I was at the gym this morning playing pickup basketball, and while resting on the sideline between games, I reminisced back to how insecure and tense I used to be in an environment like this around other guys.

This bodily state of tension affected my game, how I shot the ball, how I moved up and down the court. I felt very rigid, especially in my shoulders. And it just didn’t feel natural to be on the court.

I didn’t feel like I belonged.

A big contrast to today. Where I had basically no tension in my body. I was free to move around the court and make good decisions. I wasn’t in my head thinking about what the other guys thought of me. I was just playing and being in the moment and feeling good in myself, which made all the difference in how I played.

What’s different now?

Over the years I’ve learned to get more in my body. I’ve dealt with a lot of the repressed emotion and stress I was carrying from past events around people where I’d been hurt and shaken badly. I’ve reintegrated these emotions that were disintegrated and I’ve learned to let go of nearly all the tension I was holding in my body (you know, that feeling as if I was about to “attacked” by an invisible enemy).

And it’s made all the difference in how I feel and how I am around people. I’ve become so much more confident in myself because my body is no longer the enemy giving me reason to fear.

How to Become Embodied

It’s not a quick fix process. It’s been a journey getting back into my body. It has meant facing all those uncomfortable feelings and emotions in myself and learning to process them. It has meant sitting with the discomfort when it arises and not running from it. Not going into my head as a way to escape it – just sitting with the full intensity of it and letting it wash over me.

For around 7 years I’ve on this path to learning to become more embodied. It all started with a decision to go on a 10 day silent Vipassana meditation retreat. It was here I learned a meditation technique for focusing awareness on my bodily sensations. And this was the start to really becoming more conscious of my body. Learning to live inside my body instead of my head.

And through this process it has brought so much peace, stability, confidence to my life. I feel so much more secure around people – like I don’t have to put on or be something I’m not. I can just relax and let things come and go naturally. There’s no more fear that arises because I’m not resisting my feelings. My emotions are finally working for me instead of against me.

You don’t have to go on a meditation retreat to experience this. You can begin right now where you are. It involves a conscious decision to move attention from your head and your thinking mind, into your body and your feelings. This can be hard initially because there’s probably a lot that is packed down inside of you that is preventing you from fully feeling and being in your body.

But you have to start somewhere. Set an intent to put attention into your body, even when it’s uncomfortable. Start noticing how your body is feeling in different situations in life. Don’t resist what you’re experiencing, try to just sit with it and let it be there. This is how it gradually begins to break down from a hard shape into a softer one.

Picture an ice cube you pull out of the freezer and what happens as you hold it in your hand. At first you experience extreme sensations of cold, but, as you stay with the cold and just hold the ice, the heat of your hand begins to transform this ice cube into a more flowing and aqueous shape, water.

This same principle applies to your body. When you first put attention there, it can be an uncomfortable place where you begin to experience all this intense and unpleasant sensation. But, as you keep your attention there, the light of your conscious mind begins to transform this sensation into softer and more pleasant sensation – where it then feels good to be in your body.

This is essentially the path to embodiment in a nutshell.

Does any of this make sense? What’s your experience? Let me know in the comments.