First of all, if you have decided to step onto the exhilarating, rich, hypnotic path of Embodiment–congratulations!! It takes courage to learn to soften in a chaotic world. If you are anything like me, the lessons you learned from growing up were to push farther, go faster, get tougher, and think harder. I would call this a very masculine approach to life. It has benefits, of course, but when a individual or group is saturated in masculine energy for a long time (as most of our world has been), we can end up feeling parched for the for the meaning and juiciness of life.

This context of expectation and achievement from our broader world paired with all the big talk about how transformative Embodiment Coaching can be might bubbling up into some nervousness or anxiety about what to expect from a session and if you’ll be able to do it “right.”

So, let’s put those fears to rest.

There is no “right” path to embodiment.

There is no gatekeeper.

There are not rules about how much meditation you have to have done.

There is no threshold for how much new age jargon you need to know.

There is just you and your body, linked together in the dance of life.

And, by recognizing the fact that some of your experience is disembodied, you have already begun the trek back to Embodiment.

There are a few things you can do to “get the most” out of an Embodiment Coaching Session (I’ll talk about those in a moment), but let me offer the small caveat that approaching an Embodiment Session–especially a Feminine Embodiment Session–with an agenda for optimization will probably just stall your overall progress. This is because “getting the most” out of something is a classically masculine attitude. It is based on valuing productivity and tangible output above the layered variety of experience. And this is the attitude that has probably led to the state of disembodiment that we are hoping to remedy with an Embodiment Session.

However, asking this question is also totally understandable. Most of us are desperately hungry for the transformation, rootedness, meaning, and sensory delight that we hear talked about in Embodiment and we want to know how long it will take to get there. And the difficult, paradoxical answer that is so hard for most of who are fully acclimated to the hyper masculine norms of the larger world is…

It depends.

It depends on how much trust you have built with your body.

It depends on how much trauma that body is holding back from your conscious awareness.

It depends on your tolerance for silence, emptiness, or the messiness of big emotions in your body (not necessarily negative emotions, either. Ecstatic joy can feel big and messy, too).

But most of all, it depends on your willingness to show up over and over again to listen, learn, and receive from your body.

Thus, the best preparation for an Embodiment Session is to slow down.

Slowing down, will communicate to your nervous system that there is nothing for you to stress about, no emergency to address, and no problem to be fixed–at least, for a while. This will automatically begin to amplify the physical needs of your body and allow you to start tuning in to your desires or obstacles before our Session even begins.

Now, here’s that list we’ve all been trained to look for from Internet articles!

Some ideas for how to slow down before your Embodiment Coaching Session:

1) Make yourself a cup of something light, natural, and delicious (water is perfect!)

2) Tidy the space around the device you’ll be using for our call and check to make sure you don’t need to update something, charge your headphones, etc.

3) Put on some music (tip: reach beyond your usual playlists and try to sense the music you’re really craving. Mantras? Boy bands? Musicals? Jazz? Movie Soundtracks? Listen to something yummy)

4) Make your sitting space comfortable (pillows, fluffy blankets–you know what you like)

5) Play a little (maybe shimmy a bit to that music, maybe doodle for a moment as you tidy, maybe grab your favorite potted plant to join you in the coaching call)

All together, these ideas could be as brief as five minutes or as long as an hour. There is no pride or shame in those numbers–it just depends on what feels better to you.

No matter how much time you do or don’t have to prepare, though, I will be there to help you settle in and begin picking up the trail as you find your way back to feeling thoroughly alive and at home within yourself. And, if you’ve reached the end of this article, I’m confident you’re already well on your way.