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dis·mem·ber·ment
noun
1. the action of cutting off a person’s or animal’s limbs.
2. the action of partitioning or dividing up a territory or organization.
Most of us grew up learning that our body is a flesh and blood object, made up of organs, bones, veins and arteries, and encased in muscle and skin. We learned it is something to be researched, objectified, judged, used, harmed, exercised, fed, built, and discussed as if it is something ‘other’ than ourselves. This view has been reinforced historically through colonization in many of its forms – religion, cognitive sciences, culture, and philosophy.
According to these systems, the mind and spirit are separate entities––superior to the animal / ‘base’ nature of the flesh––that can (in theory) be isolated from the body as a transcendent feature of being human. The prioritizing of cognition, logic, and / or transcendence is often not explicit but persists as an implicit bias. This bias reinforces the mindsets of colonization, which continues to separate us from our bodies, in turn perpetuating colonization.
As a result, we are collectively cut off from the intelligence centers in our bodies, accessing only a small fraction of their genius and wisdom. We are the dismembered––cut off from the neck down, living inside our heads, detached from the parts of ourselves that are signaling, communicating, sensing, and knowing.
Why is it so important to change this trend, and reconnect to our bodies? Our bodies offer us an abundance of information, sourced through highly evolved neurological intelligence centers that help us navigate life with more connection, intuition, groundedness, street-smarts, self-trust, and wisdom. Becoming embodied is game-changing in all our relationships––to ourselves, to others, to our work and the world. Far from what colonized thinking would disparagingly label as “merely touchy-feely”, embodiment is a powerful claiming and inhabiting of our most high-performing selves.
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