Occupy Your Body
by Steve Bearman
2012-07-01

How much of your time do you spend in your body, and how much in your head? In our current cultural climate, it's easy to live a life of the mind and leave your body behind. Losing your body, however, is just as bad as losing your mind, negatively impacting your health and well-being, your relationships, and your overall aliveness.

We have all learned to think about our bodies. We've been fed a diet of ideas about how our bodies should be. Many of these ideas come from industries that profit off of us feeling bad about our bodies and wishing them to be different. As a result, learning to occupy our bodies, is a kind of political act. We need to reclaim our bodies so that we sense and feel them from the inside, rather than imposing a bunch of ideas upon them from the outside about how they ought to be.

Getting from being in your head to occupying your body isn't always easy. There are a few steps required:

  • You have to experiment and explore to find out what your body wants.
  • You often have to endure a period of discomfort while you become more attuned to your neglected body, as it comes back to life
  • Finally, you start to give your body more of what IT wants, and start to feel better and more alive as a result!

Check out the video for some examples of how the process works!

We're still hunting in our archives for this lost video file.

About the Author

Steve Bearman, Ph.D. has been counseling individuals and couples for over 30 years. He has trained thousands of people in the art of counseling, and supervised practitioners in every mental health occupation. For over a decade, he ran the Interchange Counseling Institute in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has facilitated workshops for CEOs, NGOs, and YOLOs, covering topics in the areas of personal growth, relationships, social justice, and spiritual development.

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