I couldn’t remember the last time I’d walked to the mailbox. It’s a tenth of the mile, and I’d been so focused on many other things, too many things really, but I’d decided that the weather was gorgeous that I could afford to take the twenty minutes or so out of my day. I let my spouse know where I was going and I took off down the driveway, a tenth of a mile to the mailbox. As I walked I felt my body ground. My thoughts stopped circling around the research papers I was working on. I quit worrying over this website rebranding, all those tasks I still had to do. And instead, with each footstep, I felt myself becoming an embodied being.
I wasn’t just existing in my body. I was inhabiting it as a fully sensual creature.
Beneath my feet fall leaves and the gravel crunched. I smelled that warm, fall smell. The blue of the sky combined with the burnished orange and gold of the trees provided a visual feast for my eyes. A horse calling in the pasture (hey, where are you going? It’s almost feeding time.) and the birds sang music to my ears. Not far from the driveway, I heard the tell-tale crunching of tiny pixie hooves as the deer stepped carefully, oh so carefully, through the trees separating my property from my neighbor. I turned my face to the sky and breathed deeply. I was becoming an embodied being once more, untethered from the internet, from the computer, from the worries and cares that only the human mind can create.
I returned to nature, worshiping the wonders around me with my senses. Even close to the mailbox a rooster’s crow drifted to me. The flock is just as sacred as the herd here. “I hear you,” I mentally told the gods. “I am listening.”
I turned, and walked back up the hill. It’s not an easy climb for someone as out of shape as I am. I stop halfway up the hill at the pile of rocks that’s there to catch my breath. While I do, I look into the pasture at the trees turning colors. I watch a kestrel soar overhead.
I return to my office, already sorting the mail and returning to my day. I shred the advertisements, turn back to my computer and I’m renewed.
Sometimes the key to becoming embodied beings is to find gentle movement for those bodies, to bring out awareness into those bodies and feel them from fingertips to toe tips. To let muscle and sinew, tendons and joints, function as they will (or won’t) and remember what it feels like to do so.
The good news is that it doesn’t take a walk to the mailbox to help us become embodied. You don’t even need to leave the room you’re in at the moment. Just focus on your senses and bring your awareness into your body. If you want to begin, I have a great grounding meditation I’m sharing below.