ABSTRACT
Embodiment has been a somatic practice of mindful attention toward internal sensory-based data for people throughout history. Embodiment is grounded in habitual awareness of one's inner world and the environment through clear bodily-based perceptions. Historian Morris Berman differentiates cultures that value somatic ways of knowing, like the ancient heritage of the Chamorro, from those that impose authoritarian standards of thought while suppressing bodily-based ways of knowing. Embodied self-awareness is a direct encounter with inner knowledge while conceptual self-awareness is a second hand description of a past perception. As trauma survivors come home to live in their bodies, rather than in the realm of abstract thoughts, conceptual self-awareness, and ever-cycling inner ruminations, they are able to sense and feel themselves in relationship with the environment, the earth, and other living beings. A sense of embodiment allows practitioners to enter into somatic awareness and somatic empathy, an attuned and resonant bodily-based empathic relationship with another.
