I have to level with you. The piece I was going to write was around connecting with your audience, and how much it matters. (It really does!) But then I realised I needed to go further back, and speak about our connection with ourselves. (Because if we’re not truly connected with ourselves, there’s no-one available to connect). And then I realised I needed to go one stage further back and speak about getting embodied.
What is embodiment?
Let’s start by contrasting it with what it’s not. Many people will colloquially say “I’m too much in my head”. They live most of their lives in their thoughts, about the past the present or the future. And most of that tends to be worrying or ruminating, which mostly doesn’t do us any good.
Embodiment is about getting out of our heads and into our bodies.
It’s not enough to tell yourself “stop thinking!” Or “stop worrying!”. The mind doesn’t do very well with negative commands. Much better to give your mind something else to occupy it. And the body, specifically the activity of noticing and feeling the sensations in your body is a wonderful place to put your attention.
There’s a wonderful leadership coach, who I’ve referenced before, called Richard Strozzi-Heckler. One of my favourite quotes from him is: “We think that we are thinking creatures who can feel. The truth is that we are really feeling creatures who can think.” As one of my favourite teachers would put it, “We’ve had the map the wrong way up!”
When we allow feeling to be primary, and thinking to be secondary, lots of good things start to happen.
What are the advantages of embodiment?
The first thing that happens is that we find ourselves worrying much less. When we allow feeling our feelings and sensations to take priority over our thoughts, much of the unnecessary rumination or fretting seems to die away.
We gain a sense of perspective, and end up much more in the present moment than we were previously. The sensations that exist in your body only exist right now. When you fill them, you bring yourself into an experience of now.
As we do this, the mind becomes what it was always intended to be, which is an incredibly powerful tool. A wonderful servant instead of a stressful master.
As the thinking mind gets quieter, we start to get access to other sorts of intelligence. The most obvious of which are our instincts. For most people these live in our guts –hence people speaking about “gut instinct”. This is not just a figure of speech. The enteric nervous system (the network of neurons in your gut) is sometimes described as the “belly brain”. It contains 500 million neurons – the same amount of processing power as you would find in a cat’s brain! It is capable of memory, intelligence and learning. If you want to read more of the science behind this, do check out the wonderful mBraining – Using your multiple brains to do cool stuff.
Your gut brain has lots of intelligence to give you about many different situations. It’s not very trustworthy in terms of filling out your tax return, but it might tell you whether somebody is trustworthy or not.
The challenge is that we have got so reliant on listening to our minds that these other sorts of intelligence tend to get drowned out by our thinking brains, which as I said above are mainly worrying about stuff. As soon as our conscious minds become a little quieter, these other voices become much more available for us to hear.
When we are more “in” our bodies, we can also notice changes in our body language that both reflect and affect the way we are feeling. If we are feeling defensive, we may subconsciously find ourselves crossing our arms. If we are feeling deflated, our shoulders may drop. But by noticing this, then reversing these body postures and deliberately doing the opposite, we can radically and rapidly affect our mood.
The more we are feeling the feelings and sensations in our bodies, the easier it is to look after the emotional parts of ourselves – we can’t meet and take care of what we are not aware of. But that’s a subject for my next article…so I’ll just mention it for now.
Which brings us on to the last massive benefit of embodiment. Confidence.
Why embodiment leads to confidence
Confidence is a feeling. Feelings live in the body. We say “I feel confident”. We don’t say “I think confident”.
Here’s a remarkable truth that may sound counter-intuitive: If you can notice and feel all the sensations in your body (that’s you’re aware of), without fighting them, you will feel much more confident. You won’t know what you don’t know. (So, if you haven’t done your homework, you’re still in trouble.) But you will have a sense of solidity and an ability to get behind yourself and what you know. It will suddenly become much easier to be the centre of attention, when all eyes are on you. And, it will switch off your tendency to worry about how other people are judging you or what they are thinking about you.
Why does this work? A lot of it is around down-regulating your mind that is roaming around the past or the future or worrying about the present. Another piece of the puzzle is that we are often fighting uncomfortable sensations in our bodies subconsciously. When we turn around and face these “demons”, even making friends with them, the nagging doubts that they have been causing seem to melt away. It’s rather like we are admitting secrets that we were keeping, or trying to keep, from ourselves. There is a relief in looking under the bed and seeing that what was under there wasn’t a monster after all.
There is a sense of “closing the circuit”. Imagine a very simple circuit with an electrical battery and a lightbulb. If one end of the wire is unable or “unwilling” to touch the lightbulb, it won’t illuminate. When the wire comes into contact with the bulb, it lights up. When we come into contact with ourselves, there is a felt sense of feeling “joined up” on the inside. This brings with it a greater sense of safety and with that confidence.
I used to have an anxiety dream, of attempting to drive a car from the backseat. Somehow my arms reached the steering wheel, but I didn’t feel that I was fully in control. It was pretty scary. Imagine the relief in that scenario of stopping the car, getting out of the back seat, and sitting yourself behind the wheel. That’s what it feels like to get out of your head and into your body, prioritising feeling your sensations.
This explains why many of us who have done yoga have noticed how good we feel after an extended session, and how confident we feel. (Provided we have a kind teacher and the class went “well”). The meaning of yoga is “union”. In this case it refers to a union between our awareness and the felt sense of our bodies. When the main thing that is in your awareness is the experience of sensations in your body that is a yoga state. And it feels really good for the reasons I’ve explained above.
Why does embodiment matter in public speaking and leadership?
It’s probably sort-of obvious from the list of benefits I’ve outlined above. When we are more embodied we worry less, gain a sense of perspective, are more able to access our instincts, are able to positively affect our body language, are able to “meet ourselves” and feel more confident. This is a pretty wonderful place to do public speaking from or to take a leadership role.
Imagine being a public speaker who is comfortable in their own skin, able to see the audience without worrying out them or their judgment, and who feels confident to say what they need to say.
Imagine being a leader who can see the big picture, knows themselves well and can see and support others without feeling threatened by them, and who can handle day to day challenges calmly and collectedly.
In both leadership and public speaking embodiment is not the only thing, but in my experience it’s the first thing.
It’s the foundation for deep confidence and that’s a great place to start.
So, how can we get more embodied?
Hopefully by now you are sold on the benefits of embodiment, or at least sufficiently curious to discover how you can get more of it into your life.
The bad news is, it’s not possible to be completely embodied all of the time, much as I would love to be able to! Life (and past habits) get in the way.
The good news is, it’s not an all or nothing thing. It’s a sliding scale. Put simply, we don’t need to be completely embodied all of the time, feeling everything with no “unnecessary” thinking, but more is almost always better. I’ve discovered that the more embodied I am, the more I enjoy my life and the more effective I am in all of my work and relationships.
The other good piece of news Is that the more we practice it, the better we get.
We can get more embodied by practicing feeling the sensations in our bodies and doing this more often throughout the day.
The difference between thinking about, noticing and feeling a sensation
I’ve just slapped one of my hands against the other, with the edge of one hand hitting the palm of the other. I did this hard enough to make the receiving hand sting. It’s not painful, but I am very aware of it. Can you imagine doing this? This is thinking about a sensation. Similarly, the thought “my hand is stinging right now” is also thinking about a sensation.
Now actually do it. Notice that your hand is stinging. Noticing a sensation is different from thinking about it. You can notice a smell on the breeze a moment before you have the thought “I wonder where that smell is coming from?” or “I wonder what that smell is?”
Now feel the stinging in your hand. Notice where your hand is stinging more and where it’s stinging less. See if you can discern where the stinging sensation stops. Does it extend all the way to your wrist? In order to answer these questions, you need to “go inside” and feel. This is the distinction between noticing a sensation and feeling it.
But I don’t want to feel it!
One of the biggest barriers to embodiment is that there are some sensations going on in our bodies that we don’t want to feel! There are parts of our mind may find them scary, unpleasant or overwhelming. In the Internal Family Systems model that I often use these parts are called “protectors”. One of their main jobs is to “protect us” from feeling things that they perceive to be “dangerous” to feel.
It’s important not to try to override these parts. They were created for a good reason, and they often contain a good amount of wisdom and intelligence. So, in the process of embodiment, their perspective needs to be included, and we need to work gradually.
If we try to go too fast, these parts will almost inevitably step in and shut the process down. There can be the experience of “bouncing out” – where we touching on something in the body which feels “too much” and end up feeling nothing because these emergency mechanisms have kicked in, preventing us from connecting with our sensations.
And yet, the more we can include the parts of ourselves that don’t want to feel, and the more we can gradually train ourselves to feel, even of uncomfortable sensations, the more embodied and confident we will feel in ourselves.
The Formula for Embodiment
Believe it or not there is a formula for embodiment!
It’s A+A+F=E.
If you are aware of all the sensations in your body, you are able to accept them with kindness and then feel them, you will be (much more) embodied.
I say much more embodied, because embodiment is not a binary (there or not there) thing, but more of a sliding scale. The good news from this is the more we practice, the more embodied we become, bringing with it all the benefits I outlined above.
Some notes:
- You only need to be aware of the sensations you can notice! You don’t need to try hard to notice anything you can’t. Trying will take you into your head and out of the embodied state. So just allow yourself to notice whatever you can.
- A good mantra for acceptance if you have noticed an uncomfortable sensation is “…and that’s OK”. g. “There’s pain in my back…and that’s OK”.
- The more curiosity you can have about the detail of the sensations the more you will be feeling them. g. “The pain in my lower back is more on the left-hand side, it’s a sort of throbbing pain, and it feels sort of warm”. The commentary isn’t the point, but the attitude of curiosity and feeling “in detail” is. Once you have connected with the detail of the feeling you can drop the commentary and just feel.
- If there are uncomfortable sensations happening it can be tempting to focus only on them, but this usually makes them feel more intense and this can be challenging, so include some neutral or pleasant sensations as well. Good ones to start with are often how your hands and feet feel. In fact, that’s a great place to start.
Feel the basics
Let’s start with a very basic embodiment exercise (let’s assume you’re sitting):
- Breathe in let your spine lengthen up.
- Breathe out, let your shoulders fall and your spine remain long.
- Allow your forehead, eyes and throat to relax.
- Feel your bottom on the seat.
- Feel your back against the back of the chair.
- Feel your feet on the floor.
- Feel your hands resting wherever they are resting.
- Feel your belly.
Now we can add a bit of detail:
- Notice whether your bottom is warmer or cooler than your feet (or exactly the same).
- Notice if your feet feel warmer or cooler than your back.
- Notice if your back feels warmer or cooler than your hands.
- Notice if your hands feel warmer or cooler than your belly.
Notice how you are feeling now. I can guarantee that you are much more embodied than you were two minutes ago.
Taking this to the next level
If you want to take this to the next level you can add a full body scan to your practice. This isn’t something that you’d do when you are standing in front of an audience, but can be a great thing to practice every morning when you get up, to give you a reference point for what it feels like to be “in” your body.
Remember, if this ever feels too intense, come out of the detail of feeling the inside of your body, and just feel your hands, your feet, your back and your bottom. Nobody should find that too intense.
You might want to record these instructions as a voicenote on your telephone, leaving plenty of gaps to carry out each step so you can play it back to yourself.
The body scan will probably take you in the region of 10 minutes, though it could be a little bit slower than that. I wouldn’t recommend that you do it faster.
Here’s an example of a 10-15 minute body scan:
- Close your eyes or look towards the ground.
- Start by feeling your back against the back of the chair, your feet on the floor, your bottom and thighs on the seat and your hands resting on your belly.
- Notice whether your bottom is warmer or cooler than your feet (or exactly the same).
- Notice if your feet feel warmer or cooler than your back.
- Notice if your back feels warmer or cooler than your hands.
- Notice if your hands feel warmer or cooler than your belly.
- Feel your skin in contact with the air and your clothes.
- Feel any other sensations you are aware of in your body.
- Take four 4-8 breaths as follows:
- Breathe in through your nose for a count of 4 and out for a count of 8 making your mouth into a little slit as if you were blowing a cup of tea or coffee cool, then pause for a count of 4.
- Breathe as gently as you can, but deep enough in the body so you can feel your belly expanding under your hands. It’s the least amount of breath that will make your belly expand.
- As you take these breaths and as you pause, feel whatever you can feel on the surface of your body or inside your body without making any effort to feel anything in particular.
- Let your breathing return to normal. Let your hands remain on your belly.
- Take your attention to your head, neck and shoulders. Notice whatever you can notice there without trying. g. tense, relaxed, warm, cool, heavy, light, comfortable, uncomfortable, neutral or a mixture. If everything just feels a bit numb, that is a sensation you can notice
- Feel the sensations in your head, neck and shoulders the way you would feel a piece of material or taste a drink. Some may feel “rough” or “smooth”, some may feel “sweet”, “sour”, or “neutral”.
- You are not seeking to change the sensations that you feel in any way. Welcome them if you can (even if they are uncomfortable, it’s possible to welcome them on “a good day”). If you can’t welcome them, can you accept them? If you can’t accept them, can you at least allow them? (They are happening anyway and trying to fight them will actually make them feel worse!)
- You are simply letting the sensations be as they are, without trying to change them, and feeling them.
- You can absolutely feel the sensations without thinking about them.
- If your mind wanders, just keep bringing your attention back to noticing and feeling whatever you can feel without trying.
- If there are sensations elsewhere in the body that are demanding to be included, you can feel them too, otherwise, you are feeling whatever you can feel in your head, neck and shoulders, without trying.
- Take another 4-8 breath down into your belly feeling whatever you can feel without trying as before.
- Now take your attention to your torso, arms and hands.
- Notice whatever you noticed there without trying, and feel it, the way you would feel a piece of material or taste a drink.
- Notice which arm feels heavier right now. (Usually one feels subjectively heavier than the other. Occasionally, they may feel exactly the same.) The first answer that pops into your head is absolutely perfect. Don’t try too hard to do this!
- Notice which arm feels larger right now.
- Notice which arm feels warmer right now.
- Notice which arm has more sensation in it right now.
- Take another 4-8 breath down into your belly feeling whatever you can feel without trying, as before.
- Now take your attention to your belly, your pelvis, your bottom and the top of your thighs.
- Notice whatever you notice there.
- Let it be exactly as it is without trying to change it, and feel it.
- Take another 4-8 breath down into your belly feeling whatever you can feel without trying, as before.
- Now take your attention to the whole of your thighs, your legs, your knees, your ankles and your feet.
- Notice whatever you can notice there without trying.
- Welcome it if you can, accept it or allow it if you can’t, and feel it the way you’d feel a piece of material or taste a drink
- Which leg feels heavier right now or do they feel exactly the same?
- Which leg feels larger?
- Which leg feels warmer?
- Which leg has more sensation in it right now?
- Now, widen the bubble of your attention to include: the soles of your feet on the floor, your ankles, your legs, your knees, your thighs, your bottom, your torso, your back, your hands and arms, your shoulders, your neck all the way to the top of your head.
- Feel your back against the back of the chair, your bottom and your thighs on the seat, your feet on the floor and your hands resting on your belly.
- Feel the sensation of your belly underneath your hands.
- Feel your skin in contact with your clothes and the air.
- Feel the weight of your body going down into the ground.
- Take four more of the 4-8 breaths, pausing for 4 at the end of each breath, feeling whatever you can feel without trying as you do so.
- Let your breathing return to normal
- Continue to breathe naturally feeling your contact with the chair on the floor and anything else you can feel on the outside or the inside of your body without trying.
- Do this for another 30 seconds or so.
- Notice how you are feeling now.
- Notice how your mind feels. Hopefully a good deal clearer and more open and relaxed!
- When you are ready, you may open your eyes still feeling your body on the inside as you let in the sight of the room.
- Stand up when you feel comfortable to do so, and go about your day.
How do I know if I’m embodied right now?
This is a remarkably good question. And it’s one I gave some serious thought to for the first time today! (I’ve long known the feeling of embodiment, but writing this article has forced me to seek to put it into words.
On enquiring further, I’ve come to realise that when I’m not embodied, my sense of “self” is in my head. It feels, literally, as if “I’m in my head”. When I feel embodied, it feels that my sense of who I am is located in my torso. Generally, a little way below my ribs. I feel weightier, more solid, more substantial. There is a felt sense of being contained within myself, and not needing to look to the outside for validation of my existence or worth.
It’s probably not a coincidence that when we are worrying, we would colloquially say in English that we are “in our heads”. This is not just a turn of phrase, it’s an actual experience. In Chinese medicine, the middle energy centre (Dantian) of the body is in the solar-plexus, which is roughly where I experience myself to be when I’m “in”. So, these are experiences, I suspect we have always known about, but not always been able to accurately identify.
When I’m relatively embodied, as I am now, I can feel my weight and my contact with the floor. I have some awareness of where I’m carrying tension in the body and where feels more relaxed, and I can feel my skin in contact with the air. I also notice that my mind essentially feels calm, open and “at rest”. These are all confirmatory clues that you are more in than out.
Of course you don’t need to be 100% embodied, but some magic seems to happen when we get to a certain tipping point of feeling more in than out, which I call the 50% point. Life seems to feel more straightforward as we find ourselves doing more feeling than thinking.
Check in with your body throughout the day.
Now you have a reference point for what it feels like to be embodied, you have more ability to bring yourself back “in” during the day.
Two main things take us out of embodiment. Thinking and zoning out.
Not all thinking will take us out of the state of embodiment but getting lost in thought will.
As I’m writing this article staring at a computer screen it would be very easy for me to become disembodied. That’s because what I’m doing right now is a very cerebral activity. Other than my fingers tapping on the keyboard, there’s not a lot of body activity going on here, beyond the automatic things like breathing!
In order to counter that I can do a few simple things. Every 5 minutes I can deliberately look up from my screen and look around the room. I can feel my bottom on the seat and notice how it feels, and perhaps balance it a bit better. I can feel my feet on the floor and feel if they feel evenly pressured, warm or cool. I can feel the air on my skin and my clothes. I can take a 4-8 breath and feel the inside of my body. I can allow my shoulders to move. All of that takes about 10 seconds. And as a bonus it gives my brain a break!
If you are walking from one place to another, you can let go of your thoughts for a moment and feel the air on your skin, your feet touching the ground, and you can enjoy the sights that you are seeing. (This is a technique called “pleasure centring” by the way. Simply find something in your environment that appears beautiful to you, look at it, enjoy it and take a breath).
Seeking distraction is a sign that we need to do something different.
If I’m finding myself compelled to check my emails, even when I checked them 20 minutes ago, or check the team news on my football team even though I checked that two hours ago, I am probably seeking distraction.
What am I seeking distraction from? The answer is usually uncomfortable feelings inside my body – things that a part of me doesn’t want to feel.
When I used to be a lawyer, one of my colleagues told me a horror that on her way back from court she had forgotten to bring the novel that she usually reads, and she was without her phone. She told me that as a result she was “compelled” to read the advert on the tube over and over again in order to survive the journey!
One secret that most people are not aware of is that when we turn around and simply feel the uncomfortable sensations in our bodies without trying to fight them, they usually turn out to be much less uncomfortable than we thought. This is in fact now a recognised technique for pain management. People with chronic pain in their bodies are taught how to relax around that pain. They find that by doing this the experience of the pain actually diminishes.
The trick when we are feeling uncomfortable sensations is to feel them, but not to feel only them, but also to feel the comfortable and neutral sensations in our bodies. This is a technique called “titration”. It’s a bit like combining milk and espresso to make a latte. Good neutral things to feel are often your hands and your feet. The sensation of the air on your skin will usually be neutral to pleasant.
When I notice I’m seeking distraction, I can use the technique AAC – Awareness, Acceptance, Choice.
Awareness: I’m seeking distraction right now.
Acceptance: …and that’s OK.
Choice: I’m going to look around a find something pleasant to look at, take a 4-8 breath and feel the whole of my body on the inside and my contact with the floor.
Embodied is a great place to do public speaking from!
When most people speak in public, they are a long way away from their bodies. The difficulty is that this feels pretty scary for our entire system, including our minds.
We tend to experience the audience as threatening from this place, and have a tendency to imagine their judgement.
If we are able to get our level of body awareness up to about 50%, something magical happens. Our minds become relaxed and the audience’s attention ceases to feel threatening.
You will find very little written about this because it’s almost at the level of a secret. But it’s utterly game changing. There is one acting coach that I’ve heard speak about this. Her name is Patsy Rodenburg, and she wrote a book part about this called Presence! Why? Because being present (in your body) actually gives you Presence (charisma). Who knew? I did. Patsy Did. And now you do too.
It’s a bit of a multi-tasking stretch to feel your body whilst you speak in public, but with a little practice it’s more-than possible.
As you stand in front of the audience take a 4-8 breath and feel your feet. Balance your weight left to right. Relax your forehead, eyes and jaw. Feel your skin in contact with the air and your clothes. Take another 4-8 breath and feel how your belly, chest and shoulders feel. Just for those 2 breaths, maybe 10-15 seconds prioritise feeling over thinking. Notice what a difference this makes.
As you speak you can continue to have some of your attention on the inside of your body feeling whatever you can feel without trying. Note that you don’t need to think about the sensations you’re feeling you can just feel them, so your mind is free to think about whatever it needs to think about. You are just diverting a little of your attention into the experience of being in your body.
If you are practising a body scan every morning, doing this should become increasingly easy.
Putting it all together
This is quite a long article, but in essence what I’m suggesting is incredibly simple. Notice when your attention is lost in thought and bring it back into your body. Notice when you’re zoned out, and zone in. Prioritise thinking into feeling and your thinking will become spacious and clearer. You’ll see the big picture and feel more confident.
This is a practice. It’s something that we can do daily and get better at. I’m still practicing, I’m still improving. It’s one of the few game-changing things I’ve learned that’s made the biggest difference in my life.
Leadership and public speaking start with you. And as I hope you’ll discover, when you prioritise embodiment and feeling over thinking, regardless of what you’re seeking to achieve, everything starts to fall into place.
This is a journey back home to getting comfortable in our own skins. It’s one of the greatest gifts we can have. And it’s what I wish for you.
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As always I love to hear how you get on with these ideas. Do email me to let me know or drop me a note in the comments below!
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If you’d like to receive coaching in any of this, we cover a lot of this on our Foundation Public Speaking Courses in London, or I’m more than happy to work with you one to one online.
- I and Thou:The Secret to Truly Connected Communication - June 4, 2026
- Presence and Self: The same place, different paths - April 9, 2026
- Where we’re coming from. The source of leadership and communication. - March 12, 2026