embodied awareness

Growing up, I was immersed in an environment that worshipped feats of mind, to the almost total exclusion of the body. Apart from compulsory school sports on Thursday after school, I spent 5½ days each week studying, studying, studying. Perhaps that’s why I eventually gravitated toward practicing mindfulness in my 50s. But recently, my mediation teachers have been suggesting a slightly different approach, one they call cultivating embodied awareness.

“Embodied awareness” evokes for me what meditation is about.

Here’s why.

Mindfulness and embodied awareness

The word mindfulness nudges us to focus on our mind’s experience. Being unattached to those pesky thoughts that come and go when we meditate.

In contrast, the description embodied awareness reframes meditation as encompassing both mind and body. It encourages us to extend our awareness to include moment-to-moment bodily sensations. Aware of a muscle ache, the tick of a clock, and a breeze on our skin without getting snagged by these impressions. Being aware that we are living embodied.

Yet we are not just our mind and our body. To me, meditation is experiencing the mystery of who we are and being this mystery. My meditation practice is to notice but avoid attachment to my thoughts and sensations.

Have your heart be where your feet are

For some time, I have been working on developing a daily practice for living more in gratitude. Accepting loving kindness and feeling gratitude are additional dimensions of my meditative and living experience, rooted in both my mind and my body. While cultivating embodied awareness, my teachers have prompted me to “have my heart where my feet are”, a teaching of Muhammad, the founder of Islam.

To me, this is a helpful suggestion that highlights another facet of meditation that connects my mind and body.

Meditation as embodied awareness

There is no universal definition of meditation. And that’s OK. But I now practice to experience embodied awareness when I meditate—and as I live my life.