September 11, 2025 • 13 mins
This is part one of our three-part Q&A series, where we answer the questions you’ve been sending since we launched The Circle.
We start with the big one: what is embodiment, and why does it matter in men’s work?
Tim unpacks embodiment as the practice of listening to the body’s wisdom—our inner dashboard of sensations, emotions, and signals. Eric connects the dots to mindfulness and asks how embodiment helps us meet life with more choice and clarity. Together, we explore how ignoring our body’s signals leads to collapse, reactivity, or numbing, while embodiment practices—like yoga, breathwork, and challenging postures—help us build skillful responses instead.
Short, sharp, and from lived experience—this is your entry point into understanding embodiment and why it’s foundational for men’s work.
Chapter Markers
0:00 – Welcome & Series Intro
Eric frames the Q&A series and introduces the first question: what is embodiment and why does it matter in men’s work?
1:45 – Defining Embodiment
Tim explains embodiment as the practice of listening to the body’s wisdom and signals.
4:10 – Embodiment vs. Mindfulness
Eric asks how embodiment compares to mindfulness and meditation; Tim uses the “car dashboard” analogy.
7:00 – Signs of Disembodiment
Exploring what happens when we ignore feelings—overeating, drinking, depression, collapse, or reactivity.
10:15 – Starting an Embodiment Practice
Practical entry points: yoga, posture work, curiosity about sensations. Eric closes with recap and invitation to myembodiment.com.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Eric Bomyea (00:06):
Welcome back to The Circle, the podcast where we go
all in on men's work, embodimentpractices, personal growth from
our queer perspective. If you'reenjoying the show, please be
sure to rate, like, andsubscribe. And you can also
leave us a review to help getthe word out to more people. If
you have a question aboutanything you've heard us talk
about, please send us a message.We'd love to hear from you.
Speaking of messages andspeaking of questions, since
(00:28):
launching this show, we'vegotten a lot of them from
listeners all over the world.The big ones is this. What do
you mean when you say men'sembodiment? Behind that, what
does it mean to be a man? Whatis a queer man?
And then what does embodiedmasculinity actually mean? And
then how does men's intuitionplay a role in all that? These
are really great questions andit's a lot to unpack. So we're
(00:50):
gonna break it down over thenext several weeks in a three
part miniseries where in eachepisode, we'll focus on one
piece. We'll keep it short,sharp, and from our lived
experience.
Tim, are you ready to go all in?I'm ready. Let's do this then.
So welcome to the first episodeof our three part Q and A
series. In this part, we'reasking what is embodiment and
why does it matter in men'swork?
(01:10):
So we're going to start simple.What do you mean when you say
embodiment?
Timothy Bish (01:14):
Embodiment, as I understand it, is a conscious
practice of starting tounderstand the communication
that exists with our ownphysical body. When we think
about any experience that wehave, there is the cascade of
things that happen. Right? Sosomething happens to you. You
(01:35):
have an idea about that.
You have a belief about that,and your nervous system is aware
of it, your endocrine system isaware of it, and there can be
any number of things sort ofhappening. And we can get
information from our body tohelp us understand, like, what
is moving through us and andwhat we should be paying
(01:58):
attention to. Well, we can onlyget that information if we are
attuned to it. So the example Imight use is someone who gets
really upset. They getfrustrated or angry, and they
can feel the heat, and they canfeel that, like, jittery, shaky,
on the verge thing.
(02:18):
But if you have no conversationwith that sensation, with that
experience, then you're likelygonna not know how to work with
it skillfully. And so,typically, that would be the
moment when, oh, this kind ofbig experience is happening to
me. I don't know how to work
Eric Bomyea (02:35):
with it.
Timothy Bish (02:36):
It erupts much like a volcano and will come out
in whatever way it comes out.And oftentimes, it'll come out
in a way that is detrimental toour long term term goal, our
desire, our purpose. It may notbe in service to the
relationships that we want.Embodiment and embodiment
(02:57):
practice is going in andstarting to understand these
things so that when weexperience them, which we will,
which everyone will. So anyonelistening, you you will
experience your emotions in aphysical way.
That information can help you.Oh, I'm feeling this thing. What
(03:19):
can I do about this thing sothat I can then behave more
mindfully, more consciously,make some choices? That is the
un like, sort of the ongoingunraveling conversation of
embodiment practice. And I getmore and more information and
become more and more nuanced inmy understanding of what it is
(03:40):
I'm feeling so that when I amfeeling and in particular, when
I'm feeling wrathful, angry,frustrated, super withdrawn, do
I have things to work with thatso then I can get greater
clarity about what's actuallyhappening and how I want to be?
Eric Bomyea (03:59):
Thank you for that answer. I think that that brings
a lot of clarity. One of thethings that I did hear you say
is a mindfulness to yourembodied experience. So I'm
curious now, how is embodimentdifferent and how is it similar
to mindfulness and meditation?
Timothy Bish (04:15):
I believe embodiment is a very
unapologetic attempt atunderstanding a source of wisdom
for us, which is our physicalbody. I was thinking about this
earlier today where, you know,when we learn to drive a car
when you're 15 or 16, you getyour learner's permit, you take
(04:35):
lessons or you go to school.Like, you know, there's a class
sometimes, like, I learned frommy parents, but you have to
practice. You have to understandhow to drive the vehicle you're
driving. Why would our life bedifferent?
We are living in this physicalvehicle. It is the vehicle for
our human experience, and yetsometimes we want to entirely
(05:01):
deny it. Imagine driving a caror flying a plane and thinking,
I'm going to ignore the controlpanel because that's what's been
culturally sort of, you know,rewarded or or we haven't been
modeled it or whatever, youwould think that's crazy. When
I'm driving a car, I need toknow how fast I'm going. I need
to know how much gasoline Ihave.
(05:24):
I need to know what gear I'm in.I need to be able to see my all
the things. And yet with ourbodies, we're like, oh, I have
this feeling of sadness that noone's ever given me context for,
and it's like gnawing at me.Nying at me is even funny
because you might even not knowthat. You might just know, like,
I'm having a feeling, and Idon't know what to do with it.
And you're like, we should knowwhat to do with it. And if we
(05:46):
don't know, the thing is about,like, emotions and feelings and
sensations is that they don't goaway because we ignore them.
It's a little bit like a crackin the window. You're like, you
can pretend it's not there, butwhat you ultimately need to do
is address the the problem. Andin our lived experience, it's
the same thing.
So we are we are moving throughthis experience in these
(06:09):
vehicles, and embodiment is anattempt, a practice to
understand
Eric Bomyea (06:16):
its language and what it can offer us.
Beautifully said. And on theanalogy, metaphor of the vehicle
and the crack, so if we'reignoring the crack, it could
eventually get bigger anddevelop into something else. And
so we talked a little bit aboutthat wrathful expression. So the
(06:37):
crack of anger or irritationgets a little bit bigger,
bigger, bigger, then all of asudden it shatters into a moment
of really unskillfuldemonstration of anger in some
sort of wrathful way.
What are some of the othercommon ways that if we are
disembodied or disconnected fromour bodies that we could be
missing other things? And whatare
Timothy Bish (06:56):
some of those examples? What are some ways
that we commonly ignore ourembodied experience? Yes. I
think we see this a lot. I amfeeling sad.
I don't know what to do withthat feeling, so I fall into,
(07:17):
like, something that might looklike depression. I sleep too
much. I eat too much. I stayhome. I drink too much.
I there's so many different wayswhere I don't know what to do
with this feeling. And, like, wego back to the idea, the feeling
isn't going anywhere. It mightchange and shift around, but
until we address it or or kindof start to work with it, it'll
(07:39):
it'll be present. So you'reeating too much. You're drinking
too much.
You're sleeping too much. You'reyou're not doing things you want
to be doing. Any number of thesethings could be an example of,
oh, you're that is an attemptsomehow to manage a feeling you
don't know how to work with. Anembodiment practice is creating
(08:00):
situations, safe, conscioussituations in which we can start
to experiment with how to workwith some of these sensations.
So in an embodiment practice, wewill oftentimes be in a
challenging posture.
One of them that we all know is,you know, chi generator or, you
know, sometimes something calledego eradicator, things that push
(08:24):
us to an edge, not unlike yoga.The purpose of that being, well,
when I get to my edge and I feelreally pushed, I feel really
uncomfortable, can I practicenot collapsing in that moment?
Can I practice not becoming areaction in that moment? But
that's a skill that we have topractice. And so I like the
(08:44):
image that I've used many times,you know, the gold medalist who
has that gold medal winningperformance, they've probably
done the skill that they didexcellently many times not so.
And it was you you had to havethe opportunity to I I tried it
once. I went too far. I tried itthe second time. I didn't go far
(09:06):
enough. You like and you startto learn, well, emotions and
sensations and our humanexperience are not that
different.
I have to keep going back tosharpen my ability to understand
my experience and how
Eric Bomyea (09:19):
I how I meet people. And if somebody wanted
to try embodiment today, wherewould you start them?
Timothy Bish (09:24):
Well, I might refer them to some resources to
to a person who understood thethe practices. But, you know, a
lot of things are embodimentpractice. So if you go to yoga,
for example, because everyoneknows you're you and I are both
yoga teachers, it is a great wayto start to have an experience
(09:45):
of your body, an experience ofyour body in a safe space where
you can start to feel things andget a little pushed. If you hold
warrior two for 15 breaths, youmight start to feel, oh, I'm
having an experience in my frontquadricep or I'm having
experience in, like, my feet.And that just just being curious
(10:08):
what experience am I having andwhere do I tend to go?
What's happening and where do Itend to go with what's happening
are already powerful starts ofthis practice. Because if every
time you experience frustration,you go to lashing out, that's
(10:30):
important to know. Because islashing out serving you? Based
on my experience, almostcertainly not. And then what
might be of greater service?
Beautiful. I think
Eric Bomyea (10:44):
that is a wonderful recommendation for folks. And
with that, I'm feeling thatwe've given our listeners a
broad overview and answered thefirst question of what is
embodiment and why does itmatter. And so with that being
the top level question, is thereanything else you'd like to add,
(11:04):
or are you feeling complete?
Timothy Bish (11:05):
My shamanic therapist kind of boils stuff
down all the time to, you know,what what is the crux of men's
work? Feel your feelings. Andthat sounds really simple, but
it's like because your feelingsaren't gonna go away, just like
the laws of physics are notgonna go away. Right? Then
(11:26):
embedded in that is becomeskillful about feeling your
feelings and understand whatthey mean.
And so it can sound a littlesilly. It can sound a little,
you know, yogis on the mountainwith the crystals. But the
sensations you have in your bodywhen you are nervous, when you
are scared, when you are sad,when you are angry, when you are
delighted, when you are in love,these are all important. And I
(11:48):
guess the final thing I wouldsay is I just saw this video
about limerence. Like, can youdifferentiate between limerence
and love?
I suspect there might be aslightly different physical
sensation connected to the twoof them. And wouldn't it be
powerful if we could tap intothat? If we could understand it?
If we could be begin torecognize it. I'm interested in
(12:11):
that.
Are you also? I hope so. Mhmm.
Eric Bomyea (12:16):
Beautiful. Well, maybe part four. I don't know
what the word limerence means,so I think that's that's that's
for another episode. But I thinkwhat I'm getting at what I'm
understanding is that there is asensational difference between
things and learning tounderstand what those
differences are and help us tonavigate certain things in our
(12:36):
lives.
Timothy Bish (12:36):
Yeah. I let's define that word in the episode
about that word.
Eric Bomyea (12:40):
How about that? Sounds good. How about that?
Timothy Bish (12:42):
Yeah. The important thing here is that
there could be clues that we arereceiving from our body that
could help us navigatechallenging situations if only
we had the willingness and thecapacity to hear them.
Eric Bomyea (12:56):
So with that, thank you all for tuning in to this
first part of this three partseries. And if you want to
explore this more for yourself,please head on over to
myembodiment.com where you canpractice with us via breath
work, meditation, movementpractices to start to help you
get into your body a little bitmore. See you there.
Welcome back to The Circle, the podcast where we go
all in on men's work, embodimentpractices, personal growth from
our queer perspective. If you'reenjoying the show, please be
sure to rate, like, andsubscribe. And you can also
leave us a review to help getthe word out to more people. If
you have a question aboutanything you've heard us talk
about, please send us a message.We'd love to hear from you.
Speaking of messages andspeaking of questions, since
(00:28):
launching this show, we'vegotten a lot of them from
listeners all over the world.The big ones is this. What do
you mean when you say men'sembodiment? Behind that, what
does it mean to be a man? Whatis a queer man?
And then what does embodiedmasculinity actually mean? And
then how does men's intuitionplay a role in all that? These
are really great questions andit's a lot to unpack. So we're
(00:50):
gonna break it down over thenext several weeks in a three
part miniseries where in eachepisode, we'll focus on one
piece. We'll keep it short,sharp, and from our lived
experience.
Tim, are you ready to go all in?I'm ready. Let's do this then.
So welcome to the first episodeof our three part Q and A
series. In this part, we'reasking what is embodiment and
why does it matter in men'swork?
(01:10):
So we're going to start simple.What do you mean when you say
embodiment?
Timothy Bish (01:14):
Embodiment, as I understand it, is a conscious
practice of starting tounderstand the communication
that exists with our ownphysical body. When we think
about any experience that wehave, there is the cascade of
things that happen. Right? Sosomething happens to you. You
(01:35):
have an idea about that.
You have a belief about that,and your nervous system is aware
of it, your endocrine system isaware of it, and there can be
any number of things sort ofhappening. And we can get
information from our body tohelp us understand, like, what
is moving through us and andwhat we should be paying
(01:58):
attention to. Well, we can onlyget that information if we are
attuned to it. So the example Imight use is someone who gets
really upset. They getfrustrated or angry, and they
can feel the heat, and they canfeel that, like, jittery, shaky,
on the verge thing.
(02:18):
But if you have no conversationwith that sensation, with that
experience, then you're likelygonna not know how to work with
it skillfully. And so,typically, that would be the
moment when, oh, this kind ofbig experience is happening to
me. I don't know how to work
Eric Bomyea (02:35):
with it.
Timothy Bish (02:36):
It erupts much like a volcano and will come out
in whatever way it comes out.And oftentimes, it'll come out
in a way that is detrimental toour long term term goal, our
desire, our purpose. It may notbe in service to the
relationships that we want.Embodiment and embodiment
(02:57):
practice is going in andstarting to understand these
things so that when weexperience them, which we will,
which everyone will. So anyonelistening, you you will
experience your emotions in aphysical way.
That information can help you.Oh, I'm feeling this thing. What
(03:19):
can I do about this thing sothat I can then behave more
mindfully, more consciously,make some choices? That is the
un like, sort of the ongoingunraveling conversation of
embodiment practice. And I getmore and more information and
become more and more nuanced inmy understanding of what it is
(03:40):
I'm feeling so that when I amfeeling and in particular, when
I'm feeling wrathful, angry,frustrated, super withdrawn, do
I have things to work with thatso then I can get greater
clarity about what's actuallyhappening and how I want to be?
Eric Bomyea (03:59):
Thank you for that answer. I think that that brings
a lot of clarity. One of thethings that I did hear you say
is a mindfulness to yourembodied experience. So I'm
curious now, how is embodimentdifferent and how is it similar
to mindfulness and meditation?
Timothy Bish (04:15):
I believe embodiment is a very
unapologetic attempt atunderstanding a source of wisdom
for us, which is our physicalbody. I was thinking about this
earlier today where, you know,when we learn to drive a car
when you're 15 or 16, you getyour learner's permit, you take
(04:35):
lessons or you go to school.Like, you know, there's a class
sometimes, like, I learned frommy parents, but you have to
practice. You have to understandhow to drive the vehicle you're
driving. Why would our life bedifferent?
We are living in this physicalvehicle. It is the vehicle for
our human experience, and yetsometimes we want to entirely
(05:01):
deny it. Imagine driving a caror flying a plane and thinking,
I'm going to ignore the controlpanel because that's what's been
culturally sort of, you know,rewarded or or we haven't been
modeled it or whatever, youwould think that's crazy. When
I'm driving a car, I need toknow how fast I'm going. I need
to know how much gasoline Ihave.
(05:24):
I need to know what gear I'm in.I need to be able to see my all
the things. And yet with ourbodies, we're like, oh, I have
this feeling of sadness that noone's ever given me context for,
and it's like gnawing at me.Nying at me is even funny
because you might even not knowthat. You might just know, like,
I'm having a feeling, and Idon't know what to do with it.
And you're like, we should knowwhat to do with it. And if we
(05:46):
don't know, the thing is about,like, emotions and feelings and
sensations is that they don't goaway because we ignore them.
It's a little bit like a crackin the window. You're like, you
can pretend it's not there, butwhat you ultimately need to do
is address the the problem. Andin our lived experience, it's
the same thing.
So we are we are moving throughthis experience in these
(06:09):
vehicles, and embodiment is anattempt, a practice to
understand
Eric Bomyea (06:16):
its language and what it can offer us.
Beautifully said. And on theanalogy, metaphor of the vehicle
and the crack, so if we'reignoring the crack, it could
eventually get bigger anddevelop into something else. And
so we talked a little bit aboutthat wrathful expression. So the
(06:37):
crack of anger or irritationgets a little bit bigger,
bigger, bigger, then all of asudden it shatters into a moment
of really unskillfuldemonstration of anger in some
sort of wrathful way.
What are some of the othercommon ways that if we are
disembodied or disconnected fromour bodies that we could be
missing other things? And whatare
Timothy Bish (06:56):
some of those examples? What are some ways
that we commonly ignore ourembodied experience? Yes. I
think we see this a lot. I amfeeling sad.
I don't know what to do withthat feeling, so I fall into,
(07:17):
like, something that might looklike depression. I sleep too
much. I eat too much. I stayhome. I drink too much.
I there's so many different wayswhere I don't know what to do
with this feeling. And, like, wego back to the idea, the feeling
isn't going anywhere. It mightchange and shift around, but
until we address it or or kindof start to work with it, it'll
(07:39):
it'll be present. So you'reeating too much. You're drinking
too much.
You're sleeping too much. You'reyou're not doing things you want
to be doing. Any number of thesethings could be an example of,
oh, you're that is an attemptsomehow to manage a feeling you
don't know how to work with. Anembodiment practice is creating
(08:00):
situations, safe, conscioussituations in which we can start
to experiment with how to workwith some of these sensations.
So in an embodiment practice, wewill oftentimes be in a
challenging posture.
One of them that we all know is,you know, chi generator or, you
know, sometimes something calledego eradicator, things that push
(08:24):
us to an edge, not unlike yoga.The purpose of that being, well,
when I get to my edge and I feelreally pushed, I feel really
uncomfortable, can I practicenot collapsing in that moment?
Can I practice not becoming areaction in that moment? But
that's a skill that we have topractice. And so I like the
(08:44):
image that I've used many times,you know, the gold medalist who
has that gold medal winningperformance, they've probably
done the skill that they didexcellently many times not so.
And it was you you had to havethe opportunity to I I tried it
once. I went too far. I tried itthe second time. I didn't go far
(09:06):
enough. You like and you startto learn, well, emotions and
sensations and our humanexperience are not that
different.
I have to keep going back tosharpen my ability to understand
my experience and how
Eric Bomyea (09:19):
I how I meet people. And if somebody wanted
to try embodiment today, wherewould you start them?
Timothy Bish (09:24):
Well, I might refer them to some resources to
to a person who understood thethe practices. But, you know, a
lot of things are embodimentpractice. So if you go to yoga,
for example, because everyoneknows you're you and I are both
yoga teachers, it is a great wayto start to have an experience
(09:45):
of your body, an experience ofyour body in a safe space where
you can start to feel things andget a little pushed. If you hold
warrior two for 15 breaths, youmight start to feel, oh, I'm
having an experience in my frontquadricep or I'm having
experience in, like, my feet.And that just just being curious
(10:08):
what experience am I having andwhere do I tend to go?
What's happening and where do Itend to go with what's happening
are already powerful starts ofthis practice. Because if every
time you experience frustration,you go to lashing out, that's
(10:30):
important to know. Because islashing out serving you? Based
on my experience, almostcertainly not. And then what
might be of greater service?
Beautiful. I think
Eric Bomyea (10:44):
that is a wonderful recommendation for folks. And
with that, I'm feeling thatwe've given our listeners a
broad overview and answered thefirst question of what is
embodiment and why does itmatter. And so with that being
the top level question, is thereanything else you'd like to add,
(11:04):
or are you feeling complete?
Timothy Bish (11:05):
My shamanic therapist kind of boils stuff
down all the time to, you know,what what is the crux of men's
work? Feel your feelings. Andthat sounds really simple, but
it's like because your feelingsaren't gonna go away, just like
the laws of physics are notgonna go away. Right? Then
(11:26):
embedded in that is becomeskillful about feeling your
feelings and understand whatthey mean.
And so it can sound a littlesilly. It can sound a little,
you know, yogis on the mountainwith the crystals. But the
sensations you have in your bodywhen you are nervous, when you
are scared, when you are sad,when you are angry, when you are
delighted, when you are in love,these are all important. And I
(11:48):
guess the final thing I wouldsay is I just saw this video
about limerence. Like, can youdifferentiate between limerence
and love?
I suspect there might be aslightly different physical
sensation connected to the twoof them. And wouldn't it be
powerful if we could tap intothat? If we could understand it?
If we could be begin torecognize it. I'm interested in
(12:11):
that.
Are you also? I hope so. Mhmm.
Eric Bomyea (12:16):
Beautiful. Well, maybe part four. I don't know
what the word limerence means,so I think that's that's that's
for another episode. But I thinkwhat I'm getting at what I'm
understanding is that there is asensational difference between
things and learning tounderstand what those
differences are and help us tonavigate certain things in our
(12:36):
lives.
Timothy Bish (12:36):
Yeah. I let's define that word in the episode
about that word.
Eric Bomyea (12:40):
How about that? Sounds good. How about that?
Timothy Bish (12:42):
Yeah. The important thing here is that
there could be clues that we arereceiving from our body that
could help us navigatechallenging situations if only
we had the willingness and thecapacity to hear them.
Eric Bomyea (12:56):
So with that, thank you all for tuning in to this
first part of this three partseries. And if you want to
explore this more for yourself,please head on over to
myembodiment.com where you canpractice with us via breath
work, meditation, movementpractices to start to help you
get into your body a little bitmore. See you there.
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