What is Embodied Autonomy?

Embodied autonomy means ownership of your own body, the very one that entered this world at birth. Embodied autonomy means a more mindful occupation of your own skin – on a sovereign, consistent, and pleasing basis. It’s a sensation, and leads to a coherent connection to your own intuitive, fundamental knowing. It comes from your bones. It’s confidence – that you know what you know – when you trust yourself to interpret your body’s signals.

Embodied autonomy is a far cry from the way most of us walk around. Stiff competition for the way we direct our attention comes from all sides: from friends, family, media, advertising, the Internet, or work. What’s the quality of noticing you reserve for your own soft underbelly? When successfully summoned, what does your attention yield – pleasure, connectedness, numbness, or perhaps pain?

Although it’s our birthright, we have been denied access to embodied autonomy as a result of cultural conditioning. Bright distractions pull our attention out of body – onto screens, others, and their needs at any moment. Do the demands of family, school, social media, and work conspire to keep your attention out of your embodied experience – even the kind you’re supposed to enjoy, like food or sex?

Embodied autonomy, defined by sensation, is experienced in degrees of intensity. An open breath is reliable as a way to test your access to it. Go ahead – take a deep breath – through your nose. What do you feel? Do you sense a warm body-rush of pleasurable sensation? Or do you notice limits to the expansion of that breath – in your neck, chest, abdomen, or jaw? Maybe you can’t even get a deep one due to blockage in your sinuses?

In real terms, a marker for embodied autonomy is the sensation of spreading warmth, moving through the pathways where muscles meet bones. Embodied autonomy feels luxurious yet subtle at the same time, and grows with cultivation. Asian healing traditions use the word qi to describe this sensation. Once tasted, genuine embodied autonomy is unforgettable. But embodied autonomy suffers when it’s blocked. There are four kinds of blockage. Each type of blockage represents an essential domain of health:

• Biochemistry rules your blood, your guts, and your liver/gallbladder function.
• Emotions exert surprising control over an array of muscular tension, postural habits, and pain syndromes.
• Biomechanics represents each individual’s balance of strength and flexibility, and rules the way your weight distributes through your bones. Inherent flexibility (or lack thereof) affects muscle mass, tone, and strength, controlling the comfort of your relationship to gravity.
• Scar tissue has a domain of its own, can wreak havoc, and usually sneaks by unnoticed, with bodywide consequences.

When an effective synthesis of these four domains is applied, health flourishes. Conventional medical practices rarely have or make time for their inquiry to target the right questions. The result is missing the mutual influences and inter-relatedness of the four domains described above. One unfortunate consequence is that real embodied autonomy remains out of reach for a most people. My approach is different. I believe knowledge is power, and you deserve to know the how’s, why’s, what’s, and when’s while learning about your possibilities for effective self-care.

Getting to the heart of embodied autonomy hinges on a process of discovery. Did you know your access to the sensation of embodied autonomy is an accurate predictor for the evolution and resolution of many health concerns? Perhaps you know what you need, but find it challenging to give it to yourself. You need a vitamin, but which one – how can you tell what’s missing? Do you know how to feel it? Can you tell when you’re in need of a healthy snack, and hear what your nervous system needs for balance (compared to a salty or sugary habit)? How do you know when you need a moment to slow down and integrate your day? Learning to identify and satisfy these authentic needs often requires guidance. Here are a few more questions aimed at finding out where you lie along the spectrum of embodied autonomy:

• Do you take responsibility for inhabiting your own precious flesh?
• Is living your life an expression of conscious, deliberate and effective health practices?
• How does your body feel when you deliberately practice health?
• Can you tell when unconscious habits begin to deaden your connection to your body?
• How can you tell when you’ve lost your attention on your body altogether?

Nature designed our bodies to heal, but each person travels their own road to health. The shortest route between confusing, painful symptoms and pleasurable embodied autonomy starts with accurate assessment. Assessment is the parent of fruitful inquiry. Without it, you could remain searching – down every blind alley, circling your health goals without meeting even one of them.

With that in mind, I propose a joint adventure into your terrain of embodied autonomy. During assessment, we will use the strength of our combined attention placed on your sensations as guidance. In the process you will get to know your terrain and its potential better. During the last twenty years, I’ve developed my gifts of keen medical intuition along with a well-trained and deductive scientific mind. During our work together, I will help your body find its voice inside of your daily experience. Our joint effort yields the accurate perception of two things: the essentials of, and obstacles to your embodied autonomy.

With the exception of postpartum care, work with me starts with the assessment process to identify your particular barriers to health and provide you with a most efficient map to begin your work. When you demonstrate commitment and a genuine desire to make necessary changes, there is the possibility to continue our journey by coaching with me. In coaching, we work together to apply the insights from your assessment – and rediscover your embodied autonomy one step at a time.

If you’d like to schedule an assessment, learn more here. If you’re not sure you’re ready for a full assessment, but would like to explore some basic questions about your embodied autonomy in an introductory session, learn more here. To read about what others have said about their assessments and coaching experiences with me, see the testimonials.