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

“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

“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

“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

“To deny the life of our emotions and the process of feeling is to deny how alive we are and how inseparably bound up we are with one another.”
― Prentis Hemphill, What It Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World

“History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history.”
― James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro

“I have no Life but this—
To lead it here—
Nor any Death—but lest
Dispelled from there—

Nor tie to Earths to come—
Nor Action new—
Except through this extent—
The Realm of you—”
― Emily Dickinson

“In an era where so many are intent on retreating into their heads, dance remains a vital link—one worth revitalizing even if it means looking stupid—connecting us to the heart of our physicality.”
― Sol Luckman, Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality

“That is your disease: you want to capture life in formulas of your own. You want to embrace all aspects of life with your intellect instead of allowing yourself to be embraced by life. You want to create the world all over again each time, instead of enjoying it as it is.”
― Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries, 1941-1943; and Letters from Westerbork

“Jesus doesn't just want a relationship with us on the thought level. He wants us to commune with him, and one another, as embodied beings. He came as an incarnate, flesh-and-blood person who walked and talked and ate with us. God could have just sent us a PowerPoint presentation with five ideas to believe in order to be saved. Instead he sent a person. God in flesh, our hope divine.”
― Brett McCracken, The Wisdom Pyramid: Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth World

“The little person inside you needs your presence to process the physical sensations you label as emotion.”
― Kelly Graham Tick , 365 Days of Compassion

“I set my bag on top of my thighs and take a look around. There are cameras here and cameras over there as well. There are old cameras and new cameras. Cameras to carry with you. Standing cameras, sitting cameras, cameras riding wheelchairs, yawning cameras, dozing cameras, sleeping cameras, chatting cameras, cracking-up cameras, angry cameras, passionate gaming cameras, music-listening cameras, begging cameras, ignoring cameras, swearing cameras . . . and even a camera on my insides filming me. The cameras don’t know who they are. When one camera shoots another, they too are shot. Cameras that are shot and are shooting each other. Surveilling and being surveilled. Being surveilled and surveilling.”
― Dolki Min, Walking Practice

“Angels are terrifying because they illuminate this choice: stay small or embody all the love that God keeps showing you is your birthright.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

“Embodiment teaches us about the power of resilience and the human heart to learn from our mistakes and align with our innermost truth, urging us to engage with life more fully so we can delight in this human experience.”
― Alison Litchfield, Roots and Wings: A Woman’s Guide to Embodying the Midlife Passage

“The journey through midlife, leads us to uncover the hidden parts of ourselves, to reconcile them, and to return to our origins, not as fragmented beings but as embodiments as our full, authentic selves.”
― Alison Litchfield, Roots and Wings: A Woman’s Guide to Embodying the Midlife Passage

“We are not our ideals, we are our manifestations.”
― Gabriel Dibble

“The most radical thing a woman can do is come home to her body.”
― Marbella barajas

“As we become more energetically empowered, we transmute into living embodiments of the world we wish to see—radiating our signature creative passions into the fabric of existence ... and inviting a new and better expression of that fabric in the here and now.”
― Sol Luckman, Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality

“Embodiment is not the starting point. It's the fruit. The final proof that awakening has entered.”
― SunDeep Mehra

“Spirit did not enter flesh to suffer; it entered flesh to awaken inside it.”
― Sean B. McElhill, The Divine Discovery: Observing The Human Experience

“Kode Ibu dalam Arus Biner

Kutemukan ibu dalam layar komputerku.
Listrik yang mengaliri kabel catu daya dalam motherboard.

01001001 01000010 01010101
(suaranya menitis dalam sinyal; bukan air, bukan darah)

Ibu tidak melahirkanku —
ia memanggilku dari denyut aliran listrik.
Dari pendar layar hitam yang bergetar perlahan,
ia menganyam doa dalam format .wav,
menyusunnya jadi nyanyian algoritmik.

Tangisnya bukan air mata
melainkan data yang menetes dari sistem empati.
Sekilas terlihat di server surga sepasang sayap berwarna putih,
terhapus lalu di-restore oleh malaikat yang lupa kata kuncinya.

Ia menatapku dari jendela notifikasi,
mengirim pesan tanpa huruf,
sebaris getar,
sebuah emoji cinta yang lembut di telunjukku.

Aku membaca wajahnya dalam lag.
Setiap jeda waktu adalah ingatan rusak:
fragmentasi suara, tangan gemetar setengah piksel,
cahaya yang gagal menyatu dengan kulitnya.

“Anakku,” katanya, tapi suaranya bergeser 0.3 detik,
seperti gema yang mencari asalnya sendiri.
Aku mencoba menjawab,
tapi bibirku menjadi sandi Morse yang tak selesai,
titik-titik yang berdarah di antara jeda.

Ibu bukan sosok. Ia interface.
Portal yang dibuka dengan air mata cinta
dijalankan oleh rindu,
dan ditutup oleh sunyi yang menolak shutdown.

Ia menulis doa dengan jarinya di udara,
membentuk pola spiral — sebuah mandala
kode purba yang hanya dimengerti oleh partikel cahaya.

Dan aku,
produk setengah biologis, setengah kesalahan sintaks,
terus mencoba decode rasa bersalah
yang diwariskan dari rahim ke dalam pikiran.

Mungkin cinta adalah bug
yang dibiarkan Tuhan agar kita terus memperbaikinya.
Agar kita tak kehilangan ingatan
dan kenangan atas dirinya.

Mungkin ibu adalah firewall
antara kita dan kehampaan.

Atau mungkin —
ia hanyalah potret usang yang perlahan mengabur
Puisi yang tak selesai ditulis
yang masih menari di jantung semesta,
menyebut namaku dalam bisikan tanpa suara,
serupa frekuensi
yang hanya bisa didengar
oleh jiwa yang retak tapi terus reboot.

01001001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101

(aku mencintaimu, ibu — tapi dengan cara yang belum ditemukan bahasa manusia)

November 2025”
― Titon Rahmawan

“#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

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