Using Imagery: Embodiment & Grounding

Imagery can be a powerful and effective way of assisting students in becoming embodied. Here we share a few experts’ beautiful images.

Our Bodies Are Like Shorelines

Attention to the body is simple, but not easy, because we delve into a non-verbal realm of sensing. We move into the world of image and metaphor.  Sensing is not problem solving, and doesn’t demand any particular response… Our bodies are like shorelines that receive the ocean of the infinite.  Every moment is a wave of aliveness, punctuated by breath, movement, and life potency. In just the way the ocean works on the shore, the infinite works on us with endless repetition and opportunity. We are re-sculpted by every movement we make, especially those movements that are done with attention and intention. Body as shoreline, body receiving the ocean of the infinite, is not a fix-it prescription. It is an open invitation for imagination to explore the body in ways that are not predetermined by experience. – Denise Benitez

You are of the Earth

You are not separate from the earth; you are of the earth. And grounding means touching the ground, really touching it. Let the natural expression of the earth rise up through your body. And then, from that groundedness, begin to move, and to grow, just as a tree grows taller by first extending its roots… Plant your feet. Imprint them on the ground. Enmesh your feet in the earth like the shallow roots of a giant sequoia. Feel the weightedness of your entire body falling into the ground through your feet. For without a foundation, there can be no rising.  – Rodney Yee

The Beating Heart of the Earth

An old image holds the Earth to be like a great drum. When we walk on it, especially if we walk with consciousness and an instinctive awareness of the gift of life that we have each received, then we are playing the drum of the Earth with our feet. If that sense of consciousness and awareness can be awakened in enough people, a kind of intensification of being could occur and we could find ourselves coming closer together and being closer to the beating heart of the Earth itself. – Michael Meade