They tell you to get into your body. To feel your feet on the floor. To notice your breath. To come home to yourself. And every cell in your being says: no.
They tell you to get into your body. To feel your feet on the floor. To notice your breath. To come home to yourself. And every cell in your being says: no. Because your body is not home. Your body was the crime scene. The place where the pain happened. The place where the violation occurred. The vessel that was hurt, invaded, controlled, neglected, or used. You did not leave your body because you were spiritually advanced. You left because staying was intolerable. And now every embodiment practice - every yoga class, every body scan, every invitation to feel what you are feeling - is asking you to return to the place where the worst thing that ever happened to you happened.
This is the cruelty at the heart of body-based healing: the medicine and the wound occupy the same territory. You need to be in your body to heal. You cannot be in your body because your body is where the trauma lives. The instruction feel your body produces not grounding but activation - the very survival responses that the instruction was supposed to calm. The body scan does not produce awareness. It produces hypervigilance. The yoga class does not produce peace. It produces dissociation. Not because the practices are wrong. Because the practices were designed for bodies that feel safe, and yours does not.
Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now remains one of the most important spiritual books of our time. *(paid link)*
The path back is not through forcing presence. It is through creating safety at the periphery and gradually - so gradually that the nervous system barely notices the movement - expanding the territory of safety inward. You do not storm the castle. You approach the castle from a distance, setting up camp further and further into the surrounding territory, letting the nervous system acclimate to proximity at a pace it can tolerate. Think about that. Your body learned to be afraid of itself through thousands of small betrayals, moments when being present meant being hurt. It's not going to trust you just because you decided today that embodiment is good for you. Trust gets rebuilt the same way it got broken - through repetition, through proving over and over that this time is different. Sometimes that means feeling your feet on the ground for three seconds before the alarm bells start ringing. Sometimes it means noticing your breath without trying to change it. Small acts of presence that don't trigger the old warning systems. You're not trying to convince your nervous system you're safe. You're trying to show it.
The Peripheral Approach
Start with the extremities. Not the core of the body - the core is where most trauma is stored, in the gut, the chest, the pelvis. Start with the hands. The feet. The tips of the fingers. These areas carry less traumatic charge because they are further from the sites of violation. Think about it - your fingertips weren't where the damage happened. Your toes weren't where you learned to disappear. Feel the texture of the fabric between your fingers. Feel the floor under the soles of your feet. Feel the temperature of the air on the backs of your hands. These micro-sensations are safe enough for most traumatized nervous systems to tolerate. They are small enough to register without triggering the alarm system. And here's the thing - when you can actually feel your hands, when you can sense your feet making contact with the ground, you're building evidence. Evidence that you have boundaries. Evidence that you exist. That's not nothing. That's where safety starts to grow back from the edges in.
Then expand - not to the core, but to the next ring. The forearms. The shins. The outer edges of the body. Notice sensation without chasing it inward. Let the body reveal itself at its own pace. Some days the territory of safety will expand. Some days it will contract. Bear with me.Both are normal. Both are the nervous system calibrating what it can tolerate today, in this moment, with the resources currently available. There is no timeline. There is no goal. There is only the patient, relentless offer of safety to a body that learned, very early, that safety was not available. Explore more in our healing hub guide.
I recommend keeping black tourmaline near your workspace, it absorbs negative energy like a sponge. *(paid link)* Look, I know how that sounds. Trust me. But when you're doing deep trauma work, especially around reclaiming your body, you need every bit of grounding you can get. This isn't about magic rocks or whatever - it's about creating physical anchors that remind your nervous system: you're safe here. The stone sits there, solid and real, while you do the messy work of healing.
The breakthrough - when it comes - is not dramatic. It is a moment when you notice your breath without clenching. A moment when you feel your belly without bracing. A moment when sensation arises in the core of your body and instead of the old alarm firing, there is a pause. A microsecond of okay. That pause is the beginning of a new relationship with your body - a relationship built not on the forced imposition of presence but on the earned trust between your awareness and your tissue. The trust is slow to build. It is slow because the breach was severe. But once built, it does not collapse easily. Because trust earned through patience is more durable than trust imposed through practice. And a body that has learned to trust its own inhabitant - after years or decades of the inhabitant being absent - is a body that can finally do what it was always meant to do: be home.
Listening Without Judgment: The Nervous System as a Devotee
In my 35 years of practice walking the path of embodiment, I've learned that the nervous system is not an enemy to be conquered, but a sacred devotee longing for attention and reverence. When I sit with clients who come to me shattered by their histories, the first invitation is always: Listen patiently. Hold the parts that scream and the parts that whisper alike, without judgment or haste. This aligns deeply with the Vedantic idea of Sakshi Bhava-the witness consciousness. You don’t have to fix what your body shows you. You only have to witness it, steady and unblinking. It’s in this witnessing that the nervous system starts to feel safe. Paul explores this deeply in Forensic Forgiveness.
If anxiety is part of your journey, magnesium glycinate is one of the simplest things you can add. *(paid link)* I'm not talking about some miracle cure bullshit here. Just basic biochemistry. When your nervous system has been running on high alert for years ~ sometimes decades ~ your magnesium stores get depleted. Think about it. Your body's been stealing from its own reserves to keep you alive and vigilant. And magnesium is literally what helps your muscles relax, what tells your brain it's okay to downshift from panic mode. It's like the brake fluid for your nervous system. The glycinate form doesn't mess with your stomach like other types can ~ magnesium oxide will send you running to the bathroom, trust me on that one. Start with 200mg before bed and see what happens to your sleep quality. Don't expect instant magic. But after a week or two, you might notice your jaw isn't clenched when you wake up. Your shoulders might actually drop from their permanent home around your ears.
The “fix it” mode, so prevalent in trauma circles, is a spiritual bypass dressed up in pragmatic clothing. It’s another way of saying, “If you were more enlightened, you wouldn’t feel fear.” But here’s the raw truth: trauma is a mess, and healing is not linear. The body stores history in layers; the nervous system remembers before the mind can even catch up. When you drop the need to control or accelerate the process, you create a container sturdy enough for your system’s tender movements. The devotion is mutual-your nervous system longs for the steady, non-reactive presence you learn to cultivate.
I remember sitting in Amma’s darshan, surrounded by hundreds, my body jittery from years of stuffing down fear and rage. As she hugged me, my breath hitched, and every muscle screamed to flee. But I stayed. That moment cracked something wide open—the safe space I thought was outside was actually inside, tangled deep in my nervous system. The body wasn’t the enemy. It was the doorway.
Years ago, I led a workshop in Denver where a woman broke down mid-breath work, shaking uncontrollably. Instead of shushing her or pushing through, I sat beside her, steady, feeling my own nerves hum in recognition. That raw, trembling release wasn’t just personal—it was ancestral, carried in flesh and marrow. In those moments, words fall away and only the body's truth remains. No hiding. No running. Just here.
Embodiment as Radical Acceptance, Not Escapism
There's a toxic idea circulating that embodiment means bliss, lightness, and transcendence. Bullshit. Embodiment, especially when trauma has lived in your cells, is radical acceptance of all your capacity-the agony and the ecstasy, the shame and the sacred. It's neti-neti-not this, not that, peeling back illusions about what your body "should" be or "should" feel. You recognize the body for what it is: a battlefield and a temple, sometimes simultaneously. The wounded soldier and the primal mystic. And here's what nobody tells you: some days the battlefield wins. Some days you feel everything at once and want to crawl out of your skin. That's not failure. That's honesty. The Instagram wellness crowd won't show you the moments when embodiment feels like swallowing glass, when coming home to your body means facing the ghosts that never left. But that's exactly where the real work happens-in the mess, in the contradictions, in the spaces where your nervous system is screaming and your spirit is somehow still intact.
I’m not saying this because I want you to suffer longer; I say it because when you embrace every inch of your embodiment, even the parts screaming danger, you reclaim sovereignty. You build a fortress from the inside out, not by fencing out pain, but by holding it fiercely and tenderly alike. You become a force that neither trauma nor spiritual platitudes can bypass or erode. Amma’s teaching about the Advaita principle-that all dualities dissolve in the face of truth-reminds us that our bodies, with all their history, are already whole. They are already safe, even if they scream otherwise. The path is learning to trust that reality, piece by jagged piece. You might also find insight in The Liberation Nobody Warned You About - What
Freedom Act....
Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score is essential reading for anyone on a healing journey. *(paid link)* This isn't some feel-good self-help bullshit. Van der Kolk spent decades working with trauma survivors and actually proves what many of us already knew in our bones - that our bodies remember everything, even when our minds try to forget. The guy breaks down how trauma literally rewires your nervous system and why traditional talk therapy often falls short when your body is still stuck in fight-or-flight mode. Seriously. If you're trying to heal from anything that happened to you, this book will change how you understand your own reactions and responses.
Slow and Steady Wins: The Power of Micro-Movements
You don't come back to your body in giant leaps. You come back in micro-movements that barely ripple the surface of your nervous system. In my years developing and teaching The Shankara Oracle, I've seen that these micro-movements are the real game-changers. They're the tiny acts of sensing-a softening in a fingertip, a gentle shift of weight, a subtle breath lengthening-that cumulatively build the "territory of safety" inside you. Think about that. Your nervous system doesn't trust big dramatic changes. It's been burned before. But a micro-movement? That flies under the radar of your hypervigilant defenses. I've watched people spend months just learning to feel their feet on the ground without dissociating. Seriously. That's not pathetic ~ that's genius-level self-care. Each micro-movement becomes proof that you can inhabit your body without catastrophe striking. You might also find insight in Nobody Died For Your Sins: Unmasking Christian Hypocrisy ....
This approach honors the Vedantic wisdom of Ananda-bliss as a byproduct of deep harmony in one's being, not a goal forced or fabricated. When the nervous system can tolerate these micro-movements without triggering alarm, it learns new patterns of safety. Know what I mean?It’s like rewiring the firewall with kindness instead of attack drills. These little victories, invisible to the outside observer, build a fortress as impenetrable as steel but as tender as Amma’s embrace. You are not rushing toward some enlightened goal; you are gently coaxing your body back home on its own terms, at its own pace. If this hits home, consider an working with Paul directly.
