conference. I’m coming to you from Australia, the traditional lands of the Gobby Gobby people. My body awoke to embodiment because I was hitting my head against a brick wall trying to find the way into this richness and aliveness and more, and just trying every modality in the book. Literally, I trained in so many. At one point, a girlfriend said to me, it seems like you’re wanting to do something with embodiment. I was like, what’s this word? I don’t know what this word is, but I’m so curious. I’m so hungry many moons later. It is now my devotion and life passion, embodiment definitely chose and woke up within me.

(00:02:38):

I’m going to pass the microphone to Kate. Kate, would you kindly introduce yourself for us please? Kate Leiper (00:02:44):

Absolutely. Thank you, Jenna. My name is Kate Lipper and I founded the Sensu Alchemy School of Embodied Grief and Pleasure, and I came into this mysterious realm of embodiment. About six years ago I was working as a clinical psychotherapist, and prior to that I was a high school teacher. And so I found myself in this space of really just operating as a walking head, which I think most of us can identify with. And yet it was my personal life entering into motherhood particularly that led me to this realm of embodiment and specifically a miscarriage that I had around six years ago that just cracked me open and led me to Jenna’s beautiful work. And there’s been many iterations of my work since then. But yeah, I certainly know that embodiment is my home and the way in which I can best support women and support myself. So thank you.

Jenna Ward (00:04:00):

Thank you. And welcome Kate. And Kate’s also one of our senior teachers here at the School of Embodied Arts, so we work very closely together as well. So happy to have you here. Emily, would you be happy to introduce yourself and share with us a little bit about how embodiment woke you up and where you are in the world?

Emily Grace Smith (00:04:20):

Yes, yes. So I am currently based in Asheville, North Carolina, which my body really did lean me here in a session within embodiment coach from the program. But I am an author and speaker and coach at my company Guide to Wholeness. And I was led to embodiment. First, I think at the start of the pandemic was when I started to need to find a safe place in my body when things outside of it were so unsafe. And breathwork was my first introduction. And then I really dove into embodiment in the last couple of years because I came to a point in my career where my emotions were now alive and out in the world and I had no way to process them and they were getting in the way of me succeeding. And that’s when I came to the school. Embodied Arts was when I had a lot of anger and I didn’t know how to process it beyond therapy, coaching a lot of other modalities I tried and it was the first time that I could really let these emotions flow through and tap into their wisdom. So I’m very happy to be here.

Jenna Ward (00:05:38):

So lovely. Thank you so much. What an unexpected blessing of the pandemic to be able to find that resource of safety within your own body. That is a gift that so many bodies around the globe would really benefit from being able to access. And a lot of us don’t have access to those internal resources of safety. Thanks, Emily. Rachel, would you be happy to share with us as we warmly welcome you.

Rachael Haylock (00:06:09):

Hello. Hi everyone. Thank you so much for having me here. My name is Rachel, I’m coming to you from England. I’m currently living van life, so I’m actually in a van as I travel around England for the next few weeks. I’m an embodiment coach, a somatic educator, and I’m also the founder of Breath Body Earth Yoga School where we do yoga teacher trainings with a strong focus on embodiment, thematics and the felt sense, the felt experience. And I awoke to the world of embodiment.

Actually just over 10 years ago, it was my very first lecture at university. I studied contemporary dance at a university in London. My very first lecture, the teacher said, has anybody heard of the word semantics before? And no one had heard of this word before. I actually put my hand up, I thought she said semantics. And I was like, yeah, I know semantics.

(00:07:05):

And she was like, no semantics. And she said, it’s about connecting to your body and how you feel in your body. And I was 19 years old and I just was like my connection to my what I had never, ever before, especially in an education setting, been invited to check in with my body and how I was feeling. And from that moment, my whole world changed and that just became my focus. And I have been on a quest for the last 10 years on a mission for the last 10 years, as many of you have watching this and speaking in this as well, of just learning more about myself through the felt experience and bringing it to others as well in any way that I can really. And that’s my story. So thank you.

Jenna Ward (00:07:55):

I love this. There’s the most intriguing ways that we find it and it finds us, and it seems to me that there’s an inevitability in a lot of the stories and personal experiences, answers. Let’s also hear from Sarah, a warm welcome. Would you share a little bit with us about where you are and how you awoke or made the choice to shift into the world of embodiment?

Sarah Laverty (00:08:24):

Hi Jenna, and thank you so much. So my name is Sarah Laverty and I am an embodiment coach based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I’ve recently set up my coaching practice embodiment with Sarah, but until the start of the year, I was working as a political campaigner for the National Students Union in Northern Ireland. And I’d spent many years involved in activism of various strands, environmentalism, homelessness, reproductive justice, both on a voluntary and employment level. And I feel my awakening to embodiment came both through my professional work and through my personal life. So in my personal life, like many of the people in this room, I loved the phrase that was used of a walking head. I think that that perfectly describes how I felt. I was very mind based and some of that was great. I was very strong academically. I loved learning. It’s what allowed me to be really involved in politics, but it also was a bit of a torment in my personal life.

(00:09:24):

I was really plagued by anxiety and OCD, and this came in waves and cycles throughout my life. And in my late twenties, this finally came to a head. I had tried therapy, I’d tried different models of exploring this, and somehow I stumbled upon embodiment. I really do think it chooses us. And the moment that I explored embodiment work, it was like, yes, this is it. This is exactly what I’ve been looking for. And I became obsessed with it. I started looking at it from every different angle. And at the same time, I didn’t even see the two strands working together until I took a step back in my professional work as a campaigner. I was being increasingly introduced to new models of looking at change in the world, which were embodiment based, which we’re looking at how the revolution, the way that we change the world, the way that we make shifts in our world comes through our way of being in small shifts day to day through our actual lives, through the work of people like Adrian Marie Brown, an emergent strategy, all of these wonderful bodies of work. And I was starting to realize that I could continue to go down mazes of my mind forever or I could actually come home to the body, which is where the creativity that I was really craving would be fine.

Jenna Ward (00:10:48):

So wonderful hearing about your experience, and for those who are really interested in evolving models of social justice that have a more embodied approach, we have a speaker, Dr. Ray Johnson speaking about exactly that at the conference. So just a little side note, go check out that interview as well. What is just astounding to me is that I strongly believe embodiment, if we were to define it, and I’m interested in all of our individual definitions, maybe we’ll circle the room to hear what your definition is. I define embodiment most simply as inhabiting yourself. So while we can embody different flavors, maybe embody a wild woman or particular deity or a particular quality. And while we can put those flavors onto our body as if we’re wearing a robe of certain types of things, we want to embody embodiment at its heart, I see it as almost a spiritual type of practice of actually just inhabiting yourself fully.

(00:12:02):

And that’s a surprisingly challenging thing to do in the world because to inhabit yourself fully means to allow the essence that you are at your most divine center point to shine forth in the words that you choose, in the way that you hold, carry your body in the actions that you take, in the way you spend your time in the decisions in who you show up as in the world. And so there’s quality of actualizing your individual essence and flavor, which means we’ve got to know who that flavor is and then find ways for that flavor, that unique aspect of self to actually be expressed into a world where a lot of the times there are containments agreements, relationships, systems, which would prefer you to not show up as that version of self.

(00:13:02):

And so in a lot of ways, when we think about this definition of embodiment, which is just one that I’m proposing as a working definition for us for this conversation today, a lot of the times when we think about that, it’s actually just the skill of being yourself in the world. It’s actually very simple. It’s just being yourself in the world, showing up as yourself. And yet for many of us, it’s a skill that we’re so separate from because we have to contort ourselves so completely in order for us to be able to show up safely or to receive love or to be able to achieve what we need to achieve and secure the resources that we need to secure. So with that little intro to the concept to kind of set the stage, what I’m noticing is that embodiment, if we think about it as a skill, it’s a skill in just being a human being yourself, being a fully, feeling fully yourself, human.

(00:14:08):

So it’s nothing new. It’s ageless and it’s timeless and in a lot of ways, while we see, I’ve noticed certainly an emergence, a reemergence, an increase in popularity in the concepts of embodiment and somatics. These are actually really ancient and obvious ways of operating in the world. I only have to look at my toddler. I’ve got a little four year old. She is fully, deeply embodied in her emotions, her expression, showing the world who she is. It just comes effortlessly and natural to her. So if we acknowledge this is a skill, it’s actually an squeal skill and one that we come into the world with and yet one that we forget and contort and it’s timeless. So a lot of us are waking up to embodiment as a, I think, and I’m interested in all of your thoughts as well as it reremembering. I’m just curious, are you noticing the same thing? What are your thoughts around this remembering and more people waking up? I don’t want that to sound super new agey because I don’t believe it is. I think it’s instead of ascending into something new, it’s kind of like we’re actually just coming home closer to ourselves. Interested to hear just some thoughts in the room on this. Kate, did you want to kick us off?

Kate Leiper (00:15:40):

Yeah, sure. I love this question and I suppose I could take it in many different ways. And I recognize as well that in my haste to jump in and excitement, I didn’t say that I was also here in the traditional lands of the people in Queensland, Australia. So I just wanted to note that. And I suppose what I’ve continued to witness is the ripple effect of embodiment. And there’s something incredibly potent and almost addictive when we stumble across something like an opportunity and invitation to be with the fullness of ourselves. When we feel that and the incredible liberation that begins to bring to open these ways in which all of a sudden a capacity begins to expand and a softening begins to kind of take place in our systems, I feel like a hunger just naturally develops. And it certainly did within me and within other women that I’ve connected with who have also kind of said that embodiment called to them and it was very mysterious and they didn’t really know what it was that they were moving towards, but they just knew it was like a magnet.

(00:17:20):

And all of a sudden, once again, they begin to experience not only being with themselves, and I love Jenna, how that just the simple, the simplicity of this, being able to inhabit ourselves, but also I feel like embodiment is also this full permission to express ourselves from that place. And so once that expression begins to move through, the hunger just develops. It’s insatiable. If I can feel this, then maybe I can feel this and maybe I can open into this and then perhaps there’s pleasure available to me. Perhaps I can actually meet particular depths of pain that I have been shutting down for so long and all of a sudden life becomes more available to us. So yeah, I’m not sure exactly why we’re waking up right now. I think socially, politically, culturally, there are many reasons that are forcing us to really look at life who we are and what we are doing here to our beautiful planet. But I think once we get a taste, we need more. So yeah,

Jenna Ward (00:18:43):

I would agree. And when I see someone walking around who’s kind of in their body, or if it’s a close friend or a client, there’s certainly an aspect of seeing that person that to me, that person becomes very desirable to me, not in a sexual or even a romantic way, but it could be a girlfriend, it could be a client. When somebody cracks open to inhabit themselves more fully and you see them in the process of that, there’s a captivating magnetism around them, almost like an aura, which I think I always had that sense even before I even knew what embodiment and somatics was. There were these people who were just like, you’re in your brilliance. What’s that? Get me some of that. I wish I want to be you when I grow up. Grow up says a woman who’s in midlife. So Rachel, you’ve been in the game, you were sharing with us before, it was 10 years ago that your lecturer mentioned the word and really sparked something for you. I wanted to check in with you as well around this idea of the emergence and reemergence in popularity and growth in the world of embodiment and somatics, acknowledging that it’s timeless and has a lot of ancient roots in many types of ancient philosophy. But what have you noticed over your 10 years in the arena?

Rachael Haylock (00:20:15):

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it’s interesting because back when I first got into the world of embodied and somatics, it wasn’t a very common word. If you asked a random person in the street, if they’d ever heard the word embodiment before, the answer was probably no. However, I’m not like an original person in this. It had been going on for a long, long time already pretty much since the 1970s, 1980s, this idea of embodiment and somatics. And I actually ended up writing my thesis at university on somatics and how it changes the way that you see the world and in the way that you see the world affects the way that you are in the world and kind of vice versa, kind of similar to what Sarah was saying, if you change the way you behave, if you change the way you embody yourself, the world around you actually changes.

(00:21:12):

And actually this came from, or what I remember I described it as at the time was like a second psychological revolution where people were understanding the agency that they really had in their bodies. And I think in the course, actually in the feminine embodiment coaching course, you explained it really well when you spoke about binaries and you spoke about every time we have binary man, woman, human nature, whatever it is, we automatically mind body. We automatically kind of shift one above the other. And now on a global level, we are realizing that that’s not working. It hasn’t been working, it’s not working anymore. We understand that we need the trees to breathe and they need us to breathe, and if there’s no more fish in the ocean, there’s going to be no more us. And that we are also intrinsically connected. And the way to understanding that is so much through your human, your felt, your lived experience.

(00:22:14):

And it’s not something that we can actually logically find our way towards, but it’s something that has to be felt. And there’s a beautiful book by Pema children, I forget what it’s called actually, but she’s a Buddhist nun and she explains, if you see somebody in the street suffering, she says, don’t look away. She says, look at them and feel what is there to be felt, because that helps you open your heart. And to me, that’s what embodiment is, and that’s why so many people are waking up to it now because we can’t look away anymore. We have to look and we have to allow ourselves to be opened by that emotion that comes through.

Jenna Ward (00:22:57):

I would just so wholeheartedly agree with that. And my experience in reentering a more embodied approach to life was that to begin with, it did crack my heart open in the most uncomfortable ways. Show of hands, who else that applied to it was like the vulnerability, the snot, the discomfort that this is how you have been treating and dishonoring yourself like oh, the cracking. And very soon, I feel like for most of us, we live in cultures where it’s like, well, if you don’t want to feel something, then just so numb it over with your food or your shopping or sugar was one of my favorites. And even now when I eat a lot of sugar, there’s just a little question, I’m allowed to eat that if I want to. That’s fine. No shame, no guilt. And at the same time, what is it that you’re not wanting to feel in your body when you are reaching for a lot of strong sensation outside of yourself, which is most of our culture, most of the time.

(00:24:07):

Good news is there’s a lot of other felt senses besides the pain, the grief in us. There’s a lot more of that spectrum to explore. So I’m curious to see and to hear a little bit more around the demand for this work blossoming, we all of us work in some capacity professionally with the embodied arts. And I’d love to hear perhaps from Emily and then maybe Sarah, if you have noticed that there is more demand, more interest, more curiosity over the time that you’ve been in this industry around people interested in these concepts. I certainly over the past seven years have just seen things go in terms of popularity, in terms of interest, in terms of people understanding this has to be part of the equation because if we’re not doing it in embodied ways, then there’s just this huge missing piece of body awareness and integration that’s missing no matter what the hope or the intention, whether it’s grief or pleasure, magnetism or how we run our business, whatever the topic, it needs this somatically integrated part of it in order to kind of penetrate all the way down to our bones. What have you noticed, Emily?

Emily Grace Smith (00:25:42):

Yeah, I’ve definitely noticed a shift. And my domain is helping women who are very career oriented and high achieving. And in the past few years, it’s just been such a change where I think women have gone to this level of burnout. And even in the US with the pandemic, 3 million women left the workforce even post pandemic. And it’s almost like reached this limit of I can’t operate in this kind of masculine way anymore, but I don’t know what the best way is. And I’ve really seen that there’s just been like a few have said this idea that the head is of driving all the decisions and it’s not working women in business as well and just trying to create from this place and help others is just not working anymore. And that’s what I’ve really seen is women understanding that there has to be a better way of operating.

(00:26:48):

And I really was led to this work for that same reason when I just knew that I have to be working with my cycle instead of against it. And I came to this program because I was at that point, I was in a career where I was trying to get to the next level, and I spent a few years doing that, and I just bent over backwards, running around, pleasing everyone, and then I didn’t get the result I want. And I was like, oh, see, that doesn’t actually work. That’s what I really teach women is to reclaim their power and really if they would like to advance their careers, do it from their place of being and embody worthiness and knowing that they’re following the calling versus this model we’ve been taught, which is to overachieve over please. And it’s interesting that I still see that even some of these senior level women are working in these ways and seeing that others have said, once you’re in an embodied space of living, others can pick up on that. And it’s kind of this magnetism of, oh, it doesn’t have to be this way. I can kind of step out and unsubscribe from that. So that’s what I’ve been seeing.

Jenna Ward (00:28:10):

That’s really interesting, particularly at, and it makes sense because if you’re navigating career shifts and you’re wanting to shift to something that feels more sustainable and that is more desirable to you in terms of fulfillment, these are shifts based on how you feel and it’s going to be very difficult to navigate your way to them without feeling like there’s not a checklist that you can have for fulfilling career except a feeling of fulfillment. It’s a feeling. Thanks, Emily. Sarah, interested to know if you have any comments around this resurgence, reawakening, blossoming that most of us are noticing at this time.

Sarah Laverty (00:28:58):

And I think I’ll speak to that from my experience in the activism sphere, in my own embodiment coaching work, all of my work is about helping people to connect to their core selves. And through that work, I truly do believe that that is how we move past these systems of oppression that are in our work. But I want to speak to the activism world. I’ve been in it for so long and I’ve seen shifts and changes in it. So within Ireland, for instance, as an island and the activism sphere that I see there, I’ve seen in the last few years a massive resurgence in the Irish language, a massive resurgence in people looking to ancient ways of engaging with our world, which would’ve been around prior to the 800 years of colonization. So ways of looking at the world which were very cyclical, where humanity and nature were deeply intertwined.

(00:30:01):

And that’s not to idealize that world. It was violent in its own way and it had its own drawbacks. But I have noticed within a lot of spheres, there is this massive resurgence happening of us realizing that I think that it’s been said in some spaces, we have all of the technological solutions that we need for the climate crisis sitting right here. They’re already there. They’ve been created, they’re designed, we’re just not doing it. We have so many of the solutions that we need for the social problems in our world, but we’re just not doing it. And if you bring that down to the level of a person, it’s like when we get to that point in our life where we know exactly what we need to do right now, but we’re just not doing it. And I think that what’s happened is we’ve reached that tipping point on a collective level where the crisis around us is so prominent that we can’t keep going the way we’re going, but we are realizing that when we’re only coming at it from the level of the mind and from the level of logic, we’re not actually making the shifts that we need to create a new reality.

(00:31:10):

And the only way that you create those shifts that you need to create a new reality is it by expanding your capacity to actually feel the discomfort that comes from living in a new way and also expand your capacity to feel the vibrancy of the new possibilities of that world that could be created through us. So from an activist’s sphere, I’ve noticed a massive shift from people focusing, this is what was happening in my workplace over the three years that I was there. There was a big shift away from very in-depth detailed analytical policy work to narrative and story, and actually looking at these wider concepts. And this is why it was like we were starting to dip our toe into the pond of embodiment work, of going, well, if we already have all of the solutions sitting here on a shelf, what’s missing? And what’s missing is that emotional, tangible, somatic connection to what is actually, and I am personally of the belief that we need to be able to feel what is here right now before we go looking for the solutions in the future. And that is the stumbling block that a lot of us experience. So I think that within a lot of particularly climate movements and a lot of feminist based movements, there has been a willingness to go rather than focusing on policy changes in governments and all of these technical details, how are we actually being with ourselves right now and how is that resourcing ourselves to actually create the world that we want to through us?

Jenna Ward (00:32:56):

So in love with everything you’ve shared, and this is a whole tangent, we could go down at length because if we think about collective change where all of us need to actually be making change, which is the case across so many movement fronts, we have to be willing for that change to happen in and through our body. And if we’re so docile and numb and comfortable in the scenario, in the setting that we currently are, maybe I’m speaking to all of the people with privilege in that numbness or if we’re alternatively so stressed and literally in deep states of survival to actually just get through the day. So speaking to those who might hold identities with less privilege, both of these conditions are not necessarily conducive. I mean, both of them can be fuel absolutely, but they’re not the strongest, most conducive state to saying, let’s create and let’s vision.

(00:34:06):

So I’m just really with you. Let’s dive a little bit deeper into some of the specific nuances around everybody’s flavors of work. I’m really interested to know what you are noticing in your, I don’t want to use the word niche, even though that adequately describes it, like your area of specialty, your area of passion. We’ll maybe kick things off with Kate who works most closely in her one-to-one and client work around grief and pleasure. I’d love to hear a little bit if you’re willing to share Kate, perhaps around the grief bit because it’s a special specialty area. What are you noticing that’s waking women’s bodies up and waking up in women’s bodies in this age that we’re in, in these times that we’re in? What are you noticing are some of the common themes or questions or no longer willing to tolerate in the clients that come to work with you, particularly around your grief work?

Kate Leiper (00:35:16):

Thank you, Jenna. And I’m so inspired by everything that everyone said here, and I can just feel just such resonance because I feel like we are all speaking the same language and we’re just taking these particular routes, which is so exciting. And my work in grief is still really taking shape. And I feel like it will continue to take shape for some time, particularly in this climate of incredible waking up if we keep referencing that term. Because for me personally, as we’ve already established, it’s usually the case that our work finds us. And I was already really embedded deeply in the world of embodiment when my life kind of blew up for the first time. It’s blown up a number of times since and continues to, I think that’s what life is, right? A sequence of events of blowing things up and letting the dust settle and reshaping and reconfiguring.

(00:36:39):

But in 2019, my younger sister died of a brain tumor at 30 years old after five years of a really complicated experience with the diagnosis and surgery, which essentially changed her completely. And so there was just this continual loss after loss, after loss until her eventual death. And for me, having already become acquainted to my body in the context of somatics and expression, this was revelatory for me to actually engage with such a profound loss and the experience of such enormous heart shattering trauma. And so merely for my own survival, I guess I began to really provide myself the medicine that I’d been learning and training and supporting others through, but in ways that felt really quite countercultural. And so the grief work that has been taking shape through me has ultimately been about understanding I suppose that our own personal grief experiences are these powerful gateways into channels of collective grief and ways that we can actually come together and forge greater intimacy with humanity, with the world around us.

(00:38:25):

And for me, I’m also really fascinated around really exploring grief through a feminist lens as well. And so where so many women began to resonate with my writing around my personal experience of grief and loss, I began to actually see that when we were connecting, it didn’t matter if it was a death of a loved one, if it was going through a divorce, a chronic illness, if it was a little less tangible like this climate grief, it didn’t matter exactly what it was. They were all of these layers and these kind of cumulative factors that we had in common, particularly as women identifying folk. And so it became really fascinating to me in my research and explorations began really looking at what I’ve coined the feminine web of grief and how from the moment we’re born, particularly into white, western patriarchal capitalist over culture, there are these losses that happen over and over and over and over and over around our sense of self.

(00:39:47):

So losses having to do with our being in our bodies, our expression creatively, sensually, sexually, all of these different threads tangled and that sit within these frames of cultural grief and existential grief, and through the medals, all of this lineage work and the blueprint of grief that was really laid down by our foremothers and that we continue to carry. And so this grief work that I’m so fascinated by is really vast and also really kind of when it comes down to it, it’s so easily mirrored in the most basic human ways. And it comes really down to not only the individual heartbreak that we experienced through our personal losses, but the collective heartache that bind all of us. And so I’m just so interested and super passionate about figuring out and working with the body in ways that can support us to stay connected and to explore possibilities through this collective web of heartache. So yeah, it’s still emerging,

Jenna Ward (00:41:18):

Kate, as you speak, even though it’s on a topic around grief, which generally is something some of us might tend to want to put in a nice polite little box or conversely shy away from, there’s something really captivating about what you’re saying. Part of my body goes, I want to explore that. I want to explore all the facets of that. As you speak to the map around culture and place and loss personally and collective, there just sounds like there’s so much richness to reclaim with grief as part of that portal through the reclamation, what might be discovered if we were willing to look in all of those places.

Emily Grace Smith (00:42:10):

Yeah, thank you.

Jenna Ward (00:42:13):

Thank you for the beautiful work you do in the world. So lovely to hear Emily. Next. You’ve shared a little with us already around what’s waking up for some of your client’s body, their desire to step out of burnout, their desire to step towards what’s really lighting them up and how they really want to be in their workplaces in their career. I’m curious if there’s any particular common or strong threads about what women are hungry for, what you’re noticing they’re really wanting in the way that they navigate their careers moving forward. Just curious to hear if there’s anything you want to expand on around what’s awakening.

Emily Grace Smith (00:43:04):

Yes, absolutely. I am seeing a theme of women no longer being able to settle and that functionality somehow is just not there anymore. And so they’re in the messy in between, which I call, and that I think is the biggest challenge when they realize that something isn’t working and there’s a journey to take to the next step, which is going to be more fulfilling. And that’s where I really see three components that my clients go through and that everyone really needs to master to navigate change and more importantly walk towards what’s their body calling them to, what’s their calling, what’s their purpose? And the first being really shifting their identity. And I like to just call it embracing your new face. And that’s really about letting go of your old ways of being and who that version of you was and what steps they were taking.

(00:44:17):

And that can be a bit of a loss as well because they got you to a certain point. And I just noticed that when people I work with are navigating change, there is this sadness, this grief around, I’m not that person anymore. And what was working once for that version of self doesn’t, and it can be very confusing. And so that’s why the next step is really about emotional empowerment and expressing the mess that I like to call. And that’s really where the embodiment work also plays a big part because you need these tools to be present with everything that’s alive within you. You can’t numb it. And if you do, you’re not going to get the lessons and the wisdom that they hold. And the last step that is so important, and I really call it choosing from preference over paper because it’s really easy to go down the root of what’s already out there, traditional paths.

(00:45:27):

And I think all of us in this embodiment work, at least I can speak for myself, it was this kind of radical thing to go off the prescribed path. And in order to do that, it’s really takes so much to claim that for yourself and to back yourself. So kind of the three steps all are leading up to the final step of choosing. And I think that’s what women can struggle with is the waiting for permission. And I loved when I came into embodiment work, it was like, oh, I’m going to go do what I want to do, and I’m no longer looking outside of myself for someone to give me the okay. And I think that’s what I find is the most powerful and rewarding piece of embodiment work is helping you get to where you’re meant to be.

Jenna Ward (00:46:17):

Thank you so much for sharing and this uniqueness around where you’re meant to be. I love how you described the prescribed path and stepping off it. When I stepped off the prescribed path, I had really no fricking clue where I was going or what was in store. I’m seeing a lot of heads nodding in the room along with me. Didn’t guess that I was going to end up here all these years later. It’s better than I could have expected. It’s more challenging than I could have expected. It’s definitely not the prescribed path, but it’s the one that’s quite right and uniquely for me. And I think it’s when we are navigating in the direction of that uniqueness, it can be so challenging because no one but you is the expert on your body and no one but you knows what’s right. No one, that’s such ultimate permission, but also ultimate responsibility. Yeah, that’s a lot. Thank you for sharing Emily. Rachel would love to hear from you. What you are noticing is awakening with people that you are working with perhaps, whether it’s through yoga, whether it’s through embodiment, whether it’s through the realm of the two. What are you noticing is awakening a lot in people’s bodies at the moment.

Rachael Haylock (00:47:48):

Yeah. Thank you for all of the insights everyone. I’m fangirling all of you over here and just having such a great time hearing you all. I think what I’m really noticing or what’s really coming through that I want to say right now is the need for connection. I run, I run with my business partner, we run yoga trainings and we kind of joke about it. We get people, they think they’re signing up for yoga, but what they’re actually getting is three or four weeks of sitting in a circle and being seen and being heard and being invited to feel their bodies for many people for the first time. And so much transformation happens in that

just waking up every morning, taking time to breathe, taking time to move, using your voice, opening your voice. We pass a talking stick so that everybody throughout the day gets multiple chances of just opening their voice and just being seen.

(00:48:44):

And so much of the transformation I have realized is actually less from the practices and more from being held in a container of people that don’t see you as broken. That’s a huge thing for all of us, creating that community and that connection between people that comes from this embodied space of allowing the present moment to flow through everyone and moving away. I love how you said it, Emily, I can’t remember how you phrased it, but making your own choices for yourself when you stop looking outside for something that’s going to fix you or something, that’s going to be the thing that you should do, all these shoulds that we put on ourselves, and instead allow the present moment to flow through you and be witnessed in that. It’s like a hugely transformational thing. And it’s so simple, but it’s so hard to find spaces that do that.

(00:49:47):

So many people go through their whole lives, the entire education system, every job that they’ve ever had without being witnessed, without witnessing themselves even. And all nature wants is to be witnessed. And we have both of those within us. And it’s in the yogic philosophy, and we might call it masculine and feminine or yin and yang, and one is the observer and the other one is the dancer is the movement. It’s the fluctuation of everything that is, and all that part wants all it actually is to be witnessed when you think of a flower blooming, right? It’s blooming because it needs to be witnessed. And actually everything within us, everything that we think is wrong or that we think, I don’t know, that we label as wrong or bad or not good enough. That’s actually a tiny bird that’s waiting to flower just by having a loving witness rather than a judging or a shaming witness.

Jenna Ward (00:50:57):

So appreciating everything that you’ve said, and I would totally agree with your observation around the uniqueness of a space where you can just be held in the complexity of your full spectrum self, whether that’s bright or dark, shiny or gritty, uncomfortable or delightful, however you are, to be able to show up, show express yourself. So this is the piece that we started this conversation with, like inhabiting self and expressing, sharing in words and actions and felt senses. There are so many ways of working, whether they’re ways of working that are more therapeutic or ways of working that are more transformational, like the more coaching and expansive arts that are looking for something in you to fix and change so that you can be better and then get where you need to go. And embodiment is one of the very few, quite non-dogmatic ways that says you don’t need to be any different except just to be deeper in what you truly already are, even if that’s uncomfortable. And that as you were speaking, I was just so passionate about that because it is absolutely, as you described, being held in that beautiful complexity with unconditional positive regard rather than looking for the thing that you need to change in order to be better or to be less efficient or to become something more because you are already enough.

(00:52:35):

Yeah. Thank you for sharing. I’ll get off my soapbox and hand the microphone to Sarah. Sarah would just love to hear from you. What are you noticing is waking up. You’ve shared a lot with us already and very, very grateful for your contributions already, but if there’s something more that you might want to want to add, whether that’s personally or on the collective, let us know.

Sarah Laverty (00:53:02):

Yeah, I feel like we’re at a stage where we’re done with coping mechanisms and instead we’re ready for transformation. So I think through the naughties and through the 2000 and tens, we had that whole phase of girl boss, and there was a lot of ways of operating. I talk about it in my work of how when I went into campaigning, I had this real image of what a great campaigner is. I thought I had to be on top of the news cycles all the time. I had to be up to date with everything. I, there’s many conversations where I pretended to know who we were talking about when I absolutely did not. And we had these systems where people were trying to, I feel like there was a drive to go, okay, well, this structure of the world isn’t great, but how do I give myself enough coping mechanisms to get by within it?

(00:54:02):

I think that’s the girl boss element within patriarchy of like, okay, well, these systems make life really difficult for me, but how can I make a little adjustment over here or a little shift here? Or how can I do a bit more of this so that I can have a better situation than I currently have right now? And I feel like embodiment work is liberation work because embodiment work is going see that whole system, right? Don’t care about that. It is, instead of trying to operate within the system, we’re actually moving beyond the system. And what the reason I have made this transition from campaigning work, I’ve made a transition from campaigning work to embodiment work, and I feel like it’s now coming back around. The other way where I start to merge the two is that I spent so much of my time as a campaigner desperately trying to rearrange the external world so that we could feel a sense of freedom from these systems.

(00:54:59):

But what I realized was just how utterly exhausting that is. And I think that what we see in the world, and I worked with young people working in the National Students Union. I was at one of the staff members who would train younger. I would train student officers, I’d be supporting student officers, and these young people carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. And I see it in a lot of climate movements. There is such an interest in activism, there’s such an interest in activism through TikTok, and they really are carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders right now. I need to fix everything that’s going on out here so that I can catch a breath. And where I see embodiment work coming in and why I think it’s so vital is that we realize this on an individual level when we do embodiment work, is you’re never going to create the external circumstances that lets you catch a breath.

(00:55:48):

You come back to the breath first, and then you breathe life into everything around you. And so this is where I think we’re at the tipping point within activism spheres of how instead of how do I operate within this system that’s been given to me, well, how do I just actually disregard that completely and operate the way I am here to operate? And I feel like as a campaigner, I started doing that in small ways. Even when I was there, sometimes we would be given a government, we would be given something by government and told, can you prepare that for us two days? No, we actually can’t. And there’s an inclination to feel shame as a campaigning organization. If we’re letting down the people we’re representing, we are not doing this. It’s a capitalist notion of if I just do more work, if I meet the demands, if I do all of this, then we’ll create the change.

(00:56:43):

But at what point do you create the change of going, well, actually I claim our right to worthiness. I claim the right, the worthiness to a good life, to a thriving healthy life for everyone we represent. And I’m not going to kill myself to get to it because you’ve told me to do so. And so I think what for me, because at the very beginning of creating my body of work and I’m very much just sort of picking little pieces and trying to pull things together is, for me, it’s about transformation over change. I spent years change making, trying to make things change, trying to do things differently. And what I came to realize through embodiment work was that when you create certain conditions, transformation just becomes inevitable. It’s like what Rachel talked about of creating that container of witnessing. When you create the conditions of stillness and of patience and of compassion, and you do that on a really deep level, change becomes completely inevitable and you no longer have to try and force and push. So for me, that’s the main thing that I’m witnessing, I think is this. There is the appetite for how do I have a wellness regime that helps me get through the day is falling away. And instead, there’s a bit more of a, well, why do I need something to help me get through my day? Why do we have a reality in which I have to be supported to get through the day? And that comes onto a global sphere as well when we look at the wider crisis that we’re dealing on within the world.

Jenna Ward (00:58:25):

Thank you so much, Sarah. I really love what you’ve shared, and I particularly love you speaking about instead of working with the system, we’re just transcending the system. We’re just not agreeing to operate in the system in ways that are relevant to how we are showing up. And I think that’s, I kind of personally, when I think about, I live in the suburbs. I have a husband and a kid and a dishwasher that needs unpacking every morning. So I’m a very suburban person. And I think about, okay, how am I interfacing with my community, the ways that I operate, the way that I run my business, the way that I do all these micro suburban things in ways that center my values and in ways that center the way that I believe systems should operate rather than the pace of suburbia and how it would have me be a natural resource of labor to all around me and perpetuate all of these systems that don’t work or empower me.

(00:59:35):

So that’s another big whole conversation. But I think there’s a lot of ways that each of us actually have more power than we realize to either opt in or to choose differently with those systems that are just saturating multiple facets of our life at multiple levels. This has been such a inspiring conversation, such an interesting conversation to look at this, what I believe that we’re hopefully moving towards in different ways, an increasingly blossoming age of embodiment. And I just want to take a moment to say the greatest thanks to your expertise, your voice, your time for both Kate and Rachel, for Sarah and Emily, and for joining us today. It’s been a delight to get to know you each more and see the world through your lenses. And if you’re interested in the work of any of these phenomenal humans, all of whom I can vouch for you will find their websites more details about how to work and explore and learn more about their world in the comments below or with the show notes for this interview. So thank you all. It’s been a joy to come together today.

About The Author
Jenna Ward

Welcome! I’m Jenna Ward. Feminine Embodiment Coach & Founder of the School of Embodied Arts. I’m an Australian woman living between Australia & the Netherlands. I speak English & een beetje Nederlands (that means, a little bit of Dutch). Mother of one. Lover of chai, chocolate & champagne. Read more here.

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