What is 'the embodied present'?
What is 'the embodied present'? any moment as it is experienced, met, engaged, apprehended through the lived experience of the body - our sensing feeling thinking breathing intelligently alive natures. The body is always present. It is a gateway for us (in the western world especially where we tend to be run by our thoughts) into the present, into what is present both within and outside of ourselves. It is my intent in this blog to continue my own personal investigation of 'the embodied present', what it is to be present in an embodied way and the gifts and challenges therein; and what it is to cultivate an 'embodied presence' - a quality or state of presence that invites others into their own experience of the present. I look forward to learning from any of you who may also be drawn to this inquiry. This is my joy and what I seek to share in the world. Julia Smith, May 2008
posted by Julia Smith @ 10:00 AM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
This is a much-needed exploration and I'm thrilled that someone with such depth and care is sponsoring the inquiry. Write on!
Victoria
Julia-
Thank you so much for this invitation, for leading the way into an inquiry that seems like the world is calling for. I’ve been thinking, being and practicing this a lot lately, what with the conversation many have been in with Eckhart Tolle’s book, The New Earth. I have had such appreciation that so many folks are in a conversation together with Tolle and Oprah and even more that they have been in this particular conversation. It’s remarkable and feels like an earth shaking turn in consciousness.
I am especially grateful for your most specific invitation.
There are so many ways to talk about the embodied present. It is a “right now” that one senses. It a visceral sense of stillness; it is what God feels like; it’s a most peaceful observer; it’s a kind of waking up from a dream that occupies most of my life; it’s a remembering of the most connected moments of my life….2 or 3 seconds whitewater rafting with my friends through an intense rapid, digging the oar into the river and an instant electric connection that I was all of it…I/It was so huge and the me I knew so miniscule,….connected to the vastness, the aliveness….then it was gone.
I look forward to reading more, learning more from those you have invited into this inquiry.
Denise
Denise and Victoria, Thank you for your replies - I have to get the hang of this yet, but I look forward to being in the conversation. Denise, I love your varied experiences of what it is to be so present through your senses and your physicality that you become the sensation or the motion and your separateness disappears in your full engagement with the moment. I don't know how this is for others, but I think this is a gift of conscious embodiment - our physicality as a gateway to a more expanded consciousness.
It is not my intent to be always lofty in this exploration - I think this is what is delicious - our embodied experience as an intersection between the ordinary and sublime.
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