Embodied Relationships
Embodiment involves a mutual intention to attend to and communicate from our inner experience. It suggests that the primary source of our self-awareness emerges from a practice of sensing and expressing emotions and needs, recognizing what is happening in our nervous system, and processing our reactions to the world around us. Becoming “embodied” is a process and a practice that never ends. It takes us well beyond the capacity to cognitively understand one another. Karden Rabin states:
“Before embodiment, I knew I loved my wife, after embodiment, I could feel my love for her.”
The Tenets
1
When negativity and difficult reactions are felt and expressed from an intention to become more connected (rather than being right), the gates open to allow for a deeper experience of love and pleasure.
2
Sharing your inner world of anger, fear, hurt, need, remorse, and gratitude is the language of relationship.
3
The expression of emotions and needs is a process that requires practice to listen and trust the embodied messages. There needs to be a mutuality between partners to dialogue in a new way.
4
Though conflict can be messy and destructive, it is also inherently good, because each partner’s emotional reactions can offer a genuine impetus for change. Conflict is unavoidable, so we need to learn how to grow from it.
5
Empathy lives in the heart, and so it is embodied. We cannot emphasize enough, that fostering empathy is the primary goal of Embodied Couples Work. Getting couples to experience empathy is the Northstar of our work.
All About Our Work
Authentic connection involves the capacity to experience and communicate our entire range of emotions. What creates safety and closeness with our partner is our ability to empathize with what they are feeling and vice versa. When couples connect in a way where they feel safe enough to share a multitude of reactions and parts of themselves, they flourish. Becoming embodied in relationships, first starts with our capacity to access our feelings, sensations and reactions to our partner.
In our work, we support couples from moving from protection to connection. We pay close attention to how their protective walls show up somatically, and we work congruently with body, mind and emotions. Embodiment, in this regard, means learning to trust and reveal the signals and messages that emanate from the neck down.
Brian and Marcia Gleason CSW’s, created the Embodied Relationship approach because intimacy is genuinely hard to navigate! They have spent the last three decades learning to dissect complex relationship dynamics, and create simple, easy-to-use concepts and tools for couples! To authentically relate to one another, accessing the wisdom of our embodied selves becomes an imperative.