Embodiment Quotes

“I seem to myself, as in a dream,
An accidental guest in this dreadful body.”
― Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

“Life is a useless passion, an exciting journey of a mammal in survival mode. Each day is a miracle, a blessing unexplored and the more you immerse yourself in light, the less you will feel the darkness. There is more to life than nothingness. And cynicism. And nihilism. And selfishness. And glorious isolation. Be selfish with yourself, but live your life through your immortal acts, acts that engrain your legacy onto humanity. Transcend your fears and follow yourself into the void instead of letting yourself get eaten up by entropy and decay. Freedom is being yourself without permission. Be soft and leave a lasting impression on everybody you meet”
― Mohadesa Najumi

“But Sauron was not of mortal flesh, and though he was robbed now of that shape in which had wrought so great an evil, so that he could never again appear fair to the eyes of Men, yet his spirit arose out of the deep and passed as a shadow and a black wind over the sea, and came back to Middle-earth and to Mordor that was his home. There he took up again his great Ring in Barad-dur, and dwelt there, dark and silent, until he wrought himself a new guise, an image of malice and hatred made visible; and the Eye of Sauron the Terrible few could endure.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

“Vulnerability is the least celebrated emotion in our society”
― Mohadesa Najumi

“I had thought fermentation was controlled death. Left alone, a head of cabbage molds and decomposes. It becomes rotten, inedible. But when brined and stored, the course of its decay is altered. Sugars are broken down to produce lactic acid, which protects it from spoiling. Carbon dioxide is released and the brine acidifies. It ages. Its color and texture transmute. Its flavor becomes tarter, more pungent. It exists in time and transforms. So it is not quite controlled death, because it enjoys a new life altogether.
The memories I had stored, I could not let fester. Could not let trauma infiltrate and spread, to spoil and render them useless. They were moments to be tended. The culture we shared was active, effervescent in my gut and in my genes, and I had to seize it, foster it so it did not die in me. So that I could pass it on someday. The lessons she imparted, the proof of her life lived on in me, in my every move and deed. I was what she left behind. If I could not be with my mother, I would be her.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“Deep listening is an act of surrender. We risk being changed by what we hear. When I really want to hear another person's story, I try to leave my preconceptions at the door and draw close to their telling. I am always partially listening to the thoughts in my own head when others are speaking, so I consciously quiet my thoughts and begin to listen with my senses. Empathy is cognitive and emotional—to inhabit another person's view of the world is to feel the world with them. But I also know that it's okay if I don't feel very much for them at all. I just need to feel safe enough to stay curious. The most critical part of listening is asking what is at stake for the other person. I try to understand what matters to them, not what I think matters. Sometimes I start to lose myself in their story. As soon as I notice feeling unmoored, I try to pull myself back into my body, like returning home. As Hannah Arendt says, 'One trains one's imagination to go visiting.' When the story is done, we must return to our skin, our own worldview, and notice how we have been changed by our visit. So I ask myself, What is this story demanding of me? What will I do now that I know this?”
― Valarie Kaur, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love

“When I fight off a disease bent on my cellular destruction, when I marvelously distribute energy and collect waste with astonishing alacrity even in my most seemingly fatigued moments, when I slip on ice and gyrate crazily but do not fall, when I unconsciously counter-steer my way into a sharp bicycle turn, taking advantage of physics I do not understand using a technique I am not even aware of using, when I somehow catch the dropped oranges before I know I've dropped them, when my wounds heal in my ignorance, I realize how much bigger I am than I think I am. And how much more important, nine times out of ten, those lower-level processes are to my overall well-being than the higher-level ones that tend to be the ones getting me bent out of shape or making me feel disappointed or proud.”
― Brian Christian, The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive

“The worst part of embodiment is being unseen.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater

“There's a difference between intellect and intelligence. Noise propagates the former, silence the later. Intellect is inherited, intelligence is inherent.”
― Drew Gerald

“Although our brain and nervous system only represent two percent of our body weight, they use a full 20 percent of oxygen we consume. When our breathing is dysfunctional oxygen supply is limited, and the conscious mind will work a little slower and perceive incoming stimuli as slightly more stressful and threatening”
― Anders Olsson, Conscious Breathing

“The body was never the enemy. It was the doorway home.”
― Deva Arani, The Mother Ache: Healing the Wounded Daughter Within

“Mother ache healing matters because it restores the foundation of our lives. It returns us to the place where love first faltered, so that we may learn to love in a new way, this time with awareness. It makes possible a new lineage, one that passes down presence and truth, rather than our inherited survival adaptations. When we heal the mother ache within ourselves, we heal forward and backward in time. We change the stories that shape our lives, our families, our communities, and Mother Earth who holds us all.”
― Deva Arani, The Mother Ache: Healing the Wounded Daughter Within

“Each of us carries a story written in the language of our mothers, still echoing through our bones.”
― Deva Arani, The Mother Ache: Healing the Wounded Daughter Within

“I call this place the mother ache rather than the mother wound because it is not only pain but also longing—the pull toward wholeness beneath the wound. The word wound belongs to the language of fixing and repair, but the word ache speaks in the language of reverence. It is the tender pulse that reminds us we are made of love and that our journey is a remembrance of this truth. To ache is to honor this love, intrinsic belonging, and the yearning to return home to ourselves.”
― Deva Arani, The Mother Ache: Healing the Wounded Daughter Within

“Christ in you—the hope of glory—is not just spiritual. It’s physical, too.”
― Kathleen Johnson, Healed to Heal

“For what is the human body, with its branching veins and winding bowels and many-chambered heart, if not a Labyrinth?”
― Seamus Sullivan, Daedalus Is Dead

“Forgo the lettered cells and codes
Of long-since buried men.

Translate her braille with tender sense.
You’ll find she’s living, still.”
― Caitríona Walsh

“#BodyWisdom #Intuition #SelfTrust #Healing #Embodiment”
― Lawrence Nault

“Some wisdom lives in your body before your mind can explain it. Trust what your bones know.”
― Lawrence Nault

“A Sure Thing practice is a love-replenishing practice. Whether it’s self-love or love with a partner, a Sure Thing practice will re-ignite the sizzle that once was or illuminate something you never knew was there.”
― Elana Auerbach, The Sure Thing: A Pleasure Practice to Revive the Spark

“Movement is how the body remembers itself. It is how
survival shifts into recovery. It is how safety is relearned,
one step, one stretch, one breath at a time.”
― Jasmin Tzortzakakis Malik, When the Body Whispers: Reclaiming Energy, Balance, and Wellbeing

“As human beings, identity and self image are fused into the way we move and hold ourselves. Because even if we are looking for enlightenment, we are still people. We have bodies. Ask yours for information. We have stories, histories and conditioning. Ask yours for data, too.”
― Jane Hardjono, Writerfulness: Mind & body explorations for writers

“Thoughts get thunk.”
― Jane Hardjono, Writerfulness: Mind & body explorations for writers

“Fertility isn't linear. It moves in spirals, waves, and rhythms of its own.”
― Emma Ford

“You are not broken. You are not behind. You are simply walking the path that belongs to you.”
― Emma Ford

“There comes a moment when survival is no longer enough. The soul begins demanding sovereignty.”
― Michelle Raney, Forged From Fire: From Survival to Sovereignty

“A body is too small to contain this feeling.”
― René Peña-Govea, Estela, Undrowning

“Grounding is not a descent from spirit, but a way to embody it.”
― Deva Arani, Integration Alchemy: The Real Ceremony Is Your Life

“She liked the silence most of all. The silence in which the body, the senses, the instincts, are more alert, more powerful, more sensitized, live a more richly perfumed and intoxicating life, instead of transmuting into thoughts, words, into exquisite abstractions...”
― Anaïs Nin, The Four-Chambered Heart: V3 in Nin's Continuous Novel

“Presence is the medicine. The body is the doorway. Healing creates reciprocity.”
― Deva Arani, Integration Alchemy: The Real Ceremony Is Your Life