Learning to be present through your body

When you say “I need to learn how to be present”, what does that mean? That you mentally feel scattered or fragmented? That you get distracted from overthinking about a memory, problem, situation? That you have a hard time staying still or focusing?

These are all descriptions of the same thing. And they all have the same elegant solution - learn to use your body.

Let me explain. The distractions from the present moment are not bad in and of themselves. You need to plan for the future, to remember your history, and to discover solutions to problems. However, when you do so out of distraction, compulsion, or avoidance, you are doing without using one of your greatest assets - your feeling capacity.

Feeling is the main gift of having a body. It’s the feedback system that allows us to be the observers of our experience. Being able to observe your felt experience is how we are able to choose how we experience life.

Without conscious choice, we feel frustrated or stuck, so we move away from the feeling. And we “do” without feeling. And we feel fragmented, distracted, stuck, compulsive, restless.

When I teach people how to be still in their bodies, they get better at it as they learn how to move in a way that is organic and whole.

Ironically, learning to move with feeling is one of the best pathways to stillness. Moving while feeling is the definition of somatic movement.

Over the past 20 years I have sought the most direct, effective, and lasting ways to make global changes in a body. When I started teaching classes online, I discovered that doing so through a digital medium - one that had no dimension - naturally demanded that people listen differently. When you learn embodiment online, you experiment more, you listen differently, you are naturally more self-reliant. In fact, you uncover your strength, your ease, and your resilience.

Are you ready to access more of yourself? Read an excerpt from my book to learn more.

Creative living, coherent body

What is your artform?

The acquisition of a technique that frees the soul is the gift of an artform. You learn how to interact with the medium with enough ease to let you get drawn into the meditation of your process. For the visual artist that medium may be paint or charcoal to bring out the emotion of color or negative space; for the poet that medium is words that create a visceral experience of rhythm and pauses. Ultimately, your medium is merely the material through which you can richly communicate that which is deeply felt. But that skill takes time to cultivate.

Likewise, your own body is your artform. In developing a coherent body, you develop the ultimate sounding board of your mind. With me, you will learn to skillfully employ techniques that anchor the whole of your being into coordination, greater ease. It takes time and attention to the experience within yourself, but being embodied in the moment is allowing opportunities for satisfying insights. This is the purpose and mission of Coherent Body - to develop the art of knowing yourself through the portal of your body.