Embodied mindfulness is the process of bringing awareness to the physical body, its motions, and its sensations.  This process is the fundamental basis for the field of somatics, which studies the body experientially.  Somatic inquiry is subjective and observational, mirroring scientific methodologies of experimentation and data collection within one’s own physical, mental, and emotional experience to generate meaning and connection within the self of body-mind-spirit.  The primary differentiation of embodied mindfulness from other mindfulness practices is the inclusion of movement.

Embodied Mindfulness is empowering because it addresses the relationship between consciousness and vitality.  Only an individual experiencing themselves can perceive their own consciousness and aliveness from the inside.  We may observe others, and may make meaning of our experience of others, but we cannot know accurately what another person perceives.  It would be a mistake to believe everything we feel, whether as an inside or outside observer, but having access to the data permits us greater capacity for discernment in our actions.  As health practitioners we provide great resource to our patients when we connect them to their embodied experience, empowering them in vital action.

A structure for mindful embodied inquiry:

1)  Engage Curiousity

What is your patient curious about?  Asking directly is often useful and is how I often begin my client sessions.  Often its an ache or pain, and often the patient wants to be ‘fixed’.  The perspective and questions of curiosity immediately includes the patient in the process of addressing their pain.  The pain has motivated this person to take action—curiosity shifts the role of the patient from victim to researcher.  While they may not be ready to take this leap discretely, your engagement from this place offers that it is possible to do so.  It is an invitation toward their empowerment, and it can be evidenced in each moment of your collaborative action with them.  Do research together that engages both of you creatively in any way.

2)  Create safety.

We cannot engage curiosity when our fundamental safety is at stake.  Safety has many dimensions physically and emotionally.  We cannot make someone feel safe, but we can support them to be safe in their inquiry.  If someone has a hip injury weight-bearing exercises are not the place for them to experiment.  In general, the floor is a place we can all experiment with our bodies and not get hurt.  Yet, for many this may be too emotionally threatening, and they’re better off sitting in a chair.  Follow the intention to create safety and the details will follow.

3)  Guide experimentation, improvisation, and presence.

If you are doing physical manipulations with your patient, suggest that they notice their sensations before, during, and after the manipulation.  Encourage them to explore within their range of motion; moving to feel.  Functional tasks can be helpful if this is too abstract an activity.  We almost universally try to test our injuries, focusing on what isn’t working the way we want.  Guide your patients to notice what is working.  For example, patients with shoulder issues will often find the range of motion in the joint where there’s a catch, twisting their arm into an awkward configuration that has little other function than to show the injury at the edge of their range.  Asking them to move reach up and back to grab a ball or your hand with their fingers will often bypass the injury, at least once some healing has taken place.  By focusing on function, and experimenting with what is possible we support gratitude and empowerment.  

Presence is the quality of mindful attention.  Self-touch is an excellent tool for being present in our bodies.  Encourage your clients to touch their bodies to feel their alignment, their tone, and to offer themselves loving attention.  Presence is best offered as a non-doing; a quality of receptive touch is generally more useful than touch which attempts to fix or do something.  The same body is receiving the touch as giving it, so muscular action will tend to bind the structures we’re attempting to feel into.  Tension masks sensation.

4)  Reflect

Reflection is a process of making meaning.  When we reflect we take the data we collected through awareness and draw conclusions.  I like to consider the question “What’s so obvious?”  It’s easy to try too hard with reflection, and often the most important noticing is right there in front of us.  For example, the client who kept trying to activate their shoulder injury might recognize that reaching with their fingers didn’t create pain.  Just noticing this might give them faith that they can heal through movement learning and then perhaps wait before jumping into surgery.   

Allow your patient to reflect about their experience before you reflect on yours.  Allow their experience to be true for them.  If you perceive something differently it can be useful to share that while claiming it as your own perception.  You can back up your observations and meaning making with objective measurements, your clinical experience, and other sources of information, and yet include that you heard they felt a certain way.  It could be possible to add a word of inquiry—a wondering if their experience will continue to be this way as they continue their investigation.  

5)  Offer a continuing investigation

Give your patient a simple assignment that supports them in a process of curiosity, safety, inquiry, and reflection.  It may be as simple as noticing how they feel as they complete their PT exercises.  The more you can engage their curiosity, and the more you can help them find safety for themselves, the more likely they will do their assignment!