“I am passionate about encouraging women to come back home into our bodies as safe oysters, so we can transform the pain, nurture the pearls of our innate wisdom, and express them with authority in the world.”
—Silvia
Embodied Visionary Practices for Modern Women
In my embodied work with women of all ages, somatic psychodrama, action method, embodiment practice, and applied neuroscientific knowledge of the body/brain connection offer processes for us women to trust the instinctual nature and intelligence of our bodies. These experiential modalities involve all our senses and perceptions, bringing our awareness to the body and the present moment. Learning to attend to the body’s state of being—moment by moment—sensitizes our body-mind awareness to our intrinsic personality qualities, talents, as well as growing edges. Action-oriented exploration is unscripted and spontaneous, allowing unknown qualities and information about us to emerge. The healing element of discovery and playfulness can help elicit hope and creativity amid all the struggle and pain we endure.
Embodiment is the ground for us women to recover and live our boundless (divine feminine) creativity and innate wisdom through embodied action and experiential practices. Breathing, moving, and voicing are intrinsic ways to originate visionary practices and life-affirming rituals through our bodies.
Our body is the conduit through which transformation happens. The human body is made up of the molecules and elements that form the basis of all life, human and non-human. We are not independent units but come from everything and everybody that was before us. Visionary practice and ritual can transcend our illusionary separation from everything. As we women (and girls) begin to reclaim our bodies’ knowing—as bearers of life, natural healers, and holders of ancient mystic knowledge—and voice our authentic creative expression, we simultaneously can contribute to community healing and ecological right action. Embodied learning and somatic awareness help women recover their innate body wisdom as a source of empowered confidence and agency. By respecting our own bodies, we will find ways of living caringly and responsibly with ourselves, each other, and our natural environment.
Personal growth can take many forms and is certainly not a linear process. Healing is an exploration of the mysterious nature of our body and mind. We cannot do this—to become whole—alone. We need each other. From the very moment we were conceived to the very last moment of our lives, we humans depend on each other and our relationships (not only human) for physical and emotional survival and thriving. Being in connection is the generative foundation of human growth in the personal and collective realm. Working and collaborating with others provide us with a mirror into our many selves and who we are becoming in relationship. The group dynamic is a creative process, a visionary practice, that brings into light unconscious drives and motivations. Implicit beliefs about self and the world are uncovered, which then can be explored and played out in group interactions with the help of others. We become each other’s healing agents. Once we truly experience the felt sense of our existence deep within our bones, we simply cannot not feel the other, human and non-human. Gratitude, wonder, and compassion arise for ourselves and all creation.
“Embodiment is a being process, not a doing process. It is an awareness process, not a thinking process. There is complete knowing and peaceful comprehension. Out of this embodiment process emerges feeling, sensing, thinking, witnessing, understanding, compassion. The source of this process is free; it is love.”
—Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen