The body hasn’t always been a focus for Psychologists, with traditional theories placing the brain in the spotlight for not only being responsible for our perception of the world and ourselves but also the focus for treatment.

Being in/connected to our bodies can positively contribute to our mental health and resilience. Being attuned to bodily experiences and understanding can guide us in safely and meaningfully engaging in life, the world and connecting to the people around us. However, there are many reasons why being in/present to our bodies might not be possible or safe. Our capacity for embodiment is influenced by a number of factors including socio-cultural messages about bodies, our history with our bodies and experiences of trauma and difficult emotional states that can have important implications for our mental and sexual health.

I hope that by sharing some of the information I have acquired from my clinical practice and learning that you might start to see more of your own bodily wisdom in your day-to-day life and how you might start to incorporate this into your sexual experiences and healing.

What is embodiment?

We can define embodiment as: “The experience of the body as engaged in the world, being fully present with the experience of being in our body”. This should be differentiated from body image “the picture of our bodies we form in our mind” (Hilley, McBride, Kwee, 2018)

When I speak to clients I try to listen to what it might be like for them living in their bodies. What might this relationship look like? For some, the body is like an enemy, maybe they are in pain and feeling like the body has betrayed them and so they might be on guard to any change in sensation. Maybe being with their body is fearful and chaotic and disconnection or dissociation is an escape from reliving the past. The body is currently not a safe place to be for them but finding ways to become safely embodied again is an important part of healing.

Western society often encourages disconnection too. Mind over matter is prized, the idea of a disciplined mind that can ignore or control bodily signals and sensations is seen as healthy e.g. through dieting, even if there might be long term costs to doing so.

Our body is a subject of our lived experience and worthy of listening to, not just an object through which our brain comes to know the world. Before we can put words to our experiences, our personality and identity grows around physical sensation, and eventually gives rise to mental representations and language (Klein, 2006). For example the concepts of love and temperature are often connected through experiencing the warmth of being held by a caregiver as babies. Mind and body are equivalent, inseparable and each a source of knowledge that can guide behaviour, emotions and thought.

“I make my reality and find myself only in the act...It is not because I think I am, that I am certain of my existence… The whole certainty of love, hatred or will is that I perform them.” (Merleau-Ponty, 2005, p.445)

What can impact on embodiment?

Attachment experiences - If we experience distress as a child, and our parents are unable to validate and soothe us, we may adapt by disconnecting from our bodies (avoidant attachment). This might involve becoming more focused on the world around us or engaging in mental distraction, rather than what is going on inside us. We might then carry this adaptation into adulthood and never learn how to orient to our body’s signals and be embodied.
Trauma - our brain can respond to trauma by detaching from our bodies through dissociation, depersonalisation, and derealisation. These states can be triggered temporarily or sometimes be maintained chronically depending on the extent of trauma or the nature of it. If the trauma involves a violation of the body or a body part this can be amplified further.
Social norms - shape how we feel and act in our bodies e.g. prescribing rules and scripts about how to make sense of and behave, what we should look like and what is acceptable. This can have a powerful impact on how we develop a relationship with our body.
Eating disorders - involve the body through disinhibition and control. People can experience their body as disconnected to their sense of self, as an object to be scrutinised and controlled or as a source of anxiety and pain as part of a social discourse on body ideals (Hilley, McBride, Kwee, 2018) Bodily perception is also often altered; both visually (for example overestimation of bodily size) and interoceptively (altered awareness of internal sensory information). This might include disconnection from bodily sensations that would help regulate perceptions of hunger and satiety and motivate behaviours that maintain homeostasis (Van dyk & Lutz, 2022).
Sexism, homophobia, fatphobia, racism or any other discrimination and violence based on how we appear to others can result in ongoing trauma related to how someone presents in the world and how safe they feel in their bodies.
Addiction - drugs or alcohol can be used to numb and disconnect from distressing bodily sensations.

Embodiment, sexual health and wellbeing

For many people who have concerns and anxieties related to sex there can be a disrupted relationship with the body. The quality of our embodiment is important to our mental and sexual wellbeing. We can feel safe and attuned to the body or disconnected, unsafe and burdened. A lack of felt safety and comfort in the body can be seen in a number of different concerns that clients are supported with at SHIPS, including, sexual pain (dyspareunia), sexual anxiety, trauma, performance anxiety, anorgasmia (difficulties with orgasm) and erectile dysfunction to name a few.

If we have not learnt to tune into our bodies this might mean we never learn what is pleasurable for us or what our sexual preferences are, or we might struggle to be present while having sexual experience with others and this can contribute to overall sexual enjoyment or conditions like anorgasmia. If we have not learnt to make sense of or cope with our emotional states (due to the reason above), and then when a painful or traumatic experience occurs later in life, this can also mean that we do not process this experience and the emotion, which is experienced and held in our body, remains in our body for years or a lifetime. This can also lead to chronic pain issues or sexual pain, dissociation during sex, and disconnection from wants, needs, boundaries and desires.

When the body is a place of potential harm, pain or discomfort our nervous system can try to protect us by motivating behaviours that involve a freeze/dissociation response if we feel that danger is inescapable or unavoidable. When we feel unsafe in our bodies this can impact our ability to have pleasurable and positive sexual experiences; our pelvic floor muscles may tense in response for example making sex uncomfortable or even painful. This also contributes to the form our thoughts and cognitions around sex take, including reinforcing cognitions about danger/harm. When we feel unsafe long enough in our bodies we can also become stuck in this disconnected/freeze state making it even harder to take care of ourselves.

Sexual embodiment refers to the experience of living in, perceiving, and experiencing the world from the location of our sexual bodies (Tolman, Bowman, & Fahs, 2014). The quality of this connection is important. Let’s look at some features of positive vs disrupted embodiment (based on Piran, 2017, Developmental Theory of Embodiment (DTE)).

Ways to become more safely embodied

There are a number of things we can do to start to safely reconnect and heal the relationship we have to our bodies:

Seeking support from a mental health provider, including a Psychologist, can be helpful in understanding why there might be barriers to feeling safe and connected to your body. This might include healing forms of trauma (attachment, social, historical/intergenerational etc), understanding how social messaging informs how we feel to be in our bodies in the world or even internalised messages we received early on in life about our bodies or seeing our caregivers' relationship to their bodies.

Approaches that build comfort in being embodied during sex might also be a part of treatment including mindful touch or sensate approaches. This is where the therapist guides the client, either as an individual or as a couple, to refocus in, and in essence, reconnect with their physical sexual feelings and responses, and can be understood as a form of embodiment intervention.

Recognising how our social world impacts on and constrains our embodied selves can be helpful in understanding our current relationship with the body. Social norms shape how we feel and act in our bodies e.g. prescribing rules and scripts about how to make sense of and behave in our sexual experiences.

These are often gendered around heteronormative scripts or ideologies e.g. traditional feminine discourses encourage people socialised as women to suppress their needs and wants which in turn “play an alienating role in the[ir]... lives estranging them from their bodies and their sexualities” (Tolman, Bowman & Fahs, 2014). This may make it difficult to negotiate safe and pleasurable sexual experiences (Curtin et al., 2011).

When it comes to pain, including sexual pain, cultural messages encourage people to minimise or push through their pain e.g. no pain, no gain messaging. The pain felt with vulvodynia can include perceiving oneself as abnormal or different from other women, feeling rejected, ashamed or feeling a failure (Ayling & Ussher, 2008). In order to conform to strict social expectations and ideals around idealised sex, there may be an expectation to push through this pain too causing a disconnect or disruption of self from the body.

Movement practices which encourage rebuilding awareness of the body, including yoga, tai chi or qigong might also be helpful. There are also trauma informed yoga practices that support people to find safety in their bodies again. Through breath, postures, and moment-to-moment awareness, yoga can teach people to let go of preconceived ideas (what a yogic pose “should” be) and the comparison of others, and notice what positions and movement feel like rather than what they look like (Piran & Neumark-Sztainer, 2020).
Progressive muscle relaxation involves tensing a group of muscles and releasing them with the breath (inhale as you tense, exhale as you release). This technique can help with physical relaxation, but also improving body awareness and self-efficacy. By systematically focusing on each area of the body, we can develop an awareness of where we typically hold muscle tension and learn how to release it.
We all know the five senses; sight, sound, touch, taste and smell (exteroception) but proprioception and interoception may also be important to build awareness of in becoming safely embodied. Embodiment is built through integration of all three sensory feedback mechanisms (Korner, Topolinski & Strack, 2015):
- Exteroception, which is sensing the external environment through the body (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin) to the brain.
- Proprioception refers to the sensory feedback of the body related to gravity. Proprioception happens when neurons bring sensory information from the joints of the body and inner ear to the brain. A yoga practice or embodiment practices using dance are examples of this.
- Interoception involves the sensory experience of the internal body. It may include a sense of hunger, thirst, alertness, body temperature, pain, or tension. It provides feedback about emotional experiences facilitated by sensory neurons that bring information from muscles, organs, and connective tissue to the brain. A mindful eating exercise would be a good example of this.
- Learning to attend to these sources of information, guided by mindfulness and self-compassion practices, can help us adapt to challenges and self-regulate.

Resources:

Becoming safely embodied: A guide to organise your mind, body and heart to feel secure in the world, by Dirdre Fay

Anchored: How to befriend your nervous system using Polyvagal theory by Deb Dana

The Body Keeps the Score - by Bessel van der Kolk

How to listen to your body, a series of episodes by Emily and Amelia Nagoski, episode 1 of 6

Embodiment Unlimited, podcasts with guests such as Gabor Maté, Peter Levine, Tara Brach, Richard Schwartz, Jon Kabat-Zinn and Dan Siegel.

Kristen Neff’s website is full of self-compassion resources, guided meditations and exercises.

Trauma Sensitive Yoga certified facilitator list if you’re interested in trying trauma sensitive yoga as part of your healing journey.

This blog post is a brief exploration of this topic and does not replace therapy. At SHIPS, we have practitioners that are knowledgeable and skilled in a variety of areas including sex therapy, relationships and more. If you may benefit from some support, please check out our website resources, or contact us.

We are also always happy to hear feedback about our blog articles. If you would like to share your experience or feel we may have missed something on this topic, please contact us to let us know.