You Don't Just Have a Body - You Live Through It

Sometimes we understand perfectly well that we are safe, yet the body seems unconvinced. The heart continues to race, the shoulders remain tense and the breath stays high in the chest. The stomach has not received the reassuring explanation we have given ourselves.

At other times, the body notices something before conscious thought catches up. We enter a room and contract slightly. We hear good news and suddenly breathe more freely. We keep working because we believe we are managing, then realise how tired we are only when we finally sit down.

I find experiences like these difficult to explain if we imagine the mind and body as separate systems: a thinking mind that interprets the world and a body that follows its instructions. Human experience does not divide so neatly. We perceive, think, feel and respond as embodied human beings.

We do not merely have bodies. We live through them.

What does embodiment mean?

Different dimensions of embodiment are shown separately here for clarity. In lived experience, internal signals, bodily position, sensory perception, emotion, interpretation and action continuously shape one another.

Embodiment is a way of understanding what it means to be human.

We often speak about the body as something we own: a structure that carries the brain around, needs maintenance and occasionally develops symptoms. Yet everything we know about ourselves and the world reaches us through a living body. We see through eyes that adjust to light, hear through ears that orient towards sound and know where we are through movement, balance and touch. Hunger changes what draws our attention. Fatigue alters what feels manageable. Pain can narrow our world to a single part of the body.

Thought takes place within this same living system. The brain is continuously receiving information from the heart, lungs, muscles, digestive system and other parts of the body. At the same time, it is taking in the world around us and interpreting the present through what we have learned before.

A steep staircase looks different when we are energetic than when we are exhausted or in pain. A room may feel inviting when we recognise a friend and uncomfortable when we are unsure whether we belong. A difficult conversation changes when we are trapped behind a desk, walking side by side or able to leave.

This broader understanding is what interests me about embodiment. It includes the body we sense from within, the body that moves and acts, and the physical and social world to which it is responding. Embodiment refers to the continuous interaction between body, brain and world.

Sensing ourselves and the world

We sense the body from within through signals such as heartbeat, breathing, temperature, thirst, hunger and nausea. This is known as interoception. Proprioception gives us a sense of the position and movement of the body, often without needing to look. Through sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste, we remain in contact with what is happening around us.

We do not usually experience these as separate streams of information. They are combined with memory, expectation and context.

A rapid heartbeat may be experienced as excitement while we wait to meet someone we love, exertion while climbing a hill or fear when it occurs unexpectedly at rest. A sound behind us may barely register on a relaxed afternoon but immediately capture our attention when we are walking alone at night. Tightness in the abdomen can be interpreted as hunger, nervousness or illness.

This is why I am somewhat cautious when people are simply told to “listen to their body,” as though its messages always arrived complete with an accurate explanation. Bodily sensations are real, but their meaning is not always immediately clear. Stress can make ordinary sensations feel threatening. Habit can teach us to overlook hunger or fatigue. Illness and medication can change the signals themselves. Some people notice every small change, while others recognise their needs only when the body makes them difficult to ignore.

Becoming more embodied involves curiosity about these signals and the circumstances in which they arise.

We understand through action

We encounter the world by moving through it. We reach, turn, approach, withdraw, touch and speak. What we perceive is closely connected to what our body can do.

An open door offers a way through. A heavy bag looks different when we have back pain than when our body feels strong. We understand many objects by lifting them, moving around them or discovering that they resist us.

Movement also accompanies thought. We gesture while searching for words, look away when trying to remember and pace while working through a problem. A thought that felt immovable at a desk can begin to shift during a walk. Thinking is something a living person does, in a particular place and physical state.

Our surroundings shape this experience. A body moves differently through a welcoming environment than through one in which it expects criticism, exclusion or danger. Physical and social conditions influence where we can go, how much space we take up, whether we speak and what actions feel available to us.

Embodiment also includes how we move, act and participate in the world.

Emotions involve the whole person

Anxiety may include a quickened pulse, altered breathing, tense muscles, narrowed attention and an urge to escape or regain control. Grief can change appetite, sleep, energy and the physical weight with which we move through the day. Shame may lower the gaze and make the body want to become less visible. Anger can bring warmth, pressure and an impulse to act.

The physical sensations, thoughts, interpretation of the situation and readiness to respond are different aspects of one emotional experience.

Influence moves in several directions. A frightening thought can change our breathing. Several nights of poor sleep can make an ordinary setback feel overwhelming. Persistent pain may make us more watchful, while being watched or judged can change the way we hold and move the body.

Changing our bodily state can also change how we meet a situation. Slower breathing, movement or the presence of someone we trust may create more room to think and choose what to do next. Some problems still require us to change the situation itself. Relaxing the shoulders will not make an unsafe workplace safe.

That distinction matters to me. Practices that influence the body can be genuinely helpful without becoming an answer to every problem or a way of placing responsibility back on the individual.

Why understanding is not always enough

One of the reasons embodiment matters to me, both personally and as a physician, is the gap between understanding a response and being able to change it. In medicine, psychology and everyday life, we often expect insight to produce change. Once we understand why something is happening, we expect the rest of us to follow.

We can sometimes explain our stress remarkably well. We may understand where it comes from, recognise the pattern and know that we are not in immediate danger. Yet the physical response continues. The understanding is real, but it has not changed the whole response.

Someone can know there is no real danger in giving a presentation and still shake before it begins. We can understand that rest is necessary while feeling agitated whenever we stop working. We may trust a relationship and still brace ourselves during conflict because older experiences have made that response familiar.

I do not see this as a failure of insight or willpower. Human beings learn through experience as well as explanation. Responses can gradually change through repeated experiences in which something turns out differently from what we had learned to expect.

This is one reason movement, breathing, relaxation, touch and attention to the senses can complement reflection and conversation. They change what we are doing, sensing and experiencing in the moment.

Bringing attention back to lived experience

We are always embodied, including when we feel disconnected from the body. Becoming more embodied means paying attention to parts of our experience that are easily overlooked.

Sometimes that involves noticing an internal sensation. It can also mean sensing where the feet are, changing position, looking around the room or recognising how another person’s presence affects us. For someone who spends much of the day working behind a screen, it may begin with the need to stand, eat or look into the distance. For someone who monitors every heartbeat, turning towards movement or the outside world may be more helpful than looking further inward.

We may feel most embodied when we are no longer monitoring ourselves at all: while walking, cooking, singing, making something with our hands or becoming absorbed in movement. I think this is easily forgotten when embodiment is discussed mainly in terms of awareness practices. We also inhabit the body simply by using it and becoming involved in life.

These observations do not replace medical assessment. Persistent or concerning physical changes still need to be investigated, and embodiment should never be used to attribute unexplained symptoms to stress or emotion without proper consideration of other causes.

It gives us another set of questions. What is happening within me? How am I holding or moving myself? What am I responding to? What does this situation allow me to do?

Sometimes the first answer arrives only after we stop asking. We sit down at the end of a long day and feel the weight of the body settle into the chair. The shoulders drop. The breath changes. Only then do we realise how much effort it had taken to keep going.

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References

Barsalou LW. Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology. 2008;59:617–645.

Chen WG, et al. The Emerging Science of Interoception: Sensing, Integrating, Interpreting, and Regulating Signals within the Self. Trends in Neurosciences. 2021;44(1):3–16.

Critchley HD, Garfinkel SN. Interoception and emotion. Current Opinion in Psychology. 2017;17:7–14.

Khalsa SS, et al. Interoception and Mental Health: A Roadmap. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. 2018;3(6):501–513.

Wilson AD, Golonka S. Embodied cognition is not what you think it is. Frontiers in Psychology. 2013;4:58.