Mindfulness is the practice of being present to your experience without judgement. Embodied mindfulness or somatic meditation is the practice of being present with the sensations, feelings and the 'felt sense' of the body.
The mind is generally living in the past or future, often giving rise to depression or anxiety. When we fully inhabit the body we come back into the present moment and have access to the innate sense of awareness, intelligence and well-being that naturally exists within. Through guided meditation you will be able access a sense of self that is aware, spacious, peaceful and grounded.
There is now a growing evidence base for the effectiveness of mindfulness to improve mental health, brain health and the immune system and courses in mindfulness are now offered by the NHS.
I teach meditation to groups and one to one. See below for details of upcoming workshops.
No workshops currently scheduled. Please contact me to note your interest.
Mindfulness is now also being introduced to the workplace and has been found to improve wellbeing, motivation, productivity and, reduce burnout and absenteeism. Check out the Mindfulness section on the Resources page for articles about the research in this area
If you are part of an organisation and wish to make positive changes to improve the workplace contact me to discuss getting a bespoke training.
If you have any questions or you would like to book an appointment please contact me.
"It is all very puzzling, but, with the body as our guide, we begin to feel, perhaps for the first time in our lives, that with our body, we are in the presence of a force and intelligence that is filled with wisdom, that is loving, flawlessly reliable, and, strange to say, worthy of our deepest devotion."
“....... we find that we have a partner on the spiritual path that we didn’t know about — our own body. In our meditation and in our surrounding lives, the body becomes a teacher, one that does not communicate in words but tends to speak out of the shadows through sensations, feelings, images, and somatic memories.”
Reggie Ray
Remember the body
When I use the term “somatic,” I am referring to bodily-based experience, raw sensations in the body in contrast to thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, or even emotions (which can often include a narrative component).
If we drop underneath the interpretations of immediate experience, we find a very alive world of sensations such as contraction, expansion, freezing, speed, pressure, excitement, numbing, intensity, flatness, nausea, constriction, spaciousness, dullness, warmth, and cold. We can experience these on their own as well as components of more complex conditions such as anxiety, depression, and trauma.
In a moment of emotional activation – say with panic, despair, shame, or rage – it can be helpful to temporarily set aside these words and make direct contact with what is unfolding in our immediate experience. In doing so, we may discover that we cannot find “anxiety” or “shame” (these are already interpretations of a particular configuration of experience), but instead we discover a very unique assembly of specific thoughts, feelings, and impulses.
For many of us, the habit is to turn from this material, to exit into interpretation and other forms of dissociation as we have come to associate certain self-states with being unsafe, overwhelmed, and on the brink of being thrown outside our window of tolerance. However, many have discovered that is the turning from themselves in times of need that is the actual root cause of so much additional suffering and struggle.
In moments of activation, we need ourselves more than ever, to encode new pathways of self-care, replacing the older circuitry of self-aggression and self-abandonment with the slower responses of empathy, attunement, curiosity, and compassion. No, it’s not easy. But we can go slowly, one moment at a time. Just one second is enough. More than enough. And from that “one second” a new world is born.
In addition to the thoughts, feelings, and habitual behaviors, there is often a lot happening in the body at the level of raw sensation. Most of us were not trained to attune to this level of experience and it can take some practice. There is valuable information in the body which presents itself during moments of emotional intensity and it is both wise and also kind to tend to it as part of our inquiry.
To be sure to include the body in our work and not stop at the thoughts/ beliefs or even pre-labeled, generalized emotions or conditions. To be curious during challenging times and drop down into the body to make contact with the life that is surging there. Not necessarily to privilege the somatic over the other layers, but to include it, to use everything we can in our experience to understand and care for this precious human form.
It is incredibly important, intelligent, and compassionate to attend to each of the dimensions of our sacred human experience. All are holy in their own way and as a system are a true miracle. Especially in times of suffering, confusion, and struggle, it is an act of kindness to consider each of the levels and what they may be trying to share with us. Perhaps this is the true meaning of integration, to bring the layers together in one act of mercy, wisdom, and love.
In our world and in these crazy times, perhaps it is especially important to remember the body, the vessel, for it is a sanctuary of immense intelligence and majesty.
Matt Licata
