August 12, 2025 • 46 mins
Somatic movement teacher and author Colleen Wahl is an expert in embodied knowing—the wisdom and guidance our bodies hold when we take the time to listen. Colleen shares how sensation is the foundation of embodiment, why slowing down before labeling an experience opens up new possibilities, and how this awareness can transform both yoga teaching and personal practice.
We dive into the gap between sensation and analysis, the power of staying present with discomfort, and how embodiment can help us navigate life changes and decisions with greater clarity. You’ll hear stories of chronic pain resolution and learn practical ways to explore sensation in movement—tools you can bring right into your classes to help students connect more deeply to themselves.
If you’ve ever felt out of touch with your body’s signals or wanted to teach in a way that truly honors each student’s unique inner experience, this conversation will give you inspiration and clear, practical insight you can use right away.
5 Key Ideas:
- Sensation is the foundation of embodied knowing—it’s how we remember that we have a body.
- When you stay with sensation before labeling it, you open space for possibility.
- Discomfort is often the signal that gets us to change.
- Your body’s wisdom can’t be rushed—the knowing arrives in its own time.
- As yoga teachers, our job is to point students toward their own inner experience, not tell them what they should feel.
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Keywords: embodiment, embodied knowing, somatic movement, yoga philosophy, sensation in yoga, somatic awareness, yoga teaching skills, embodied yoga, listening to your body, body wisdom, chronic pain and yoga, somatics in teaching, yoga beyond alignment, sensory awareness, somatic decision-making, embodied movement, yoga teacher tools, intuition in yoga, self-awareness practices, yoga teacher growth
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
As the world moves more and moretowards artificial intelligence,
there's a greater and greater need for embodied and
experiential intelligence. This is what we do as yoga
practitioners. This is what we guide others as
yoga teachers towards embodiment.
So the wisdom that comes from presence into reception,
(00:22):
self-awareness, all the things that we do in yoga practice.
So it's my honor today to talk about this with the person to
talk about embodiment is ColleenWall.
She hosts the Embodied People podcast, which I had the honor
to be a guest on recently. So you can check out my episode
in season 6, episode 11 where wetalk about astrology and yoga
(00:47):
and my path through this and my own embodiment practices.
And if you want to learn about astrology, I am hosting a
workshop called Become Your Own Astrologer.
And I think it's all about becoming an embodied and
experienced astrologer is what is really useful for applying
this information to our lives. And it's so helpful.
(01:07):
It's helped me so much in my life to understand my health,
wealth, relationships, purpose, all the big picture things in
life. We can see it all in the birth
chart and work with it. So if you want to check that
out, the link is in the show notes, Quiet Mind
astrology.com/workshop. It's going to be super fun.
It's my most popular astrology workshop every year and it's all
new for 2025. It's the new workbook and new
(01:30):
processes, new exercises, even better than ever.
So that's at Quiet Mind astrology.com/workshop or the
show notes. And I have the link as well to
the Embody People podcast hostedby the amazing Colleen Wall,
where I did an interview with her recently and had an amazing
time. So she's a master semantic
movement educator, author and dance teacher and artist
(01:52):
herself. She teaches workshops around the
world. So check out her site and her
podcast, colleenwall.com and theEmbodied People podcast.
So let's start with the first question to ask Colleen.
So what is embodied knowing? Oh, embodied knowing.
(02:15):
I would say that on its simplestlevel, it's what we feel or know
in and through our tissues. I want to kind of back up a
little bit with this word embodied, though.
I think that embodied requires sensation.
(02:37):
It requires us to attend to the sensation of being alive in this
body. And then if sensation is the
foundation of something that we can feel that we have a body and
that we can know things through our body, then there's a space,
(03:01):
there's a gap between sensation.And then the more mental
processes of perception, analysis, meaning making.
And so embodied knowing, I think, asks us to slow down and
to bring our consciousness into feeling that we have a body,
(03:24):
staying with whatever sensationsare present in that body.
Because when we stay with the sensation longer, before we give
it a name or before we label it,then there's a lot of
possibility with that sensation.When sensation jumps right away
to something perceptive or something named, then we've sort
(03:48):
of gone out of our bodies and we've sort of gone more to the
analytical analysis aspects of being alive.
And while there has a lot of value to that, it does, in my
experience, in my work with clients, in my classes, it does
take us first quickly to reaction and not to the space of
(04:10):
possibility that sensation offers.
So I feel like maybe I got aheadof myself and answering your
question, but embodied knowing is about the wise counsel that
our bodies offer us as guidance,as direction in our lives.
And the one of the like foundational ways to get there
(04:31):
is sensation as the start. I feel like just this one
question we could talk about 10 hours.
Yeah, me too, Jeremy. So I guess the first place my
head is going, my body is going is I had digestive issues for a
(04:51):
long time and I kind of ignored it.
And just as like whatever stomach pain, whatever, then a
certain point I just like was doing yoga a lot, meditating a
lot is like, I just probably do something about this.
I should probably pay attention to that.
Like, that's probably not good that I'm having digestive issues
so commonly and just starting topay attention to this signal my
(05:15):
body was constantly giving me. Like, started to open up so much
awareness. Like that eventually led me on a
path over a few years to like, uncovering some deep unprocessed
anger in my stomach. And that whole thing shifted
when I got to that point of like, there was all this anger
in my teenage years and my stepdad that I never expressed.
(05:37):
And it was just like suppressed,suppressed, suppressed.
And finally, you know, through alot of work and therapeutic kind
of work of constantly just like what's going on in my stomach,
Like what is it trying to tell me?
What happens when I eat this food?
A lot of work in like yoga practices and somatic release
kind of stuff. And but it was a long journey of
(06:00):
that just one bodily signal of like stomach pain or digestive
issues and whatever. I'll just ignore it.
So I, I've definitely experienced this myself.
I didn't have the words for it of embodied knowing, but the
sense of like, hey, something going on in my body I should
probably pay attention to, especially when it's like a pain
or an, an issue like that. It's, it's probably a lot there,
(06:23):
right? Yeah, there's so much there.
And I think what strikes me first about your example is that
when you decided to attend, you sort of, I would almost say,
dropped the attention into your body and gave it attention that
it wasn't unnecessarily a linearprocess.
(06:43):
Like this is here and now I knowthis or I'm going to treat it
this way. But, and there may have been
moments there, it's linear, but it was much more like a mind
map. Like at the center of it was the
sensation of distress in your guts.
And then there was lots of things that sort of spoked out
(07:06):
from that center that became a larger cluster of insight for
you. And that that is really, I think
an important part of embodied knowing is that from the center
of something that we experience,there are so many interconnected
(07:28):
or relation relationships between what's happening, what
we're sensing in our body and the like, larger pattern of our
lives. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. So I'm guessing you've probably
worked with clients like this for maybe they have some sort of
presenting symptom physically and you go into it and it's
(07:51):
maybe not for me. You might, you might have seen
on the surface, oh, I just need to change my diet.
But it was so much more than that, right?
Yeah, absolutely. I don't have any like client
stories off the top of my head that I have permission to share.
But I, I let me see if I can come up with a sort of imagine
(08:12):
cluster of of of one or two there or three that that come
together. I think yes.
So I think one of the ones that I think I can pull together as a
cluster is someone who has been struggling with some health,
(08:35):
health issues for a little while.
And in that sort of needing health related support, needing
people in the medical profession, needing care from
loved ones, that what started tofeel like it evaporated.
And this person was a sense of acentral self, like a coherent
(09:00):
self-image that both is a psychological state.
But I also believe in it is alsothat we can imagine that deep in
the center of us, like between our belly button and the bottom
of our pelvis, that there is a sense of who we are right there
that we hopefully can operate from.
It's both enduring over time. It's like who I am.
(09:23):
It's different than who you are.But these are related and in the
needing to be so out there that the connection into a central
feeling of a core of 1's body and the psychological connection
to a central self sort of to dissipate.
And then what happened was this sort of reaching out like I need
(09:45):
you, I need you, I need you. But there wasn't movement, there
wasn't a sense of connection to the self.
It was just grasping. And there wasn't even support
for the deepest connection in the center.
And so one of the things I, I did was work with bringing
awareness to the center of the body.
And then eventually that the center of the body could support
(10:08):
an elongation of a reach and that there was a connection
between the center of the body. And like the need to reach out
to make contact, that they weren't sort of separate from
each other. And that meant when contact was
made, it felt more secure. So like when the grass was had,
(10:30):
they could feel that this connection was received in their
deep guts, not held, embraced atthe edges and made it feel much
more satisfying to be in connection with people.
So I'd guess that was maybe hopefully not too abstract for
the listeners, but that's a that's a way that like I have
(10:52):
worked with some people for sure.
And I'm thinking about one client especially but.
Yeah. So like if somebody say and
they're in a relationship dynamic where they feel they are
losing themselves in a way or maybe anxious about their
partner needing validation, needing affirmation, kind of
reaching to the partner for something, but from a place of
(11:15):
like not being rooted and centered, this kind of thing.
Absolutely. That's a beautiful rephrase.
Yeah. And so that if we're going to,
if we need to satisfy our needs,we want to reach out.
We still are reaching out from aplace of centeredness in
ourselves and that there's support that there was a
connection between the reach andthe the center of the body or
(11:35):
somewhere else in the body. And so I think possibly what
you're also can hear in this is that while these things are felt
in our body, that they're present in the experience of
having a body, we also sort of work with them psychologically.
And a lot of our psychological language does have maybe
(12:00):
contrails or connections to a deeply embodied knowing.
And it's often a knowing that. I think it's important to say
that it's often a knowing that is pre verbal because it's the
kind of knowing that comes into us more as infants, at least on
the very foundational level. Like learning what's me and
(12:21):
what's not me is that happens first developmentally in
movement and then the movement activity of center and edges me,
not me becomes a psychological and an intellectual knowing of
me, my caregivers, my mom, my dad, the world.
(12:42):
And so often times it does mean getting sort of that's the value
of going to sensation is that the sensation we can know and
work from sort of before the activity of language and
labeling it lets us go deeper into the knowing, I think.
That's what so much of yoga is really about.
(13:03):
It's observing, being present, not necessarily giving a story
or meaning to things. It's very powerful.
I think, Jeremy, that is one of your particular gifts in
teaching yoga also, is that I think you provide space both in
(13:28):
your queuing, in your timing, and in your general approach
where you invite people into what they're feeling and
experiencing really, really uniquely, beautifully.
And I think it does allow, at least As for me, it has in your
(13:51):
classes in presence. It allows me the space to hear
my own response, my own inner experience, instead of maybe
being told what to experience. Those are very different.
Yeah, I agree and I appreciate that.
And and I feel the same way whenI go to classes and they sort of
tell me you should feel this or this, you know, you need to do
(14:14):
it this way or it has to be thisway.
It's sometimes it's true, but sometimes it's very dissonant to
my own experience. And I think so much of yoga
should be pointing us as a teacher should be pointing the
student to their own experience and their own embodiment and,
and so much wisdom is there. And like, you just don't know as
(14:35):
a teacher, you don't know what the other person is going.
You have no idea what their day was like, what emotions they're
processing. You just see what you see on the
physical and maybe energetic youcan see.
But yeah, I think so much of yoga should be like creating
space for that. And, and I appreciate that and,
and that space. So when, when we're just
(14:55):
observing and just noticing sensation, I, I can imagine, you
know, some people like there's so many angles to, to approach
us. So like 1 is that so many, some
people might come into, there's things they don't want to feel
kind of like with me, with my stomach, like they're
uncomfortable and then they kindof check out.
(15:16):
I mean, I've experienced this too, like start to feel
something uncomfortable and suddenly I'm like totally
distracted. So what do you say to that?
If people are like, they know there's stuff in there and like
they try to look at it and they just, they somehow check out.
I mean, I emphasize I have kind of a wicked my first ever case
(15:39):
of Poison Ivy right now. Oh wow.
And it is totally an experience of of how much do I want to feel
this or not? It's that's very mundane
example. You know, I'm not exactly sure
(16:01):
how to answer this in a in a very clear way, except that I, I
really do think that pain and discomfort is usually the signal
that we're going to listen to more.
Even though the desire for pleasure is is beautiful and
there is totally a seeking of that in our lives, the one that
(16:23):
actually gets us to do somethingdifferent, like especially
change in our lives. And I guess that's something
worth talking about in a minute,but is usually discomfort.
And so in the not wanting to go there, most of the time it
doesn't go away. We can back away from it or kind
of create boundaries and edges, but there's sometimes where we
(16:47):
have to feel it till it runs itscourse like Poison Ivy, or
there's other times where there's something more sort of
systemic that it will find otherways until we deal with it.
Yeah. And I'm thinking about, I had
chronic psychroiliac joint pain from about the age of 12 and the
(17:13):
doctor said I needed PT. Maybe I shouldn't dance so much.
Maybe I should stop playing football.
Like I got all those stories. And I think with my movement and
somatic skills, I was able to keep it being not so bad that I,
I didn't, I didn't really do anything about it.
And over the summer I had an emergency hysterectomy and you
(17:38):
know what? The pain was gone.
So whatever that was, 28 years of feeling that pain, I, I
thought it was like in the muscular skeletal system because
that was where I had been putting my energy and my
understanding of it. And I did find lots of ways to
(18:00):
deal with it and lots of meaningaround it.
But it was really, really kind of an, something I'm still
processing is that it was a uterine related issue.
And then the change in me. First I had to accept my body
not feeling that pain. And that was really strange
(18:21):
because I didn't really know what my, I didn't know how to
feel myself without the sensation of discomfort.
But then the sort of energy or space or freedom from not having
to feel what is in and around that, like to not have that to
contend with, it's kind of amazing.
(18:45):
And yeah, there's definitely some larger metaphors in my life
about like, wow, that thing thatI, it was parts of me that I was
keeping a babe. But that's like a longer
conversation that's beyond the scope of this hour also.
So yeah, I guess The thing is that it's I, I, I do feel like I
(19:05):
limited myself though, because Ihad put a muscular skeletal lens
on it for so long and I tended to it that way and it worked
well enough. But now that I have more time
and have that information from that experience, I'm starting to
make sense out of all of it differently.
You. Have this experience.
(19:27):
You have the sensation you've had.
Now you have a different sensation and that's that is a
neutral fact that now you have the choice of how to interpret
and make meaning of that. Right.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
And and I and I think I'm partially not when I start
(19:47):
because I'm, I'm not ready. I'm still working on making
meaning out of it. It's not, it's not ready to be
out of my mouth yet. It's still like a goldfish
swimming around in my torso, sort of being processed in
there. Big.
One, I appreciate you sharing that and I imagine I know some
listeners have similar like major life changes.
(20:08):
And that's the the interpretation, the story you
tell yourself about it is kind of such a big impact and it can
unconsciously form of like an immediate reaction of this is
all bad or negative or somehow problem.
You know, if for the listeners who might be stuck in some level
(20:29):
of the story of a situation experience and then a negative
interpretation of it. And you know, and it's the
nature of that is like it seems like that is not just a negative
interpretation. That is just the reality.
It's just the facts. You know, this thing happened
and it sucks. You know, that is valid people
who experience that and true forthe people who are experiencing
(20:52):
that. So you know what, What do you
say if somebody's in that kind of experience or like, yeah, I
don't feel like I have a choice on how to interpret this.
It just is what it is. I think it depends on the
intensity and the severity. I think sometimes they own the
(21:14):
1st thing we try to do is get the Organism out of pain.
Because when the Organism is in a panic around pain, there's not
a whole lot I think that's easy to move with.
There's not a whole lot of movement in any direction.
But I I also say that if you can, if it's not so overwhelming
(21:38):
to the system or it's not spiraling out, like to take the
pain and almost buffer around it.
Like to create in your psyche like a space around it to hold
its possibilities and to see what else might feel like it's
(22:00):
connected to it might feel like there's room for you to sort of
grow a little bit bigger in one way of perceiving it or grow a
little bigger in another way of perceiving it.
And and I will say that the different teachers and training
programs and queries that my quest to work out my SI joint
(22:23):
pain in the intermediary years has been profoundly important to
the work that I'm doing now in terms of connecting to
creativity. The idea of why would a person
change? I mean, sure, we're going to get
old, but like an Organism, organisms change.
(22:44):
And do they change because like in the Darwinian sense of they
need to survive, so something that is perceived as negative,
as barreling at them, and so survival instincts kick in and
they shift. Or another model that I learned
through like Continuum and EmilyConrad.
(23:05):
Continuum is a somatic practice about opening the fluid system
and opening the being to a stateof flow is called acceptability,
which is like the Organism changes because it's exposed to
a new possibility for itself. It's exposed to a new sensation
or a new way of moving, or you know, like the sensation of
(23:30):
moving from the lowest part of the pelvis instead of from the
lower back, or the differentiation between the
tail, the bottom of the pelvis. So exposure causes, generative
exposure causes the Organism to change.
And I would say so much of my learning has in part was
inspired by wondering what was going on in there in the
(23:52):
intermediary years. So there is something that is
like those the seeds of discomfort, like they can cause
us to change because we have to survive, but they could also
bump us out towards more generative curiosity, maybe in
and around whatever it is. I love the way you think about
(24:14):
this and just the idea like the Organism will continue to change
so they can't really be stuck inone sort of expression forever.
And Jeremy, I'm sorry to interrupt you.
That's so important that embodied knowing isn't about the
mechanics of the body. It's not about the like
(24:35):
anatomical structures they participate, but it's it's more
expressive. There's a inner expression
that's part of this cluster of ideas.
And that I guess that can look alot of different ways, right?
Absolutely, yeah. Yours is going to be so
(24:58):
different than mine. That's kind of one of the, I
think really important parts is you're not moving yourself to
look like something else, but you're moving yourself kind of
from the inside out to into moreand more of your own unique
pattern. Well, it's pretty different than
yoga, which is like you look like a a dog, a cat, a cow, a
(25:24):
crow. I mean, those are models that
open up new possibilities for us.
We also do need that, yeah. So then when you're looking at
the pleasure side of things, like moving towards pleasure,
how might that look? Well, what a interesting
(25:51):
contrast to behold. I think that the moving towards
and I want to like discern or like separate.
There's like the pleasure because I want to have a
cocktail or buy a new pair of pants.
I'm not talking about that kind of pleasure.
That's fine. But we're not, you know, I'm
(26:12):
attracted to that person or something.
That's not the kind of of pleasure here.
It's, I think it's more like theversion of pleasure that
enriches your sense of yourself and your sense of wholeness and
moving towards that. Yeah, I think that it can feel
(26:36):
often times when we first meet it maybe nervous, maybe almost,
I'd even say sometimes the innerexperience of cringiness at
first because it's unfamiliar. But I think that if it's
something that the system want for itself, that it wants to
(26:58):
accept, there is often an, an inner response of like I, it's
almost like an inner call, like I have to move in this
direction. And it does have a directional
nature that's like outside of ourselves.
That's a pull, I think, but thatI have to start to move in this
(27:19):
direction. And if I don't, something that
needs to, that's wanting to awaken within is not, is going
to maybe die or not be fulfilled.
It's like, am I giving myself the chance to bloom or go in
that direction? And I think it's a, it's a, it's
(27:40):
a mix between like an inner callthat has a magnetism or an
attraction as well as something often that we see out there that
looks good to us, like it's something we want to try on.
And I don't think we always havethe language for that quieter
(28:01):
but also more intense version ofdesire.
But we can like feel that something inside starts to knock
and it might come in and movement might come in and dream
material. I mean, we are so relational,
like all of our parts are in relationships.
So I think it usually shows up in lots of different ways.
(28:21):
But I can tell that at least in my experience, sometimes it's
like once I introduced to that thing, like I can't, I can't
have it any other way. And all of me gets invested in
sorting out how to move in that direction.
But then there's other things that have felt much more scary,
especially like, I don't, you know, it doesn't make sense to
sell my house. Why would I sell my house?
(28:43):
But you know, the my brain, my intellect, it doesn't make
sense. But all parts of me think this
is everything else is like saying to do it.
And so those can be harder to sort out.
And I think that's where our embodied wisdom comes in more is
like how how does the Mama hedgehog know how to feed her
(29:04):
babies? Like the body starts to take
over somehow. And if it doesn't, then I think
we have a lot more pain and a lot more distress in our body
because somewhere in us we're wanting to do this and the
systems are holding us back. There's that quote.
I think it's from the book of Thomas.
(29:24):
It's like, well, if we bring forth what is within us, what we
bring forth will save us. If we do not bring forth what is
within us, what we do not bring forth will destroy us.
And that resonated a lot when I first heard that in my my teens,
like, oh, I got to really listento these like this calling and
go in this direction and that when I didn't, it seemed like my
(29:48):
life was harder. Mm Hmm.
Mm hmm, absolutely. I have similar like motor boats
of my life that different waves.But yeah, life feels a lot
harder, I think. And the body is life is already,
you know, taking out the trash can be hard, but when your body
isn't able to support you and that like something's holding
(30:10):
you back, it just it's that muchless pleasant.
Yeah. And there's the actual like
physical body movement version of this where like in a yoga
context, we might say like, justfind what feels good in the
movement or move any way that you like in this part of the
(30:31):
practice. And it's sort of breaking the
hierarchy of, you know, do as I tell you to do kind of thing.
And instead of like, I'm just providing A framework.
And then you have some space in here to just explore.
And then so there's that part ofembodiment and yoga and the way
that you teach. How does this express and like
(30:53):
how my this like look in a yoga practice?
Besides that comment to show up?Yeah, let me think about.
I hope I can answer those adequately.
I think every teacher finds their different ways and
different ways change over time.I don't teach yoga.
(31:13):
I teach dance and somatics and boxing.
Actually, I teach boxing througha somatic lens.
But I think some of those like foundational ways, whatever kind
of movement you're teaching is to bring awareness to this is my
body, this is your body, feel that you have a body, that you
(31:35):
are a body. And then actually starting to
develop increased nuance around sensation, sensation of parts to
the body, of qualitative connections in the body.
So even something like the feeling of the feet onto the mat
(31:56):
or into the ground, and then noticing that there's a
connection between the feet and the ground, and that even that
the ground can come up to receive those feet and kind of
spread out as it receives your feet.
But then what's the feeling of the tone, the the energy of the
connection? Is it like frozen butter or is
(32:18):
it like melted butter? It's a changing in different
parts of the feet. So I think sensation, the
nuanced sensation of different parts and then quality of
connection, Well, maybe connection, so parts in
relationship to each other, but then the qualitative energetic
(32:41):
relationship or nature of some of those connections.
And it can be the quality of like the surfaces of the body,
like the tone, the tissue tone. It can also be like the quality
of the connection through to different parts, like the
fingers through to the center, like you know, is, is there a
maybe a lighter, more expansive sense of the connection?
(33:05):
Is there more condensed and contained sense of the
connection? So this opens up more
understandings, more awareness of the body, but it's slow.
It's a slow process. Yeah.
And it's like another dimension beyond the joints and the
(33:26):
muscles and the alignment. So now, OK, you have that.
And then now what's happening inthe Organism in that shape,
right? Absolutely, yeah, yeah.
And I, I guess I want to add onemore, which is like so in a in
yoga we have shapes, we have forms.
That's the predominant I think just of what yoga is.
(33:51):
But inside of those forms, there's also like an internal
motility, motility, not mobility, but motility with the
MOT. And it's like the inner life
processes. It's like an internal movement,
maybe the image of the goldfish swimming in the torso as part of
(34:11):
it. It's like feeling the internal
life processes that's supportingthe form.
Like underneath the placement ofthe arms and the legs is a
baseline of like growing and shrinking that supports and
underpins the actualization of this form, and that internal
motility is ready to go somewhere new.
(34:34):
It both supports the form from the inside out, but it also is
the capacity of the Organism to shift into the next pose.
It's beautiful, and as a metaphor too, to be able to
shift from one pose of life to another.
Totally and one. Of the first questions I had
(34:56):
too, is like embodied knowing, you know, and I know a lot of
very intuitive people. I tend to trust my intuition
quite a bit. And there's certain times where
it's not so clear. The knowing is not quite there.
It's like, should I go left or right?
Should I do this or that? And I try to check in with my
(35:18):
body and the message is not so clear still and try to meditate,
it's still not clear. So how do you navigate those
kind of things? This is such a kick ass
question. I I sometimes like, well, it's
not time yet. The knowing can't be rushed.
(35:39):
These things have a wisdom in themselves.
But I also, I do have some practices of, of going inward to
the body for asking questions. And a couple very simple ones is
one of them comes from the dancemovement therapy form known as
(36:00):
authentic movement, which is a process of closing your eyes,
sort of entering the space of a known.
You can ask a sacred question like you might ask the dream
maker, or you can go in without a question and you move what
wants to be moved. It's through move, what wants to
be moved, move what it wants to be known through movement.
(36:23):
And you're just seeing what arises on a movement level and
there's a witness and there's a process afterwards for moving,
working through what came through in movement and what it
might be suggesting. That can be really, really
helpful. And sometimes I authentic
movement myself. If I don't have a witness to
(36:45):
work with, I'll use my phone, set it up and then watch it and
kind of role play with myself. I also do something you said
like moving right or left. Like I'm not sure if I should
move right or left or go forwardor back.
I actually love to work with theimage of a mini central self
right at my core. And I will like put my choices
(37:05):
in this facial world around my body.
So I might to my right side be like keep my job and to my left
side go out on my own. And then I might like have above
me like this aspirational project and then down here some
connection to the earth. And then maybe in front of me,
maybe something about my primaryintimate relationship and
(37:27):
something behind me. And So what I may do is actually
explore moving from these different places and exploring
the feeling of what happens to the other parts of my life.
So say I decide to stay at my job and I inhabit the space over
here and I kind of bring my whole mini core over to
inhabiting this place. I'm like, well, what happens to
(37:48):
that aspirational project? And what happens to my
relationship, my primary relationship and what happens to
my house? Like, and so I kind of any
movement play out that the different scenarios and all the
different relationships, connections that may be part of
it. And even in that like saying
(38:11):
just like we said about the quality, like what's the
qualitative experience of my body in this choice?
What's the qualitative experience in my body and my
heart of this choice? And yeah, I really, I mean, I
really, really do spend time in those practices, especially as
I'm feeling in myself that change is coming and I want to
be as whole and centered as I move through those changes.
(38:37):
It's. Awesome, I love that.
I actually wrote an article about a year or two ago.
I have this large climbable icosahedron.
It's a 20 sided dodecahedron like or icosahedron, 20 sided
icosahedron. And I, we do movement scales in
that structure, like a musician plays musical scales.
We have movement scales in space.
(38:58):
And all these different scales teach you, your body, how to
experience different versions ofchange.
And I actually wrote an article about working with the
icosahedron and like navigating major relational changes.
So I can send you that too if people want.
It's kind of academic, but people might find it
interesting. That's cool.
Yeah, I'll put it in the notes. So is there a place like people
(39:21):
can come work with you on that structure?
Yes, yes. Right now the structure is
deconstructed because we're installing a new floor, but it's
going to be back up in a month or two.
It's coming back. It's called the Maverick.
A friend and colleague invented it and he really works with
applied neuroscience, but I use it more expressively and with
(39:44):
these movement scales. So the main place to do that is
through integrated movement studies.
Integrated Movement studies is acertification program and the
Lavon Baratinia work as well as a fast track program for Asmeta,
which is International Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist
Association. That's the main place and then
(40:06):
you will go into the weeds of the whole Lavon system.
I also know that not everybody wants to do 18 months of
somatic. Professional training and so I
am setting up some workshops forthis fall with it.
So just e-mail me, yeah? I put the link on the website,
people can check it out. They're international, right?
(40:28):
Yes, yes, most of them are in Alfred, NY or Salt Lake City,
UT. And then, yeah, there's the,
there are there's workshops in China and Montana and other
places. And then I do a summer retreat
in Maine. Somatic connecting to the
creative process to your body and and the coast of Maine.
(40:50):
Amazing. And then the online workshop
coming up shortly and well, whenever people listening.
This will be in 2025 coming up. Yeah.
Around to the end of August. I think that's our plan to
launch it. We have an online course coming
out. It's 4 weeks.
It's just called introduction tosomatic movement practices.
(41:13):
And it will be all of this with a lot of movement, with daily
gems, with some journaling, two classes a week and movement and
then some guided practices on the side.
And I also, if you're like a movement professional or you
want more really specific sort of industry like information, I
(41:34):
have a book lab on Bertanieff movement studies, contemporary
applications. The second edition comes out in
September 2025. You can pre-order that on
Amazon. Or if you're impatient and you
need it now, there is the 1st edition.
I will say that I feel so much better about the second edition.
The first one felt rushed and I felt much more insecure about
(41:54):
what I was my own voice with this material.
And the second one I I just feellike it's polished.
It feels like it comes from a more centered and honest place
in my own knowing. Yeah, so there's that also.
And then I guess finally a podcast called Embodied People.
And yeah, we talked about all things related to embodiment.
(42:18):
Amazing. So yeah, inviting people.
I'll put the links to all this on the the show notes.
And I guess if you could projectout five years from now and your
work has this ripple effect through yoga teachers, what what
would be cool? What would be interesting to see
(42:39):
like, OK, you start seeing this more commonly in yoga classes,
some way of approaching asana oryoga practice that is more
influenced by cymatics and things like embodied knowing.
Like what would be really cool to see for teachers to take into
their classes or to kind of havesome sort of effect on the yoga
community. I think the first three things
(43:01):
that come to mind are inspired by some conversations with a
student of mine who's also a yoga teacher.
So it's Meg, you're here in the room with me.
I think 1 is connecting, guidingstudents increasingly to connect
to their bodies as a life process.
That the things that they're feeling in their under their
skin is they're like informationabout their continuity of their
(43:27):
life processes. I think I would love to see yoga
teachers working more with students to use their own self
touch, both as a way to confirm their own bodily being, but also
to open up the idea of like the possibility of new sensations
(43:48):
through touch. So this isn't the teacher
touching, this is students usingtheir own hands to guide new
sensations and possibilities. And I think another one would be
the increased fluid suppleness that maybe starts at the kind of
(44:08):
the front of the spine, like themouth through to anus, the
digestive tract. But then that that fluid
potential ripples out through the whole being.
I think that those are the my biggest three.
Amazing. That's a great answer, I love
it. So thank you so much for your
(44:30):
time today. I really appreciate your
insights and definitely recommend people check out your
stuff. I'll put it in the links.
Any last things you want to share before we go?
I think that people who are listening to this, who are
teaching yoga or in their own practices, I, I think it's so
(44:54):
exciting that they are like entering the portal of an
embodied knowing, like the consciousness that becomes
possible when we drop into our flesh.
It's not that our consciousness resides in our flesh.
It's that our flesh holds a consciousness.
And I think that people who are finding their way to yoga are
(45:17):
like at the precipice of like the whole world opening up to
them. And I just, I think I want to
say like, keep going and go. Maybe what's the word like?
Keep going because there's more.Beautiful.
(45:42):
Thank you, Colleen. Thank you, Jeremy, it has been
wonderful and totally an honor to be here.
My pleasure. So have you enjoyed this
interview? Now go check out the Embodied
People podcast where Colleen interviews me and I share about
my insights from yoga and astrology and my path with all
that. And if you want to learn Vedic
(46:04):
Astrology, the sister science ofyoga, check out Quiet Mind
astrology.com/workshop. You get the free workshop and
workbook to start to decode yourown rising moon and sunshine
your own birth chart. So much cool stuff in there.
And how to move on this path to being more embodied yoga
practitioner and Yogi and integrating the spiritual
(46:24):
science of Jyotish or Vedic astrology which is typically
taught alongside yoga traditionally.
As the world moves more and moretowards artificial intelligence,
there's a greater and greater need for embodied and
experiential intelligence. This is what we do as yoga
practitioners. This is what we guide others as
yoga teachers towards embodiment.
So the wisdom that comes from presence into reception,
(00:22):
self-awareness, all the things that we do in yoga practice.
So it's my honor today to talk about this with the person to
talk about embodiment is ColleenWall.
She hosts the Embodied People podcast, which I had the honor
to be a guest on recently. So you can check out my episode
in season 6, episode 11 where wetalk about astrology and yoga
(00:47):
and my path through this and my own embodiment practices.
And if you want to learn about astrology, I am hosting a
workshop called Become Your Own Astrologer.
And I think it's all about becoming an embodied and
experienced astrologer is what is really useful for applying
this information to our lives. And it's so helpful.
(01:07):
It's helped me so much in my life to understand my health,
wealth, relationships, purpose, all the big picture things in
life. We can see it all in the birth
chart and work with it. So if you want to check that
out, the link is in the show notes, Quiet Mind
astrology.com/workshop. It's going to be super fun.
It's my most popular astrology workshop every year and it's all
new for 2025. It's the new workbook and new
(01:30):
processes, new exercises, even better than ever.
So that's at Quiet Mind astrology.com/workshop or the
show notes. And I have the link as well to
the Embody People podcast hostedby the amazing Colleen Wall,
where I did an interview with her recently and had an amazing
time. So she's a master semantic
movement educator, author and dance teacher and artist
(01:52):
herself. She teaches workshops around the
world. So check out her site and her
podcast, colleenwall.com and theEmbodied People podcast.
So let's start with the first question to ask Colleen.
So what is embodied knowing? Oh, embodied knowing.
(02:15):
I would say that on its simplestlevel, it's what we feel or know
in and through our tissues. I want to kind of back up a
little bit with this word embodied, though.
I think that embodied requires sensation.
(02:37):
It requires us to attend to the sensation of being alive in this
body. And then if sensation is the
foundation of something that we can feel that we have a body and
that we can know things through our body, then there's a space,
(03:01):
there's a gap between sensation.And then the more mental
processes of perception, analysis, meaning making.
And so embodied knowing, I think, asks us to slow down and
to bring our consciousness into feeling that we have a body,
(03:24):
staying with whatever sensationsare present in that body.
Because when we stay with the sensation longer, before we give
it a name or before we label it,then there's a lot of
possibility with that sensation.When sensation jumps right away
to something perceptive or something named, then we've sort
(03:48):
of gone out of our bodies and we've sort of gone more to the
analytical analysis aspects of being alive.
And while there has a lot of value to that, it does, in my
experience, in my work with clients, in my classes, it does
take us first quickly to reaction and not to the space of
(04:10):
possibility that sensation offers.
So I feel like maybe I got aheadof myself and answering your
question, but embodied knowing is about the wise counsel that
our bodies offer us as guidance,as direction in our lives.
And the one of the like foundational ways to get there
(04:31):
is sensation as the start. I feel like just this one
question we could talk about 10 hours.
Yeah, me too, Jeremy. So I guess the first place my
head is going, my body is going is I had digestive issues for a
(04:51):
long time and I kind of ignored it.
And just as like whatever stomach pain, whatever, then a
certain point I just like was doing yoga a lot, meditating a
lot is like, I just probably do something about this.
I should probably pay attention to that.
Like, that's probably not good that I'm having digestive issues
so commonly and just starting topay attention to this signal my
(05:15):
body was constantly giving me. Like, started to open up so much
awareness. Like that eventually led me on a
path over a few years to like, uncovering some deep unprocessed
anger in my stomach. And that whole thing shifted
when I got to that point of like, there was all this anger
in my teenage years and my stepdad that I never expressed.
(05:37):
And it was just like suppressed,suppressed, suppressed.
And finally, you know, through alot of work and therapeutic kind
of work of constantly just like what's going on in my stomach,
Like what is it trying to tell me?
What happens when I eat this food?
A lot of work in like yoga practices and somatic release
kind of stuff. And but it was a long journey of
(06:00):
that just one bodily signal of like stomach pain or digestive
issues and whatever. I'll just ignore it.
So I, I've definitely experienced this myself.
I didn't have the words for it of embodied knowing, but the
sense of like, hey, something going on in my body I should
probably pay attention to, especially when it's like a pain
or an, an issue like that. It's, it's probably a lot there,
(06:23):
right? Yeah, there's so much there.
And I think what strikes me first about your example is that
when you decided to attend, you sort of, I would almost say,
dropped the attention into your body and gave it attention that
it wasn't unnecessarily a linearprocess.
(06:43):
Like this is here and now I knowthis or I'm going to treat it
this way. But, and there may have been
moments there, it's linear, but it was much more like a mind
map. Like at the center of it was the
sensation of distress in your guts.
And then there was lots of things that sort of spoked out
(07:06):
from that center that became a larger cluster of insight for
you. And that that is really, I think
an important part of embodied knowing is that from the center
of something that we experience,there are so many interconnected
(07:28):
or relation relationships between what's happening, what
we're sensing in our body and the like, larger pattern of our
lives. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. So I'm guessing you've probably
worked with clients like this for maybe they have some sort of
presenting symptom physically and you go into it and it's
(07:51):
maybe not for me. You might, you might have seen
on the surface, oh, I just need to change my diet.
But it was so much more than that, right?
Yeah, absolutely. I don't have any like client
stories off the top of my head that I have permission to share.
But I, I let me see if I can come up with a sort of imagine
(08:12):
cluster of of of one or two there or three that that come
together. I think yes.
So I think one of the ones that I think I can pull together as a
cluster is someone who has been struggling with some health,
(08:35):
health issues for a little while.
And in that sort of needing health related support, needing
people in the medical profession, needing care from
loved ones, that what started tofeel like it evaporated.
And this person was a sense of acentral self, like a coherent
(09:00):
self-image that both is a psychological state.
But I also believe in it is alsothat we can imagine that deep in
the center of us, like between our belly button and the bottom
of our pelvis, that there is a sense of who we are right there
that we hopefully can operate from.
It's both enduring over time. It's like who I am.
(09:23):
It's different than who you are.But these are related and in the
needing to be so out there that the connection into a central
feeling of a core of 1's body and the psychological connection
to a central self sort of to dissipate.
And then what happened was this sort of reaching out like I need
(09:45):
you, I need you, I need you. But there wasn't movement, there
wasn't a sense of connection to the self.
It was just grasping. And there wasn't even support
for the deepest connection in the center.
And so one of the things I, I did was work with bringing
awareness to the center of the body.
And then eventually that the center of the body could support
(10:08):
an elongation of a reach and that there was a connection
between the center of the body. And like the need to reach out
to make contact, that they weren't sort of separate from
each other. And that meant when contact was
made, it felt more secure. So like when the grass was had,
(10:30):
they could feel that this connection was received in their
deep guts, not held, embraced atthe edges and made it feel much
more satisfying to be in connection with people.
So I'd guess that was maybe hopefully not too abstract for
the listeners, but that's a that's a way that like I have
(10:52):
worked with some people for sure.
And I'm thinking about one client especially but.
Yeah. So like if somebody say and
they're in a relationship dynamic where they feel they are
losing themselves in a way or maybe anxious about their
partner needing validation, needing affirmation, kind of
reaching to the partner for something, but from a place of
(11:15):
like not being rooted and centered, this kind of thing.
Absolutely. That's a beautiful rephrase.
Yeah. And so that if we're going to,
if we need to satisfy our needs,we want to reach out.
We still are reaching out from aplace of centeredness in
ourselves and that there's support that there was a
connection between the reach andthe the center of the body or
(11:35):
somewhere else in the body. And so I think possibly what
you're also can hear in this is that while these things are felt
in our body, that they're present in the experience of
having a body, we also sort of work with them psychologically.
And a lot of our psychological language does have maybe
(12:00):
contrails or connections to a deeply embodied knowing.
And it's often a knowing that. I think it's important to say
that it's often a knowing that is pre verbal because it's the
kind of knowing that comes into us more as infants, at least on
the very foundational level. Like learning what's me and
(12:21):
what's not me is that happens first developmentally in
movement and then the movement activity of center and edges me,
not me becomes a psychological and an intellectual knowing of
me, my caregivers, my mom, my dad, the world.
(12:42):
And so often times it does mean getting sort of that's the value
of going to sensation is that the sensation we can know and
work from sort of before the activity of language and
labeling it lets us go deeper into the knowing, I think.
That's what so much of yoga is really about.
(13:03):
It's observing, being present, not necessarily giving a story
or meaning to things. It's very powerful.
I think, Jeremy, that is one of your particular gifts in
teaching yoga also, is that I think you provide space both in
(13:28):
your queuing, in your timing, and in your general approach
where you invite people into what they're feeling and
experiencing really, really uniquely, beautifully.
And I think it does allow, at least As for me, it has in your
(13:51):
classes in presence. It allows me the space to hear
my own response, my own inner experience, instead of maybe
being told what to experience. Those are very different.
Yeah, I agree and I appreciate that.
And and I feel the same way whenI go to classes and they sort of
tell me you should feel this or this, you know, you need to do
(14:14):
it this way or it has to be thisway.
It's sometimes it's true, but sometimes it's very dissonant to
my own experience. And I think so much of yoga
should be pointing us as a teacher should be pointing the
student to their own experience and their own embodiment and,
and so much wisdom is there. And like, you just don't know as
(14:35):
a teacher, you don't know what the other person is going.
You have no idea what their day was like, what emotions they're
processing. You just see what you see on the
physical and maybe energetic youcan see.
But yeah, I think so much of yoga should be like creating
space for that. And, and I appreciate that and,
and that space. So when, when we're just
(14:55):
observing and just noticing sensation, I, I can imagine, you
know, some people like there's so many angles to, to approach
us. So like 1 is that so many, some
people might come into, there's things they don't want to feel
kind of like with me, with my stomach, like they're
uncomfortable and then they kindof check out.
(15:16):
I mean, I've experienced this too, like start to feel
something uncomfortable and suddenly I'm like totally
distracted. So what do you say to that?
If people are like, they know there's stuff in there and like
they try to look at it and they just, they somehow check out.
I mean, I emphasize I have kind of a wicked my first ever case
(15:39):
of Poison Ivy right now. Oh wow.
And it is totally an experience of of how much do I want to feel
this or not? It's that's very mundane
example. You know, I'm not exactly sure
(16:01):
how to answer this in a in a very clear way, except that I, I
really do think that pain and discomfort is usually the signal
that we're going to listen to more.
Even though the desire for pleasure is is beautiful and
there is totally a seeking of that in our lives, the one that
(16:23):
actually gets us to do somethingdifferent, like especially
change in our lives. And I guess that's something
worth talking about in a minute,but is usually discomfort.
And so in the not wanting to go there, most of the time it
doesn't go away. We can back away from it or kind
of create boundaries and edges, but there's sometimes where we
(16:47):
have to feel it till it runs itscourse like Poison Ivy, or
there's other times where there's something more sort of
systemic that it will find otherways until we deal with it.
Yeah. And I'm thinking about, I had
chronic psychroiliac joint pain from about the age of 12 and the
(17:13):
doctor said I needed PT. Maybe I shouldn't dance so much.
Maybe I should stop playing football.
Like I got all those stories. And I think with my movement and
somatic skills, I was able to keep it being not so bad that I,
I didn't, I didn't really do anything about it.
And over the summer I had an emergency hysterectomy and you
(17:38):
know what? The pain was gone.
So whatever that was, 28 years of feeling that pain, I, I
thought it was like in the muscular skeletal system because
that was where I had been putting my energy and my
understanding of it. And I did find lots of ways to
(18:00):
deal with it and lots of meaningaround it.
But it was really, really kind of an, something I'm still
processing is that it was a uterine related issue.
And then the change in me. First I had to accept my body
not feeling that pain. And that was really strange
(18:21):
because I didn't really know what my, I didn't know how to
feel myself without the sensation of discomfort.
But then the sort of energy or space or freedom from not having
to feel what is in and around that, like to not have that to
contend with, it's kind of amazing.
(18:45):
And yeah, there's definitely some larger metaphors in my life
about like, wow, that thing thatI, it was parts of me that I was
keeping a babe. But that's like a longer
conversation that's beyond the scope of this hour also.
So yeah, I guess The thing is that it's I, I, I do feel like I
(19:05):
limited myself though, because Ihad put a muscular skeletal lens
on it for so long and I tended to it that way and it worked
well enough. But now that I have more time
and have that information from that experience, I'm starting to
make sense out of all of it differently.
You. Have this experience.
(19:27):
You have the sensation you've had.
Now you have a different sensation and that's that is a
neutral fact that now you have the choice of how to interpret
and make meaning of that. Right.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
And and I and I think I'm partially not when I start
(19:47):
because I'm, I'm not ready. I'm still working on making
meaning out of it. It's not, it's not ready to be
out of my mouth yet. It's still like a goldfish
swimming around in my torso, sort of being processed in
there. Big.
One, I appreciate you sharing that and I imagine I know some
listeners have similar like major life changes.
(20:08):
And that's the the interpretation, the story you
tell yourself about it is kind of such a big impact and it can
unconsciously form of like an immediate reaction of this is
all bad or negative or somehow problem.
You know, if for the listeners who might be stuck in some level
(20:29):
of the story of a situation experience and then a negative
interpretation of it. And you know, and it's the
nature of that is like it seems like that is not just a negative
interpretation. That is just the reality.
It's just the facts. You know, this thing happened
and it sucks. You know, that is valid people
who experience that and true forthe people who are experiencing
(20:52):
that. So you know what, What do you
say if somebody's in that kind of experience or like, yeah, I
don't feel like I have a choice on how to interpret this.
It just is what it is. I think it depends on the
intensity and the severity. I think sometimes they own the
(21:14):
1st thing we try to do is get the Organism out of pain.
Because when the Organism is in a panic around pain, there's not
a whole lot I think that's easy to move with.
There's not a whole lot of movement in any direction.
But I I also say that if you can, if it's not so overwhelming
(21:38):
to the system or it's not spiraling out, like to take the
pain and almost buffer around it.
Like to create in your psyche like a space around it to hold
its possibilities and to see what else might feel like it's
(22:00):
connected to it might feel like there's room for you to sort of
grow a little bit bigger in one way of perceiving it or grow a
little bigger in another way of perceiving it.
And and I will say that the different teachers and training
programs and queries that my quest to work out my SI joint
(22:23):
pain in the intermediary years has been profoundly important to
the work that I'm doing now in terms of connecting to
creativity. The idea of why would a person
change? I mean, sure, we're going to get
old, but like an Organism, organisms change.
(22:44):
And do they change because like in the Darwinian sense of they
need to survive, so something that is perceived as negative,
as barreling at them, and so survival instincts kick in and
they shift. Or another model that I learned
through like Continuum and EmilyConrad.
(23:05):
Continuum is a somatic practice about opening the fluid system
and opening the being to a stateof flow is called acceptability,
which is like the Organism changes because it's exposed to
a new possibility for itself. It's exposed to a new sensation
or a new way of moving, or you know, like the sensation of
(23:30):
moving from the lowest part of the pelvis instead of from the
lower back, or the differentiation between the
tail, the bottom of the pelvis. So exposure causes, generative
exposure causes the Organism to change.
And I would say so much of my learning has in part was
inspired by wondering what was going on in there in the
(23:52):
intermediary years. So there is something that is
like those the seeds of discomfort, like they can cause
us to change because we have to survive, but they could also
bump us out towards more generative curiosity, maybe in
and around whatever it is. I love the way you think about
(24:14):
this and just the idea like the Organism will continue to change
so they can't really be stuck inone sort of expression forever.
And Jeremy, I'm sorry to interrupt you.
That's so important that embodied knowing isn't about the
mechanics of the body. It's not about the like
(24:35):
anatomical structures they participate, but it's it's more
expressive. There's a inner expression
that's part of this cluster of ideas.
And that I guess that can look alot of different ways, right?
Absolutely, yeah. Yours is going to be so
(24:58):
different than mine. That's kind of one of the, I
think really important parts is you're not moving yourself to
look like something else, but you're moving yourself kind of
from the inside out to into moreand more of your own unique
pattern. Well, it's pretty different than
yoga, which is like you look like a a dog, a cat, a cow, a
(25:24):
crow. I mean, those are models that
open up new possibilities for us.
We also do need that, yeah. So then when you're looking at
the pleasure side of things, like moving towards pleasure,
how might that look? Well, what a interesting
(25:51):
contrast to behold. I think that the moving towards
and I want to like discern or like separate.
There's like the pleasure because I want to have a
cocktail or buy a new pair of pants.
I'm not talking about that kind of pleasure.
That's fine. But we're not, you know, I'm
(26:12):
attracted to that person or something.
That's not the kind of of pleasure here.
It's, I think it's more like theversion of pleasure that
enriches your sense of yourself and your sense of wholeness and
moving towards that. Yeah, I think that it can feel
(26:36):
often times when we first meet it maybe nervous, maybe almost,
I'd even say sometimes the innerexperience of cringiness at
first because it's unfamiliar. But I think that if it's
something that the system want for itself, that it wants to
(26:58):
accept, there is often an, an inner response of like I, it's
almost like an inner call, like I have to move in this
direction. And it does have a directional
nature that's like outside of ourselves.
That's a pull, I think, but thatI have to start to move in this
(27:19):
direction. And if I don't, something that
needs to, that's wanting to awaken within is not, is going
to maybe die or not be fulfilled.
It's like, am I giving myself the chance to bloom or go in
that direction? And I think it's a, it's a, it's
(27:40):
a mix between like an inner callthat has a magnetism or an
attraction as well as something often that we see out there that
looks good to us, like it's something we want to try on.
And I don't think we always havethe language for that quieter
(28:01):
but also more intense version ofdesire.
But we can like feel that something inside starts to knock
and it might come in and movement might come in and dream
material. I mean, we are so relational,
like all of our parts are in relationships.
So I think it usually shows up in lots of different ways.
(28:21):
But I can tell that at least in my experience, sometimes it's
like once I introduced to that thing, like I can't, I can't
have it any other way. And all of me gets invested in
sorting out how to move in that direction.
But then there's other things that have felt much more scary,
especially like, I don't, you know, it doesn't make sense to
sell my house. Why would I sell my house?
(28:43):
But you know, the my brain, my intellect, it doesn't make
sense. But all parts of me think this
is everything else is like saying to do it.
And so those can be harder to sort out.
And I think that's where our embodied wisdom comes in more is
like how how does the Mama hedgehog know how to feed her
(29:04):
babies? Like the body starts to take
over somehow. And if it doesn't, then I think
we have a lot more pain and a lot more distress in our body
because somewhere in us we're wanting to do this and the
systems are holding us back. There's that quote.
I think it's from the book of Thomas.
(29:24):
It's like, well, if we bring forth what is within us, what we
bring forth will save us. If we do not bring forth what is
within us, what we do not bring forth will destroy us.
And that resonated a lot when I first heard that in my my teens,
like, oh, I got to really listento these like this calling and
go in this direction and that when I didn't, it seemed like my
(29:48):
life was harder. Mm Hmm.
Mm hmm, absolutely. I have similar like motor boats
of my life that different waves.But yeah, life feels a lot
harder, I think. And the body is life is already,
you know, taking out the trash can be hard, but when your body
isn't able to support you and that like something's holding
(30:10):
you back, it just it's that muchless pleasant.
Yeah. And there's the actual like
physical body movement version of this where like in a yoga
context, we might say like, justfind what feels good in the
movement or move any way that you like in this part of the
(30:31):
practice. And it's sort of breaking the
hierarchy of, you know, do as I tell you to do kind of thing.
And instead of like, I'm just providing A framework.
And then you have some space in here to just explore.
And then so there's that part ofembodiment and yoga and the way
that you teach. How does this express and like
(30:53):
how my this like look in a yoga practice?
Besides that comment to show up?Yeah, let me think about.
I hope I can answer those adequately.
I think every teacher finds their different ways and
different ways change over time.I don't teach yoga.
(31:13):
I teach dance and somatics and boxing.
Actually, I teach boxing througha somatic lens.
But I think some of those like foundational ways, whatever kind
of movement you're teaching is to bring awareness to this is my
body, this is your body, feel that you have a body, that you
(31:35):
are a body. And then actually starting to
develop increased nuance around sensation, sensation of parts to
the body, of qualitative connections in the body.
So even something like the feeling of the feet onto the mat
(31:56):
or into the ground, and then noticing that there's a
connection between the feet and the ground, and that even that
the ground can come up to receive those feet and kind of
spread out as it receives your feet.
But then what's the feeling of the tone, the the energy of the
connection? Is it like frozen butter or is
(32:18):
it like melted butter? It's a changing in different
parts of the feet. So I think sensation, the
nuanced sensation of different parts and then quality of
connection, Well, maybe connection, so parts in
relationship to each other, but then the qualitative energetic
(32:41):
relationship or nature of some of those connections.
And it can be the quality of like the surfaces of the body,
like the tone, the tissue tone. It can also be like the quality
of the connection through to different parts, like the
fingers through to the center, like you know, is, is there a
maybe a lighter, more expansive sense of the connection?
(33:05):
Is there more condensed and contained sense of the
connection? So this opens up more
understandings, more awareness of the body, but it's slow.
It's a slow process. Yeah.
And it's like another dimension beyond the joints and the
(33:26):
muscles and the alignment. So now, OK, you have that.
And then now what's happening inthe Organism in that shape,
right? Absolutely, yeah, yeah.
And I, I guess I want to add onemore, which is like so in a in
yoga we have shapes, we have forms.
That's the predominant I think just of what yoga is.
(33:51):
But inside of those forms, there's also like an internal
motility, motility, not mobility, but motility with the
MOT. And it's like the inner life
processes. It's like an internal movement,
maybe the image of the goldfish swimming in the torso as part of
(34:11):
it. It's like feeling the internal
life processes that's supportingthe form.
Like underneath the placement ofthe arms and the legs is a
baseline of like growing and shrinking that supports and
underpins the actualization of this form, and that internal
motility is ready to go somewhere new.
(34:34):
It both supports the form from the inside out, but it also is
the capacity of the Organism to shift into the next pose.
It's beautiful, and as a metaphor too, to be able to
shift from one pose of life to another.
Totally and one. Of the first questions I had
(34:56):
too, is like embodied knowing, you know, and I know a lot of
very intuitive people. I tend to trust my intuition
quite a bit. And there's certain times where
it's not so clear. The knowing is not quite there.
It's like, should I go left or right?
Should I do this or that? And I try to check in with my
(35:18):
body and the message is not so clear still and try to meditate,
it's still not clear. So how do you navigate those
kind of things? This is such a kick ass
question. I I sometimes like, well, it's
not time yet. The knowing can't be rushed.
(35:39):
These things have a wisdom in themselves.
But I also, I do have some practices of, of going inward to
the body for asking questions. And a couple very simple ones is
one of them comes from the dancemovement therapy form known as
(36:00):
authentic movement, which is a process of closing your eyes,
sort of entering the space of a known.
You can ask a sacred question like you might ask the dream
maker, or you can go in without a question and you move what
wants to be moved. It's through move, what wants to
be moved, move what it wants to be known through movement.
(36:23):
And you're just seeing what arises on a movement level and
there's a witness and there's a process afterwards for moving,
working through what came through in movement and what it
might be suggesting. That can be really, really
helpful. And sometimes I authentic
movement myself. If I don't have a witness to
(36:45):
work with, I'll use my phone, set it up and then watch it and
kind of role play with myself. I also do something you said
like moving right or left. Like I'm not sure if I should
move right or left or go forwardor back.
I actually love to work with theimage of a mini central self
right at my core. And I will like put my choices
(37:05):
in this facial world around my body.
So I might to my right side be like keep my job and to my left
side go out on my own. And then I might like have above
me like this aspirational project and then down here some
connection to the earth. And then maybe in front of me,
maybe something about my primaryintimate relationship and
(37:27):
something behind me. And So what I may do is actually
explore moving from these different places and exploring
the feeling of what happens to the other parts of my life.
So say I decide to stay at my job and I inhabit the space over
here and I kind of bring my whole mini core over to
inhabiting this place. I'm like, well, what happens to
(37:48):
that aspirational project? And what happens to my
relationship, my primary relationship and what happens to
my house? Like, and so I kind of any
movement play out that the different scenarios and all the
different relationships, connections that may be part of
it. And even in that like saying
(38:11):
just like we said about the quality, like what's the
qualitative experience of my body in this choice?
What's the qualitative experience in my body and my
heart of this choice? And yeah, I really, I mean, I
really, really do spend time in those practices, especially as
I'm feeling in myself that change is coming and I want to
be as whole and centered as I move through those changes.
(38:37):
It's. Awesome, I love that.
I actually wrote an article about a year or two ago.
I have this large climbable icosahedron.
It's a 20 sided dodecahedron like or icosahedron, 20 sided
icosahedron. And I, we do movement scales in
that structure, like a musician plays musical scales.
We have movement scales in space.
(38:58):
And all these different scales teach you, your body, how to
experience different versions ofchange.
And I actually wrote an article about working with the
icosahedron and like navigating major relational changes.
So I can send you that too if people want.
It's kind of academic, but people might find it
interesting. That's cool.
Yeah, I'll put it in the notes. So is there a place like people
(39:21):
can come work with you on that structure?
Yes, yes. Right now the structure is
deconstructed because we're installing a new floor, but it's
going to be back up in a month or two.
It's coming back. It's called the Maverick.
A friend and colleague invented it and he really works with
applied neuroscience, but I use it more expressively and with
(39:44):
these movement scales. So the main place to do that is
through integrated movement studies.
Integrated Movement studies is acertification program and the
Lavon Baratinia work as well as a fast track program for Asmeta,
which is International Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist
Association. That's the main place and then
(40:06):
you will go into the weeds of the whole Lavon system.
I also know that not everybody wants to do 18 months of
somatic. Professional training and so I
am setting up some workshops forthis fall with it.
So just e-mail me, yeah? I put the link on the website,
people can check it out. They're international, right?
(40:28):
Yes, yes, most of them are in Alfred, NY or Salt Lake City,
UT. And then, yeah, there's the,
there are there's workshops in China and Montana and other
places. And then I do a summer retreat
in Maine. Somatic connecting to the
creative process to your body and and the coast of Maine.
(40:50):
Amazing. And then the online workshop
coming up shortly and well, whenever people listening.
This will be in 2025 coming up. Yeah.
Around to the end of August. I think that's our plan to
launch it. We have an online course coming
out. It's 4 weeks.
It's just called introduction tosomatic movement practices.
(41:13):
And it will be all of this with a lot of movement, with daily
gems, with some journaling, two classes a week and movement and
then some guided practices on the side.
And I also, if you're like a movement professional or you
want more really specific sort of industry like information, I
(41:34):
have a book lab on Bertanieff movement studies, contemporary
applications. The second edition comes out in
September 2025. You can pre-order that on
Amazon. Or if you're impatient and you
need it now, there is the 1st edition.
I will say that I feel so much better about the second edition.
The first one felt rushed and I felt much more insecure about
(41:54):
what I was my own voice with this material.
And the second one I I just feellike it's polished.
It feels like it comes from a more centered and honest place
in my own knowing. Yeah, so there's that also.
And then I guess finally a podcast called Embodied People.
And yeah, we talked about all things related to embodiment.
(42:18):
Amazing. So yeah, inviting people.
I'll put the links to all this on the the show notes.
And I guess if you could projectout five years from now and your
work has this ripple effect through yoga teachers, what what
would be cool? What would be interesting to see
(42:39):
like, OK, you start seeing this more commonly in yoga classes,
some way of approaching asana oryoga practice that is more
influenced by cymatics and things like embodied knowing.
Like what would be really cool to see for teachers to take into
their classes or to kind of havesome sort of effect on the yoga
community. I think the first three things
(43:01):
that come to mind are inspired by some conversations with a
student of mine who's also a yoga teacher.
So it's Meg, you're here in the room with me.
I think 1 is connecting, guidingstudents increasingly to connect
to their bodies as a life process.
That the things that they're feeling in their under their
skin is they're like informationabout their continuity of their
(43:27):
life processes. I think I would love to see yoga
teachers working more with students to use their own self
touch, both as a way to confirm their own bodily being, but also
to open up the idea of like the possibility of new sensations
(43:48):
through touch. So this isn't the teacher
touching, this is students usingtheir own hands to guide new
sensations and possibilities. And I think another one would be
the increased fluid suppleness that maybe starts at the kind of
(44:08):
the front of the spine, like themouth through to anus, the
digestive tract. But then that that fluid
potential ripples out through the whole being.
I think that those are the my biggest three.
Amazing. That's a great answer, I love
it. So thank you so much for your
(44:30):
time today. I really appreciate your
insights and definitely recommend people check out your
stuff. I'll put it in the links.
Any last things you want to share before we go?
I think that people who are listening to this, who are
teaching yoga or in their own practices, I, I think it's so
(44:54):
exciting that they are like entering the portal of an
embodied knowing, like the consciousness that becomes
possible when we drop into our flesh.
It's not that our consciousness resides in our flesh.
It's that our flesh holds a consciousness.
And I think that people who are finding their way to yoga are
(45:17):
like at the precipice of like the whole world opening up to
them. And I just, I think I want to
say like, keep going and go. Maybe what's the word like?
Keep going because there's more.Beautiful.
(45:42):
Thank you, Colleen. Thank you, Jeremy, it has been
wonderful and totally an honor to be here.
My pleasure. So have you enjoyed this
interview? Now go check out the Embodied
People podcast where Colleen interviews me and I share about
my insights from yoga and astrology and my path with all
that. And if you want to learn Vedic
(46:04):
Astrology, the sister science ofyoga, check out Quiet Mind
astrology.com/workshop. You get the free workshop and
workbook to start to decode yourown rising moon and sunshine
your own birth chart. So much cool stuff in there.
And how to move on this path to being more embodied yoga
practitioner and Yogi and integrating the spiritual
(46:24):
science of Jyotish or Vedic astrology which is typically
taught alongside yoga traditionally.
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