Embodied Mindfulness is an eclectic amalgam of embodied, self-regulating practices and supportive science. For a complete list of the practices and science see ‘The Embodied Practices’ page at www.stevetemplin.com.
Since one size does not fit all, the variety of practices provides options to find the self-regulation methods that are best suited to the individual.
Key Concept #1
Get out of your head. Shifting awareness from ‘thinking’ to ‘sensing bodily felt experience’ activates your system’s self-healing capacity. This shift in attention style is technically called ‘interoception’. The inner act of simply noticing bodily felt experience curiously and without judgment activates neural circuitry that spontaneously helps to balance your brain and autonomic nervous system (ANS). This is how we engage the innate, self-healing wisdom of the mind and body.
Key Concept #2
Connect with your heart. A refinement to the inner, healing act of interoception is to add heartfelt qualities like appreciation, acceptance, and empathy to the experience. We’ll draw on the science and practices of the HeartMath Institute and other insights from neuroscience ー and on the timeless insights of sages and poets. The take-home message is that ‘love’ heals. Your heart is your personal link to a larger healing mystery.
Key Concept #3
Experience yourself as Awareness itself. Paradoxically, the process of embodiment nurtures the experiential ground of a larger, non-material sense of Self. These embodied practices will help you to experience more of your essential self, while becoming less identified with your feelings, personality, or beliefs. With practice, you will become more grounded in a safe, bodily felt experience of a larger reality.
At times, Identifying as Awareness can be challenging for HSPs because often their spiritual essence, or Awareness, had difficulty in fully inhabiting the physical body before or shortly after birth. These self-regulation practices will help to safely nurture the embodiment process.
Identifying with your essential self creates a safe distance between the real you (Awareness) and challenging emotions and feelings. With safety comes integration, healing, and transformation. Now, you’re big and safe enough to process whatever that’s inside you that needs attention, or in the words of mythologist Joseph Campbell, “You can say yea to it all”.
Key Concept #4
Experience Safety. The experience of safety can be nurtured with practice. With consistent practice, the neural circuitry that underlies the experience of safety is strengthened. This is positive neuroplasticity.
Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory shows us that the experience of safety is the key ingredient for healing old wounds, including the sense of overwhelm experienced by many HSPs. This information encourages us to keep our inner practice safe and not to push ourselves beyond our Window of Tolerance as psychiatrist Dan Siegel would suggest. The Window of Tolerance is our safe zone, beyond which our efforts become counterproductive.
The embodied self-regulation skills will support you by nurturing ‘safety’, and trust in the healing power of heartfelt qualities like curiosity, kindness, and empathy. Relating to your inner experience with more love and compassion is the key to increased safety and transformation.
Remembering to practice safely, curiously, consciously, and kindly, without pushing will help to avoid being sabotaged by unconscious resistance. It helps to be aware that sooner or later you will very likely resist, avoid, or simply forget about mindfulness practices because they threaten to dismantle lifelong survival strategies, even if they have now become a detriment to your health and well-being.
Key Concept #5
Feelings are memories with a connection to a younger you ー so treat them with kindness, empathy, and compassion, the way you’ve always wanted to be treated. Feelings can be reframed as early, non-verbal memories, or implicit memories. And these feeling memories link us with remnants of our younger selves, or Parts, that are primarily looking for what they didn’t get at an earlier time, namely respectful, caring attention.
It’s counterintuitive, but feelings, especially the more difficult ones, are a portal to a deeper, intuitive healing connection that thinking alone does not allow. This is a further refinement of interoception and heartfelt awareness that reaches deep into our limbic brain for releasing past hurts and survival programming. As limiting, outdated patterns are released, our potential for healing and wholeness returns spontaneously.
Key Concept #6
The Highly Sensitive Person has an advantage. The HSP’s innate sensitivity allows their sense of interoception to connect more deeply and to heal more dependably. While high sensitivity can lead to a protective distancing from bodily awareness or dissociation, HSPs can learn to safely reinhabit their bodies, reawaken their interoceptive capacity, and nurture an experiential connection with spirit.
As always, practice with gentle curiosity, patience, and compassion towards yourself.
Steve is a retired Doctor of Oriental Medicine, Acupuncture Physician, and HeartMath Trauma-Sensitive Certified Practitioner with over 35 years of clinical experience in Energy Medicine, Energy Psychology, and Biofeedback.