In this week’s Highest Self Podcast solo episode I share how I completely transformed and up-leveled my life through the wisdom of embodiment to become the most radiant, expressed, sexy, and badass version of me yet (can you feel the shift?)
I used my heartbreak as fuel for me to open my heart wide the F open and have never felt more full of love before. And I share how you can transmute the obstacles you’re overcoming to become your life’s greatest turn-on.
This is an episode that will activate a dormant part of your soul so if you start twerking after listening, don’t say I didn’t warn ya!
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Transcript
Episode #503: How To Become A More Embodied Person
By Sahara Rose
[00:00] Sahara
Your highest self is not your spirit, the part of yourself that’s out of your body, but rather, it’s your full expression, it’s your range, it’s your ability to be in the depths of your shadows, and your pain, and your suffering, and the mud, because it is from that place that the lotus grows.
So, for me, my highest self is my most embodied self.
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[00:35] Sahara
Welcome back to The Highest Self Podcast! My name is Sahara Rose and this Podcast is all about taking spirituality and making it modern, fun, grounded, relatable, so it can actually serve the needs of today’s people.
[00:49] Sahara
And today’s Episode is going to be about a topic that has radically transformed my life, it’s a buzz word that you’ve probably heard in the spiritual space, and that word is embodiment.
[01:00] Sahara
So, we’re going to be talking about what embodiment actually means, what my journey to embodiment looked like and how you can actually start embodying (we’re going to be using this word a lot), embodying more of what you desire, so it’s not just coming from a mind level, but rather, a somatic.
[01:17] Sahara
So, some words that I’m going to use here, like embodiment, actually means to be in the body. So, if we break down the word ‘em’, is ‘to be in’, ‘body’, ‘body’, ‘ment’, ‘the state in’. So, it’s the state of being in your body.
[01:33] Sahara
So, you might be wondering “Aren’t I always in my body? Like, I don’t leave my body”, but notice the difference right now, of how you feel, just take a little inventory of how you feel, and let’s just do a little drop in.
So, I invite you to just close your eyes and connect with your breath. Slowly inhale and exhale. Dropping your shoulders, relaxing your jaw, relaxing any expression in your face, relaxing your hands, your heart space, and coming back to your breath. And with each exhale, I invite you to drop further and further down into the base of your body, feeling where your seat meets the chair underneath you, feeling your feet firmly grounded into the earth, and allowing your breath to come from your belly, rising and falling like waves. And I invite you to notice anywhere in your body that you’re holding any tension right now, maybe it’s your shoulders, your hands, and gently moving that part of your body. And just noticing what’s there and any other parts where you might feel stagnation, stuckness, just moving that part of your body now. And when you’re ready, you can open your eyes. And now, do you feel more in your body?
[03:57] Sahara
So, something as simple as that, just taking a minute to drop in and noticing the tension that we are holding on to, allows us to be so much more present right here in this moment. It allows us to speak from a more anchored place, and we’ll be talking about your voice, and your expression, your movement, how all of these things are a reflection of your consciousness.
But you may notice that, sometimes, you’re going through life not really being present, that you’re there with someone, but you’re not really listening, or you’re anxious about what’s coming next. And these are simply results of not being in our body, which, our society, has taught us to not be in.
The body has been considered to be one of the most dangerous places because when we are in our bodies, we feel, we feel what is there, we feel what is present in the room, in our emotions, and that is one of the scariest places to be in.
[05:01] Sahara
So, as children, we developed patterns of leaving our bodies. So, these are different patterns that, when we speak about this in my new Embodiment Coaching Certification, it’s launching right now, I’ll share more with you about, but there are five personality patterns that you can see in the body, and these are really holding patterns that we have. And without really going into them, I want you to notice, if, when you feel stressed, you feel like you want to leave your body, it’s almost like you just want to get out of there, you disassociate, someone’s talking and you’re not really listening, that’s a leaving pattern right there.
Or maybe, when you’re really stressed out, you get really stuck and rigid and you try to, like, protect yourself, that’s a holding pattern right there.
Maybe you want to fight, you get aggressive, you get bigger, that’s a fighting pattern right there.
[05:55] Sahara
So, we began our embodiment journeys, really, as babies, as our way of dealing with the copious amounts of sensory information that we were constantly getting, that was too much for our little baby nervous systems to handle. So, we learned “If I hold myself in this way, or leave my body, or cry, or do whatever else, then I have a higher chance of being safe”.
[06:22] Sahara
So, embodiment really is the way that your body has adapted being based on what it believes will keep it safe. It comes back to evolution, right? Like, if you go under the ocean, this just came to me right now, but there’s certain fish that you go by and they scatter and they run away and they’re super-fast, they’re very flighty. And there’s other ones that blend into the environment around them and you can’t see them. And there’s some that show you their teeth, and they’re little piranhas, and you know, every spectrum in between. We are like this, too, as humans. And we also have a range that, in different situations, you might show up in a more fight, flight or freeze way.
[07:03] Sahara
So, we talk about this a lot, in terms of our nervous systems and our reactions, but it actually starts to translate into what our bodies look like, how we hold our bodies, how we move. You can learn so much about a person just based on how they walk, based on how they dance, based on how they express themselves. We are picking up, really, 80% of communication is non-verbal, right? Which is why, social media, the pitfalls of it, is, you’re reading all these words but you’re not actually feeling what they’re feeling.
And especially with these dating apps and stuff, it’s like you’re just texting, but you don’t know the tone of their voice, you don’t know their presence and what that’s like. And this is really why embodiment is so important, because, ultimately, the way that we are expressing is not based on the words that we say, but rather, the energy that we emit. And that energy goes so much further because it permeates through our beings and allows us to feel something that is so much greater.
I could be saying this exact same thing, talking to you guys from a place like this and just doing the whole Podcast, not having a conversation [inaudible], and it’s like, I mean, you’d probably turn this shit off. Like, you could feel the difference between someone who’s actually embodied and grounded.
[08:20] Sahara
So, a little bit about the voice. So, some of you guys might know, I actually teach about speaking. I have a course called Speak With Soul, which I’ll also link about below, which takes you 21 days into becoming a more expressed speaker.
But what I’ve noticed in my own journey, of now, doing this Podcast for over 7 years, and speaking on stages, is, my voice has become lower and more grounded because I am more grounded, I am more in my body, as opposed to being in my head.
[08:51] Sahara
So, when someone’s in their head, they tend to talk a little bit more nasally, like this, because it’s coming from the upper chakras and you can just tell, they’re, kind of, disconnected.
And you know, often times, also, as women, we try to make our voices higher because we think it’s more feminine, it’s maybe more, I don’t know, safer for other people, we’re less scary. But to actually be in your voice and in your power, there’s something that’s so, first of all, sexy, second of all, just, like, assured about it, and it gives this energy of confidence and this energy of you are being what you are sharing, because you might have the perfect words, but there may be a disharmony between your embodiment and what you are saying, and that is always going to be felt.
And if you want to watch my own embodiment journey happen, like, go back to the first episodes of this Podcast and you will hear a huge difference in my voice and how I show up, as opposed to me today.
So, it doesn’t mean that you’re either born with it or not, it’s a practice, it’s a development, and the more that you go deeper into your body through spiritual practices, embodiment practices, which I’ll share a little bit more about in this Episode, it changes how you show up in your relationships, in your work, in your friendships, in all dynamics.
[10:08] Sahara
So, really, embodiment is the missing link in our spiritual practices, because spirituality, previously, really came from this more esthetic perspective.
So, someone’s who’s esthetic was someone who desired to be a monk, they desired to leave their body and go into the caves in the Himalayas and have no attachment to the outside world, and alleviate themselves from all desires and worldly possessions and humanly traits, you know, it was seen as fleshly, low-worth man. So, then, to not have those things, to be out of the body, to transcend the body, was seen as superior. However, the way that conscious has shifted, and this is really a more Shiva approach to spirituality, if you look at Vedic wisdom, which is what I’ve written books about, it’s a more masculine path. Whereas, the Shakthi path, the feminine path, was more about immersing yourself into all things. It’s also called The Householder Path, and even The Tantric Path.
The word tantric means to weave, to merge together, so it’s not for me to separate myself from the world, but rather, how can I be so immersed and involved in the world, and community, and pleasure, and textures, and creations, that I am one with it, without preferences of anything being better or worse, right or wrong, higher or lower.
[11:38] Sahara
And this is one of the huge things, because this Podcast is called The Highest Self Podcast that, for me, your highest self is not your spirit, the part of yourself that’s out of your body, but rather, it’s your full expression, it’s your range, it’s your ability to be in the depths of your shadows, and your pain, and your suffering, and the mud, because it is from that place that the lotus grows. So, for me, my highest self is my most embodied self.
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[13:25] End of Advertisement
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[13:27] Sahara
So, how can we become more embodied? So, some of you guys know my background. I came from a very intellectual family, I, you know, went to school in Boston, and I was, you know, organizing protests and I wanted to become a Human Rights lawyer, and I’m very good at reading, writing books, learning information, I love learning, it’s so much fun for me. However, I realized that there was a certain point that more information was not actually going to solve any of my problems.
[13:57] Sahara
And I remember I was, you know, pulling cards from my oracle card deck, and I kept pulling different cards and I’m like “If I just took one of these cards and embodied it for the rest of my life, just one, that would be enough”. But here we are, hungry, wanting more and more, we want that tidbit of information that someone’s going to say something, we’re scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, like, hungry to get that hit, to let us know, like, it’s time to get us off, and we never get it because the mind is always going to desire more because it doesn’t feel it’s enough.
The mind was created like as a meaning-making machine, to take all of the information that it can and try to find patterns to keep us safe. However, the mind cannot actually solve the mind’s problems because the mind is going to keep running, it’s going to keep finding holes and it’s going to keep obsessing, right? Have you ever had something go wrong or a conflict in your life that you know, in your soul level, that it’s needs space and time, but you’re just obsessed about how you’re going to find a solution about it right now? And thanks to Google, there’s no freaking end to how many rabbit holes that you can go down. And then, what are you left off feeling with? More anxious, more detached from your intuition and unable to actually solve the problem. Or even see that maybe it wasn’t even a problem, maybe it just is.
[15:19] Sahara
So, when we’re in this place of mental masturbation, which is what I like to call it, we think that we’re doing something by learning, learning, learning, but actually, it’s not the real thing, it’s not the real thing. We think that we’re making progress, we think we’re getting ahead, but actually, we’re using information as a coping mechanism to make us feel like we’re making progress, when actually, the true progress is getting to the somatic level.
[15:45] Sahara
So, the word ‘soma’ also means ‘body’, in Greek, so, somatic is the state of the body. So, similar to embodiment, they’re sometimes used interchangeably. To me, embodiment is a little bit more movement-oriented, I find, somatic tends to be used in a more clinical sense, like somatic psychology, etc., but some people use them interchangeably. But for me, I could go around in circles and tell you what my problems are, how they’re connected to my childhood, and what the word for it is, and all of these things, but it’s, like, great, now you have all this information about it, now what?
And it wasn’t until my embodiment journey that I was actually able to go beyond the problems.
[16:24] Sahara
So, for me, my embodiment journey, I mean, obviously, began as a child, when I incarnated in this earth suit here, like “Yo, bitch! Why am I back? For real!?”, but it became more conscious. You know, I grew up, I was a dancer, so I always had a relationship with my body, but it was very performative, right? I was a competitive dancer and it was like “Did you point your toes? Did you this and did you that?”, and it was all about presenting my body and making it look a certain way for it to get validation.
[16:50] Sahara
So, when I stopped, you know, doing competitive dance and just, kind of, stopped dancing for a long time, years later, I found myself on an ecstatic dance floor.
And if you haven’t heard of ecstatic dance before, it is a free-flow style of dance where there’s one rule, no talking, and the DJ plays music, and it’s like conscious, tribal, it’s really a journey with different waves, and layers, and textures, and everyone is just having their own experience. Like, some people are rolling on the ground, some people are jumping up and down, some people are crying, some people are contact dancing with each other.
And I was 23 years old, and at this point in my life, I was really having, what I would say, was my biggest spiritual awakening. I was questioning my dharma, what was my purpose, I was looking at my relationship with my family, just all of these different factors were coming to place.
And I was in Ubud, Bali, and I found myself on this ecstatic dance floor, and for the first time, I just felt like I could be myself, I could do anything, I could move however I wanted and no one was even looking at me. And at first, I was like, you know, I was like, doing my dance moves, like, okay, like, what do we do, like, you know, you’re used to doing choreography, and I, kind of, quickly learned, no this is not the place to do your, like, ‘loosen up my buttons baby’, even though, I will forever remember that choreo, because I watched it so many times when I was in high school.
But anyways, I’m doing my own dancing and I’m having my own experience, and then thoughts are coming up, like, I’m thinking about my relationship with my mom, but then I’m like, you know, sometimes I’ll get angry and then I would dance and it would resolve, and then I would think about something else, and I would dance and it would resolve. And I found myself feeling just so much joy, and openness, and possibility, that all of these things that were like, little – you know you have those problems you kind of go back to, and then it’s like too much and then you’re just “I can’t handle this problem”, and you put them away, I was able to dance my way through it. And on the other end of, like, untying this know, find so much gratitude, and peace, and freedom. And after doing that, that first time, and, like, feeling on the other end of this journey of like “I just moved through, more in this hour and a half, than I probably have in my entire life”, I was hooked, I was like “I need to do this as much as possible, this is my new church!” And so, I stayed in Bali for six months, for the ecstatic dance.
And you know, my parents thought I was crazy, wanted to send me to a mental asylum, like, lots of shit was happening in my life, but I was like “This is my path”. And I was able to move through so much, just, like, ancestral trauma, and generational trauma, and just limiting beliefs, through movement.
[19:36] Sahara
And I went to Ubud thinking, because I was a big Ashtanga yogi, I was practicing Ashtanga in India for 2 years before that, so I came to Ubud with this rigid Ashtanga practice, which, if you guys have done any rigid yoga, it’s all about, again, making the pose look a certain way. And I found myself trading, my, like, yoga clothes for, like, flowy skirts and instead of trying to make my body fit a certain pose, ask my body “How do you want to move?” And, like, maybe my body just wanted to do this thing with my shoulders for a really long time, or maybe I just wanted to, like, be in, like, a child’s pose for an hour, or maybe it just wanted to shake and release all this energy, and I let my body guide me. And this became my morning practice of waking up and just playing music and letting my body take me on a journey and it would bring up so much, it would bring up memories, it would bring up emotions, it would bring up things I’m grateful for, ideas, expression, I mean, all of me was able to actually, fully, come online because I wasn’t trying to control.
And that’s the thing, we’re always trying to control, we even use spirituality as a way to control “Sit down, meditate, straighten your back, control your thoughts, don’t think, don’t this, you’re doing it wrong”, and it’s like, do you need more of that in your life? I know I don’t, I know what I desire more of in my life, is ease, and flow, and pleasure, and joy, and freedom, and expression. So, why would my physical practice be one of structure, and making sure I get everything right, and making sure it looks in a certain way, if what the qualities I want in my life, are way more loose and fluid. Because the way that you move your body is the way that your mind and your thoughts move, they’re expressions of each other. So, if I’m practicing rigid movement, I’m practicing rigid thinking. That being said, there is a time and place for that, I still love lifting weights and creating structure and stability in my body, I don’t only do ecstatic dance. But I also know if I only do that, then I’m going to be creating more of this rigidity in my mind, I need to have the balance.
[21:45] Sahara
So, my embodiment journey really started with ecstatic dance, but I started to, then, notice that that embodiment is so much more than just dance, but it’s also our breath, it’s how life is moving through our bodies. If you want to know how you feel, notice how you’re breathing. Even right now, just take a moment and notice how you’re breathing. Where is your breath coming from? Is it up here, in your chest, in your neck? And as you become more aware, do you feel it moving more into your diaphragm, your belly? So, simply the awareness of our breath changes its shape and quality.
[22:31] Sahara
So, I started to take classes in breathwork and noticing how I was breathing, and my pattern was holding my breath, that, when I would be in uncomfortable situations, I would literally stop breathing, which is stopping living. And many of us do that, especially as women, we’re taught “Suck in, suck in your stomach”, you know, and especially if you did something like dance, growing up, you’re literally trained to be like that. So, I started to just drop in, and loosen, and allow more breath in my being. I started to, then, incorporate more touch.
And that has been a huge part of my practice more recently, incorporating more of that pleasure and sensuality, because most of us, we are so deprived of touch, and that’s why we’re so hungry for attention and for someone to date, or someone to love, or someone to this, someone to that, it’s like, actually what we want is touch and we can give that touch to ourselves, at any time. And actually, our bodies don’t really know the difference.
[23:28] Sahara
So, incorporating self-touch in your morning practice. Even right now, I invite you to touch your hands and feel the sensation of your hands touching each other. What does it feel like to actually be here, in your body and in your hands? Maybe you want to touch your arms, maybe you want to touch your face, your head, and just giving yourself that self-touch, which is so nourishing for the nervous system because it lets you know that you are safe, because, as babies, the reason why we would cry often is just because we wanted to be touched and know “I’m okay”.
And many of us are so deprived from that touch that we try to get it from other people who don’t honor us and respect us, because we just want to be touched, when really, you could’ve given yourself that touch in the way that you really wanted it to be. And you can dive deeper into how you want to be touched, these are all the things we talk about in the Embodiment Certification.
[24:25] Sahara
Another element and component I found, was tapping. So, tapping is to literally tap meridian points in your body, which are acupressure points that hold on to emotional charge, and tapping those parts of your body as you are saying affirmations or going through limiting beliefs, and it’s actually helping move this energy where it’s stuck in your body.
[24:47] Sahara
So, for me, I’m always tapping my heart, if there’s, like, a new thought pattern or something that I really want to hone in, I tap my heart space to really let it anchor in. And even massaging your heart and opening that heart space up because we hold so many layers of just suppression and tension. And I once witnessed, in a journey I was on, like a black tar that was over my heart from all the times that I had held myself back from love. And that tar builds over time and over time, and then you wonder why you can’t feel joy, and you can’t feel love, and you can’t feel bliss, and maybe every day just feels numb for you because your heart has been shut closed.
So, these are all things that you can only gain through embodiment. And embodiment goes beyond knowledge.
[25:36] Sahara
You know, knowledge is information that I read about, it can be helpful, it can share with me facts, research, information, I love knowledge, I have a really good time with it, but it’s not the total picture.
[25:48] Sahara
And then wisdom is really when I to integrate and embody this knowledge, and it becomes part of my life and my way of being that I don’t need to necessarily know the stats, and the data, and the tools, and the this, and the that, it’s just who I am.
[26:03] Sahara
So, embodiment is really the path to wisdom, it’s to move past information and into a state of being. And to me, this is really the missing link in the coaching world as well, because I’ve done many coaching certifications and what I have found is, often, we see these coaches, big, famous coaches, on tv, and they’re like “You have this limiting belief and you need to think positively, and if you just think positive thoughts, you’re going to get everything you want, and you just need to set more goals, and if your thoughts are negative, then that’s the reason behind all your pain and suffering”, and that’s just not true.
The reason why you have those negative thoughts is because your body is holding onto something that makes it feel unsafe, and it’s only that you feel whatever your body is holding on to, that you can unravel that thing from the root level.
[26:54] Sahara
So, embodiment addresses the issues in your life from a root cause. And when you’re able to address it from a root cause and actually feel it and transmute it, and heal it, you don’t need to use discipline anymore, you don’t need to say “Okay, stop thinking that thing, think about something else”, that’s the mind trying to, like, analyze and, like, master the mind. You actually can’t master the mind, it’s going to find its way around it. The body is giving the mind information based off of our surroundings and our state of being.
So, let’s say I’m, like, running away from burglars, I can tell in my mind “I am peaceful, I am safe, I am peaceful, I am safe”, but, like, my body is like “No, bitch, you’re not, you’re running away from burglars right now”. And that’s the state that my body is in.
And most of us are in this constant state of hyper-vigilance and fight or flight, hypo and hyper aroused nervous system states, which, we get into all the science components, but basically, we’re dysregulated and we’re wondering why we’re anxious, and depressed, and sad, and lonely, and angry, and all of these things, but it’s because our bodies are holding onto it. And our bodies hold on to trauma from our entire lives.
So, there may be an unprocessed emotion from when you were 7 years old, that just needed to have been felt, and when you complete that emotional process, you are healed from it. But part of your healing right now is still tied in your 7-year-old self that maybe wanted to get a toy and didn’t get the toy and started crying, and then your parents left you, and then you created this view that no one cares about what I want and I’m never going to get what I desire in life, that you’ve been holding onto your entire life.
So, it’s through embodiment that you get to the root cause of these things. Memories, often, come up, and they don’t even need to come up. Sometimes, you don’t actually need to know what the trauma was, for you to feel it and heal it.
[28:39] Sahara
So, a lot of people are afraid of embodiment because they’re like ‘I don’t want to relive those painful memories”, and I so feel you on that, and it doesn’t mean you have to go through those memories again, you don’t need to actually be tied into the story of what happened, but you need to feel the emotional charge it left you with, because, until that emotional charge is left, it’s going to keep repeating in your life.
[29:00] Sahara
If you see the angriest people out there, the people that, like, snap all the time, it’s because they never fully felt their anger. If you fully feel your anger, you feel your rage, you punch your pillow and you scream, and you cry, and you say all those things that you want to say, you no longer feel angry because you don’t need to hold onto this emotion anymore because it’s been acknowledged. That anger is just there to say “Hey, my boundaries were crossed, I’m feeling upset about it”. And when you acknowledge it and you feel it, it doesn’t need to remind you of that anymore, it’s a “Thank you, for paying attention to me, and now I can be released”.
And then it might show up again, and you feel it, and you release it, and this is why having embodiment practices are safe spaces for you to feel your feelings without projecting them onto another person. So, you don’t snap at someone else, or your dog’s parking and you freak out at your dog, but rather, you give yourself that safe time and space to feel whatever it is that’s showing up for you, without needing to label it, without needing to get to the solution of it, without needing to analyze it and know how it’s connected to everything else in your life, just fucking feel it, I know. And truthfully, an emotion can actually be felt in its entirety for 90 seconds, according to research.
[30:12] Sahara
And I would say I’ve definitely felt my emotions for longer, but maybe I’m just an over-achiever. But the actual reality is, you can’t really feel that emotion in its purity if you go there for more than a few minutes, I would say.
[30:25] Sahara
So, let’s say, you’re holding onto sadness, when you let yourself just cry and let go, and be vulnerable, and feel that sadness, feel that grief, and you might not even know why you’re sad, you might be sad because of something you saw on tv, or something you heard, or something in your childhood, you don’t need to know, it just needs to be felt. And when you let yourself feel it, then what happens? You know, it’s like when a little kid is crying, and crying, and crying, they go [breath], and then, all of a sudden, they’re better, and they’re like “Okay, what are we going to do now?”, and you’re just like “What? You were just, like, on the floor crying, three seconds ago, and now you want to watch a movie?”, but it’s like, that’s how we get to be. As adults, we hold onto these emotions because we’re so afraid of feeling them that we just feel them for the rest of our lives, instead of just fully feeling them, having a freaking tantrum, if we need to, in your safe space, and then moving on with your life. And this has been so empowering for me.
[31:21] Sahara
And if you guys know, my family comes from Iran, my mom was a refugee, my parents escaped from war and revolution, so there was a lot of trauma in my lineage. My grandma was in a forced child marriage, like, I have seen a lot of trauma, I’ve seen Afghani street children, I have worked with many immigrants and refugees, and what I have found the most inspirational is that, in many of these communities, the way that they heal is through song, and dance, and movement, that they don’t need to hold onto these things that could be life-defining, but instead, they let the energy move through them.
[31:58] Sahara
So, I want to share with you this little story that I heard, that was just such a game-changer for me. So, after the Rwandan genocide, many of you have watched the movie Hotel Rwanda, but horrific acts of terror that are just like, my human mind can’t even compute, it’s unfathomable, the war crimes that were committed there and things that people saw.
And so, after the Rwandan genocide, the US Government sent a team of psychiatrists, psychologists, they’re taught mental professionals, to work with the victims who have survived this genocide, but have seen their family, friends, children, neighbors, be killed in front of them.
And after a few days, the village sent back these mental health professionals, and the US Government was like “Excuse me, these are our top tier psychiatrists here, why did you send them away?”, and they said “No, no, no, no, I think you sent the wrong people because these people wanted us to go into a dark room, by ourselves, and to keep talking about what happened, but in Rwanda, that is not how we heal. We heal through joining hands under the sun, and singing, and dancing, and telling stories, and being with each other. That is how we heal”.
And I invite you to just breathe that experience in for a moment and just let it drop in. The way that singing, dancing, being in community, being under the sun, feeling, can heal things that our human mind can’t even compute, in ways that analyzing our problems never will.
[33:45] Sahara
And it really begs the question of, is our western psychological model really working for us? Is talking about the trauma again, and again, and again, and again actually healing us from it? There is a time and space, for sure, I think it’s really important to share your story and to be heard and to dissect it and to learn the lessons from it, and it’s limited, because you might be in talk therapy for 20 years and have the same patterns show up because it’s living in the body.
[34:19] Sahara
So, this is why embodiment needs to be part of our mental health solution to this giant crisis that we are in as a society and planet, we can’t think our ways out of it. We need to include the body because the body is what holds score, the body is what holds the trauma, the body is what holds onto the story of whatever unprocessed feeling happened.
And that doesn’t mean you need to do a million things for the rest of your life, something as simple as singing and dancing under the sun, with community, can be enough. It’s a process, there will be more, but we can’t dissect and take out the body when the body is actually what experienced that trauma, it’s what’s holding onto it in its cellular memory. And trauma finds its way into every single part of our DNA, it changes our DNA. But I don’t think it’s for the worse.
[35:15] Sahara
You know, a lot of people talk about the traumatized brain and how, like, if you’ve experienced trauma, your brain is, like, lesser than. And in my experience, that has not been the truth, because I believe that, actually, our traumas can be used as the ultimate purifying force should we release it.
[35:36] Sahara
So, when you go through a trauma, it causes you to question everything in your life, it causes you to look at every single decision that you’re making, the way that you’re showing up, it changes everything for you.
And yes, there can be negative side effects of that, such as hyper-vigilance and, you know, the fear and the unsafety, 100%, and the most powerful people that I know and I have ever seen have overcome some of the greatest traumas, and it’s because they didn’t hold onto it, they didn’t make it define them. They used it as fuel, they used it as, in a way, nectar, for them to look at all the areas of their lives that they have not been looking at, that this trauma actually gave them a magnifying glass of.
And then, when you’re able to embody it, feeling the anger, feeling the sadness, feeling the grief, you then feel what’s on the other side of that, which is the growth, which is the possibility, which are the blessings of it. And then you can release it, and you don’t need to hold onto that trauma anymore, and you know that that happened to you in the past and you are now safe, you’re never going to have to go back into that thing again because now you know the cues, you never need to learn that lesson. And it made you so much more resilient, so much more open. I think heartbreak is one of the greatest heart openers.
So, when we can see – and even changing the word, I feel like this word trauma, is so charged, it’s like, ultimately, we’ve all had challenges in our lives, and it’s just a matter of how we’re going to transmute them and are we going to make it disempower us or rather, be the very thing, the catalyst, of our fullest expressions? And, ultimately, that is up to us.
[37:23] Sahara
So, in my own journey, in my own practice, if you’ve been following me on Instagram, I’ve been sharing more and more about my personal embodiment journey. It started with dance, but it’s really so much more. And to me, embodiment is really the root foundation of it all.
[37:37] Sahara
So, dharma was the thing that I was teaching about for the past few years and continuing to with my book “Discover Your Dharma”, and the Certified Dharma Coach Program, but the tool that I found I kept using on our weekly Q&A calls, were these Embodiment Coaching Practices.
I’m taking people into where are they holding onto that story in their bodies, what does it feel like, what texture does it have, what qualities does it have, what story and messages does it have for you? And I found myself really teaching these tools a lot more, and wanting a place that I could share it.
And then going through my divorce, I had to become my own greatest healer and dive into what are the tools that are really going to transform me. And I just became such a student of this work, doing so many different practices, but really, it was always the embodiment and somatic practices that completely shifted me and made me into, honestly, the best version of me that I have ever been.
[38:31] Sahara
So, this is why I am so excited to announce our new Certified Embodiment Coach Certification. So, this certification allows you to learn the tools for you to, not only dive into your own embodiment journey, but to take these different tools and use it on your future clients.
[38:50] Sahara
So, maybe you are a yoga teacher, or a health coach, or a life coach, a dharma coach, any type of coach, but you want to go deeper into the body level. Well, these tools are going to teach you exactly how.
Or maybe you just want to learn more about embodiment for yourself, you want to embody more of your won truth and feel more of your emotional and full spectrum self. Then the best way, ultimately, to learn about something is to learn how to teach and share it.
[39:16] Sahara
So, this Certified Embodiment Certification is brand-new, a 3-month certification that takes you through really everything you need to know. Of course, there’s always more, but it’s jam-packed, not just with the knowledge and the information, but every single week, you’re going to be embodying and practicing these tools in your life.
[39:36] Sahara
So, we start with the inner child, what is the inner child holding onto, what are her unmet needs, what are her holding patterns, what are those five personality patterns that you are holding onto, somatically, in your body, that is changing the shape and the definition of your body, and how you’re interacting with the world.
[39:53] Sahara
Then we go into your inner teenager, who is that inner rebel within you that, maybe, wasn’t fully heard, maybe the part of you that’s holding onto shame or anger, and really feeling what voice they have for you.
[40:06] Sahara
And then we go into many different tools. So, we use our EEE method. So, the EEE method stands for Emote, Embody and Express. So, how can you emote what it is that you’re holding onto, feeling your feelings; and then how do you embody it. Actual embodiment practices that I guide you with music, so you can give that expression a home and a voice, through your body. And then the expression of it, not just through communication, but also through coaching. How can you be a coach that uses these tools, to allow your clients to tune into their own body’s wisdom, because, ultimately, only they know the answers for their problems, you do not. We cannot know what someone is meant to do, but we can hold a safe space and container for them to drop in for themselves.
And that is the gift that you get to offer people as a Certified Embodiment Coach. You get to take people so much deeper into themselves, than they could’ve on their own, because most of us are afraid of our bodies, we don’t give it time, we don’t give it space, because we are afraid to feel.
So, you will learn how to create that container and then use different tools like movement, and breath, and expression, and art, and creativity, for people to actually go into what it is that they have been escaping from within themselves and then find the wholeness and completion and realize that sometimes those traumatic and challenging events were actually the greatest blessings on their path, it just needed to be seen, felt and experienced.
[41:37] Sahara
So, I so deeply stand behind the Embodiment Method, because it transformed my personal life in my darkest hours when I did not know what I was going to do and how I was going to heal, and it just felt like my entire life was turned upside down, I came home into the body. And I believe that I needed to have that experience for me to, really, on a soul level, know and trust and believe the quantum levels of healing that can take place through an embodied approach, that things like divorce, and health challenges, and all these different traumas that we’re experiencing on a daily level, if we don’t actually address it from a body level, we will be holding onto it for the rest of our lives.
But when we do, and by the way, it can be fun, it can be joyful, you can bring pleasure into your pain, you can bring joy into your healing, it doesn’t need to be being in a dark room by yourself, talking about that thing again, and again, and again. You can actually go beyond that into creating the state of being that you desire to be in, and then letting that anchor as your foundational setpoint so then everything you do is coming from this higher level perspective because you are embodying it from the ground up.
[42:52] Sahara
It’s like, if I am on the first floor of my life, I’m only going to see first floor problems, I’m going to see all the root, foundational, icky things, but then, if I go to the seventh floor, I’m starting to see things from a higher level perspective, and if I go to the twentieth floor, I’m seeing things from an even higher level perspective. And that’s what embodiment does, it takes those cobwebs that you’ve been holding onto, that tension in your shoulders from years of over-responsibility, or that pain in your lower back from feeling like you need to emotionally provide for everyone.
You know, we have a whole emotional pain body chart to actually show you what different points of your body are related to emotionally. But when you’re able to really look at it, and feel it, and observe it, and give it a space, that’s all it wants, it’s just like “Hey, look at me, pay attention to me”, and when you do it, and you move it, then you can reprogram what it is that you want to feel.
[43:44] Sahara
So, I also teach a variety of embodiment practices that you can do on a daily level, as setpoints for yourself, and then later do with your clients. So, how to embody more intuition, how to embody more of your inner shame that you are holding on to, how to embody more courage and confidence, how to embody more sensuality and pleasure.
These are not things you need to do years and years of work to finally get to one day, you can access those things right now. And this gives us so much permission because it makes us realize that we’re not broken and we’re not a constant problem to be solved, but rather, the things that we want to experience are just a song away, just a breath away, they’re just waiting for us to tune into that new radio switch that we have created this idea around, that it’s going to take us years to get there, but your body is so deeply craving it.
[44:38] Sahara
And we numb ourselves, we numb ourselves with food, we numb ourselves with alcohol, we numb ourselves with all these things, when really, our bodies just want to be felt. And when you start doing it, it’s like, your body… Like, last night, yesterday, instead of doing my embodiment practice, I had a flight to make so I didn’t do any embodiment practice, and then by night time, I could feel my body just wanted to dance, and move, and unwind, and my hips wanted to stretch, but I was like “No, I need to do work”, and I’m on my emails, and I could feel my body was, like, screaming at me, it just wanted to feel that openness and bliss, and then, finally, when I even gave it five minutes, I felt so much better.
[45:13] Sahara
So, so many of our problems that we have, that we hold onto for the rest of our lives, that we feel like “I’m never going to be in the relationship that I want, have the job that I want, have the friends that I want, have the home that I want, the life that I want”, when you integrate embodiment practices, your life radically shifts, because all of those things, it was just an arms-length distance away, you’ve just had a veil over it because your mind has told you the process is so long to get there, when that’s actually not true. It’s about embodying that energy right now and it actually becomes your reality.
[45:47] Sahara
So, I’m super excited to be sharing our Certified Embodiment Coach Certification. So, this is for you to dive deeper into your own embodiment journey, or to actually create a career for yourself as a Certified Embodiment Coach.
So, it is a 3-month long program, I’m running it Live, so I will be on the Q&A calls with you every single week, we’re taking a really small group this time because you’re our first batch of this, so we’re going to be really in the webs together. And honestly, this summer is going to go by regardless. So, you can choose to commit, just 2 hours a week, to creating a new career for yourself and diving deeper into your body’s wisdom and actually getting to the root cause of your ailments, or you can let the summer pass by and scroll through Instagram and be exactly where you are in September, with the same things and the same patterns showing up.
So, it doesn’t mean you can’t have your hot girl summer, I’m still going to have my hot girl summer, don’t worry about that, but you can be learning and growing, you’re going to have a way hotter girl summer if you bring these embodiment practices into the mix because you’re going to realize that you are manifesting on a level that is no longer resonant for you. You’re now manifesting on this higher level because you’re embodying this higher frequency that now, the things that you attract in your life are so much truer to who you are, rather than coming from this place of not enoughness and unworthiness that, you know, most of us are constantly in.
[47:07] Sahara
So, I’m really excited to be sharing this new program with you, it’s so near and dear to my heart, it’s what has healed me, it is what has healed so many people. You know, we’ve graduated over, now, almost 2000 students in Dharma Coaching Institute, which is now shifting into Highest Self Institute, so, we are rebranding the school into Highest Self Institute, as we open up more certifications like Certified Embodiment Coach.
So, we’re really excited to have you with us and be part of this movement into taking spirituality and grounding it into the body level and realizing the body is not lesser than, but the body really is sacred and holy, and when we listen to its wisdom, we receive everything that we need.
So, to learn more about it and to check out a Free Embodiment Practice with me, head over to the show notes or highestselfinstitute.com, you can find the information there. Enrollment is open right now, this month, early, we hit the ground running in July. And if you’re listening to this later on, be sure to head over to highestselfinstitute.com, you can find that link in the show notes, to get on the wait-list for when we open up again.
[48:15] Sahara
I’m super excited to dance, breathe and just embody our fullest expressions together, and I can’t wait to have you with me on this journey.
[48:24] Sahara
So, with that, I’ll say goodbye to you, and I’ll see you on the next Episode!
Episode#503: How To Become A More Embodied Person with Sahara Rose
By Sahara Rose