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For us, an "embodied movement" is any movement that your body 'knows' - you do not have to think about how to do the movement, your body just does it. 

 

Some embodied movements are skills that we worked at.  For example learning to walk; to read; to write; to drive; to play piano or to swing a baseball bat.  Some, however, are movements that we are unaware of and did not intend to learn.   For example raising our shoulders and holding them there; walking on the outside edges of our feet, holding our breath, clenching our jaw or leaning on the same one leg whenever we are standing.  

 

The coaching we provide is first to look at the movements that you want to embody.  For example, walking or running with fluidity, balance and ease; gardening and household labour; dance; sport or singing.  

 

Next is looking at the movements that you already embody, in particular movements that are actually getting in the way of how you want to move.  The unconscious movements that are preventing you from becoming as skilled and efficient as is within the design of your human body to do.  While we call them unconscious "movements", we could also call them unconscious "activity" - the activity of holding one's body braced or tensed in some way.  Like holding the ribcage and pelvis fixed when walking or bracing in the hips when bending down to pick weeds or stiffening one's neck when dancing or singing.  

 

It is this embodied "holding", "bracing" and "stiffening" that we coach you to un-learn as integral to the process of learning the movements that you need and desire.