Embodiment - Live Life more Fully

16/03/2025

Glorious blessings.

07/03/2025

Good afternoon, all -

Today in my Secular Al-anon meeting, the topic was "obsessive thinking". So many people talked about their challenge right now with obsessive thinking related to the political sphere. Do you feel this?

I do...and I listened with fascination and great joy as I realized that what helps me the most with this challenge - whether about politics or any other demanding question of being alive - are the practices that I am offering in my upcoming workshop on March 15th.
Tend and Befriend: An Embodiment offering of Somatic-based Self-Care

For me, the type of thinking that feels obsessive in my Mind and in my Body is the OPPOSITE of Self-care,
and usually results in no productive action,
and almost always results in simply exhausting me, sometimes until I simply shift into the states of Fawn/Flight/Fight or Freeze and then I become unhelpfully reactive!

Consider this:
While doing the action of obsessively thinking in your Mind, your Body mirrors your Mind's activities.
Yes, Body, at some level, always does the action of your thoughts right along with your Mind.

As my mind grasps and clings to ideas, my body also grasps... onto nothingness and clings...onto the non-physicality of ideas.
This causes stress and tension in the Body because when I think like this, I am not allowing my Body to ALSO FEEL a sense of my capable or stable physical Self that is right there, in the moment, doing its best to act on my behalf.

This is the nature and dis-ease of dis-embodiment.

This type of thinking will, without also Tending to the accompanying experience of my Body, quickly deplete me.
It will result in my physical Body feeling less and less Safe or satisfied and more and more stressed and tense..
And my Body being in this untended state will keep my system in a wild unproductive cycle in which the DESIRE for an answer will heighten the attachment of my Mind in trying to figure out the answer to the original question because the nervous system reads all of this as being very dangerous.
Over and over and over.
Whew...if you recognize this pattern, you know, it is too much.

And I am here to tell you ---- it is unnecessary.

CREATIVE INSPIRATION, for me, is the opposite of obsessive thinking.
And CREATIVE INSPIRATION comes to me only when I uses my practices of Tending and Befriending to ensure that my Body AND my Mind both feel a sensed experience of SAFETY and/or STABILITY.
Tend and Befriend: An Embodiment offering of Somatic-based Self-Care

When I approach a question in my Mind with a Body that senses it is safe and supported,
I am able to more easily access my feelings and beliefs that I am capable, rested and able to move myself in some productive way.
When I practice Embodiment as part of my thinking, I can FEEL my Self as a place of empowerment, able to do the thing, (maybe just one thing), in this moment to ACT in some way that will address the question at hand in a productive (and probably more developmental and sustainable) way.
This is also the foundation of what Jen Hoffman of the Americans of Conscience calls Empowered Resistance ( a workshop I highly recommend happening virtually the next day!
(Visits the website of Americans of Conscience for this information.)

What I will be sharing in this workshop is a Framework of practices of Embodiment to help you empower yourself in relationship to your thinking about and experiences of the unknown and of that which you do not have control over! (Politics and the behaviors of other people fall in this category!)

SO, If you find yourself obsessively thinking, or feeling as if you are grasping for answers without ever feeling a sense of accomplishment,
or simply desiring to be able to more readily recognize when you are exhausting yourself with no benefit,
AND
you'd like to learn somatic-based practices so you can choose to BE more deeply in your Self in ways that could help you shift your dysfunctional/depleting unproductive patterns, THIS workshop is for you!

Tend and Befriend: An Embodiment Offering of Somatic-based Self-care
March 15th, 2025
1:30 - 4:30 p.m.
sliding scale: $15 - 90
see event link for more details!
Tend and Befriend: An Embodiment offering of Somatic-based Self-Care

Send a message to learn more

26/02/2025

Hi there folks,
I'm working on bringing my Website up to date to reflect the wisdom, experience and insight I've developed since I first created it almost ten years ago.

If you are interested in my updated description of myself, please visit https://www.embodimentllc.com/about-victoria

be sure to click on the link within the description to view my profile with the international organization that recognizes my proficiency in the field of somatic movement therapy and education!

"Peace is not the absence of war.  It is the time when we will all bring ourselves closer to each othercloser to building a structure that is unique within ourselvesBecause we have finally come to Peace within ourselves."

05/02/2025

I am thinking about this community/group often.

I have not had the energy to maintain contact on this page, and have been sharing only with those who know me personally.

Are you interested in hearing from me as the voice of Embodiment, or is it time for me to close this page?

22/09/2024

Dear Ones of my Embodiment community -

I am so excited to invite you to join me tomorrow morning at 7:30 a.m. CDT on a Zoom gathering to celebrate the Equinox.

For those who may not know, Equinox is a simultaneous moment of balance all around the globe, where the Earth finds its balancing minute – precisely halfway between the summer and the winter solstices. Our theme for our Zoom gathering is “Encompassing the Equinox” and we will be holding this moment of full balance together, from all around the globe. My friend Marylee Hardenbargh of Global Site Performance https://www.facebook.com/globalsiteperformance and her band of merry movers have created this global art experience out of MaryLee's love of numbers: This year the Equinox takes place on the 22nd day of the month of September at 44 minutes after the hour, and so the dance of 44 dancers!

If you have the time and bandwidth to join in the morning, this is what will be happening:

LOG IN at 7:30 AM CST.
At the exact moment of the Equinox (7:44 a.m.) we will be led in a ritual by Bogyeol Choi, head of the Community Dance School in Korea. https://www.facebook.com/bogyeolchum/?locale=ko_KR

You will then have the opportunity to watch the PREMIUM of the 092224 Equinox Dance with 44 dancers (including ME) performing from all over the globe!
After the film you will be invited to join some of us in break out rooms to discuss briefly what brings balance in your life OR what spots you visit to feel balanced.
We will then all move together in a 44-second "dance" made up of a set of simple movements to end our time together!

I would love for you to join !
Topic: Equinox Gathering for Everyone
Time: Sep 22, 2024, 07:30 AM Central Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88281882139
Meeting ID: 882 8188 2139

30/07/2024

Sharing a brief article on the neuroscience of fitness that has me thinking about what I see in my mind when I hear words like "fitness" and "exercise" and how those images may OR may not be the same as when I hear the words "embodied movement" or even "mindful movement."

What about you?

Exercise stimulates neurogenesis, primarily in the hippocampus, influencing memory and learning while increasing key mood-regulating neurotransmitters.

24/07/2024

A gentle reminder to slow down and seek the subtle beauty in some part of your day today.

This flower is a Missouri native. It is half the size of my pinky nail. If I had been in a rush I would surely have missed it... yet now that i know she is there in my yard, I seek her out.

01/07/2024

This song was gifted me through the Divine that exists within the algorithm of the internet and Youtube. And I do not use the term "gifted" lightly.

https://youtu.be/FTR4Yeprl5I?si=ZKNrB-j2WNXj4E5F

Life is amazing and then it sucks.

To shift the lyrics a bit:

You can find a job that feels like a life calling in October and feel as equally strong in June that you are being called to leave.

When you notice that you've stopped dancing, pay attention.

When you notice you are feeling less joy and you find yourself wanting to and actually exploding on people you love way more than you used to, stop just apologizing and notice you need to make a change!

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I am not sure why I feel called to share - it is something about connecting with others in the learning of living this life thing.

What am I realizing that I have learned:

I've learned that our bodies don't know what it will experience until we have let it have the experience.

Even though I have long taught this (and believed I understood it), I have now learned from the lived experience that there is definitely a difference between the experience of the discomfort that comes when we LEARNING something new and the increasingly uncomfortable sensations when we begin to experience OVERWHELM (that leaves no space for learning, and is information to slow down, Check-in https://youtu.be/sVje5Vhbxek?si=3sI2FcPjtYODEmwC, and Reset!) AND the mind-blowing, loss-of-control feelings when the body shifts into Fight or Flight or Collapse (or any of the other words you might use to describe this state).

An aside if you are interested, I am using words in the above paragraph originally coined by Tom Senninger in a model of Change known as the Learning Zone Model and then refined (over the last few years) by me and my clients. Our refinement of the vocabulary was based on our lived experiences and seeks to reflect a more trauma-informed, resiliency-focused language that recognizes that between Learning and Panic or I have come to call Reactivity, we often have the information and experience of Overwhelm. If you'd like to read more about the original Learning Zone Model, check out this link: https://youtu.be/sVje5Vhbxek?si=3sI2FcPjtYODEmwC or this one: https://youtu.be/sVje5Vhbxek?si=3sI2FcPjtYODEmwC

I have had the opportunity to learn in ways that I didn't fully understand before that my Mind can tell me all the reasons I SHOULD (one of my least favorite words) stay in a situation my Body is obviously suffering from.

I have learned that I can even feel a physical desire to keep trying to do a thing I believe I want to do while my Body is screaming "Uncle".

I have learned that I can lose my perspective of when my Body has shifted from the experience of Learning and is experiencing a bit of overwhelm vs a lot overwhelm. I have learned that my Mind can be so busy trying to get my Body to cooperate with my Mind's intention that I lose any accurate sense of embodiment.

I have learned that I have a warped sense of what "normal" tiredness feels like in my Body.

I have learned that my Mind is very adept at supplying the ways I COULD do this experience better if, my Mind says, I could just get my Body to be different than it is, "better" than it is because my Mind has decided THIS is what my body should be doing.

I have learned that my Body is incredibly strong and resilient and capable...and it is also human and sensitive and, by its nature, limited.

Oy. It's been a journey.

*************************************
I feel a little fear when I consider writing what I'm considering to write as the next sentence about what I recently learned about all of this...

wait. Here is a Learning moment... I realize I need to ask myself, to ask my body: is it fear or is it just discomfort?

I breathe in deeply and let it go. I find and feel my feet and my seat. I slow down. Do I really want to share this publicly?

Breathing. Grounding. Orienting...yes, I do. I want to share it.

Wait...do I?

Keep breathing and grounding and orienting.

I realize I could...My Mind tells me I could. And I realize that what I am feeling in my Body is more than just curious discomfort, it is a little Fear, a little Overwhelm.

How curious. I feel a physical compulsion to share more - and my mind says "yes, yes, yes" and my body says "slow down, Vic".

And so to practice what I believe I am being called to learn, I am choosing to stop right here in my sharing with you.

To quote Toni Jones, "I only share the necessary when necessary..."
https://youtu.be/Kt3Bh7rhuqs?si=Ku8cpiFyI2gGu2mS

hmmm, how to know. How exactly to know what is necessary...

Blessings, ya'll.

Provided to YouTube by Amuseio ABBeing Real Is the New Fake · Toni JonesI See Me Mantras℗ IAM sounds Music Group, under exclusive license to Amuseio ABReleas...

19/02/2024

"Well- being is not simply the absence of problems, but also the presence of strengths. " -Deb Dana

17/10/2023

I've been pondering the idea of offering an early morning "wake up your body with Victoria" ZOOM session a few mornings a week.

This would be a 30 or 45 minute whole body, gentle wake up - it would include practices of body awareness, mindfulness, stretching, self-soothing, awakening, strengthening and cardio. It would include foundational movement patterns, yoga, qi gong and some dance.

The fee would be 7 - 10 sliding scale.

I'm thinking like 6 to 6:30 or 6:45.

Would anyone be interested in being a part of this sort of morning "get your day started right" kind of movement class?

13/10/2023

Augmented rest.

It simply means consciously bringing small periods of rest into the space between your phrases of activity. I think of it as a pause in which you don't simply stop but also allow yourself to consciously breathe, yield, be in the truth of the present moment, let go of what needs to be let go of. And it is not a pause that happens once, but woven in all that you do throughout your day.

It is a basic concept of somatics. It is a practice I highly value but had not previously had a name for. For me, it is a time to practice what I call The Checkin, which is taking time to orient, to tune into your breath and tune into your sense of yourself connected to the Earth. https://youtu.be/_658KYwATtI?si=WN9jpF4ngCfSi8vl

What do you think of this idea of augmented rest? Is it something you practice? Do you see the value of starting this practice?

The Check-InThis is what Registered Somatic Movement Therapist/Educator Victoria Day has named the embodied practice of self-soothing and self-regulating tha...