Being an Embodied Practitioner
- Cathy Williams
- Jan 15
- 4 min read
In a world that often prizes thinking over feeling and doing over being, embodied practice invites us to slow right down and return to our most alive wisdom: the body.
For those of us drawn to healing, facilitation, teaching, and community-building, becoming an embodied practitioner is a way of being in the world with integrity, presence, and deep relational capacity.
I am currently promoting my first ever Facilitator Training which is a collation of my 16 years experience in the Community Development sector - designing, facilitating and offering spaces for personal and collective deep-dives, connection and transformative work.
The Facilitator Training isn’t just about facilitation skills. It is about cultivating presence, attunement, and embodiment in everything you bring to your work and your life. This intersection of inner aliveness and outer facilitation is where real transformation emerges and I wanted to take this moment to speak to my take on EMBODIMENT.
Embodiment is the foundation of PRESENCE
Being embodied means fully inhabiting your own body and inner experience. This means not bypassing emotion, rushing through discomfort, or intellectualising what you feel. Hard and uncomfortable, trust me - I get it! I’ve gone years developing epic coping mechanisms of bypassing feelings, going straight to problem solving, distracting myself, numbing myself.
However - it has been my experience that my body is consistently giving me signals, communicating with me and wanting my attention. If I create the space to listen, hear and be with these feelings - I can find healthy avenues for expression, understanding, transformation and action - from an empowered and resourced place.
In my Facilitator Training, I centre the pre-work and first day on this very truth: your ability to hold space for others is only as grounded as your own body and nervous system.
Practically, this looks like:
Feeling rather than suppressing emotions
Communicating with presence, not avoidance
Listening with the body as well as the ears
This is the work of embodied self-leadership: staying grounded in your felt experience and responsive with compassion rather than reactivity.
Embodied Practitioners lead with their NERVOUS SYSTEM
An embodied practitioner feels before they act. Rather than relying solely on logic or technique, they pay attention to how sensation, breath, and emotion show up in the moment. They are in tune with their intuition, sensitivity of themselves - others and the space around them.
This doesn’t mean being overwhelmed by feelings. Instead it means learning how to regulate, co-regulate, and stay present with what arises.
When you understand your own nervous system: how it responds to stress, fear, joy, and connection - you naturally become better at holding safety and trust in a room. This is what trauma-aware facilitation is about: creating environments where deep transformation can happen because people feel safe to explore.
Embodiment is RELATIONAL
Being embodied isn’t an isolated experience - it happens in relationship.
To be an embodied practitioner is to understand:
How your presence affects others
How connection emerges through shared states, not just shared words
How emotional safety and belonging are co-created, moment by moment
In this training, we will explore group dynamics, emotional co-regulation, and authentic connection, because embodiment in community is different to embodiment in solitude.
Embodied Practitioners hold space with clarity and care
In my book, Body Wisdom - I defined 'Holding Space' as:
Having the ability to be fully present with and compassionate towards either something within yourself (i.e. an emotion, a thought) or someone else and offering a safe place to land, being with what is present, expressing this if desired and being heard in this act of sharing. (page 9)
This requires well-developed emotional literacy and the courage to witness intensity without bypassing it. Rather than fixing what arises, embodied practitioners learn to be with what is — and guide others into deeper relationship with themselves.
Movement, Creativity, and Full-Body Intelligence
Embodied practice isn’t just thinking and talking, it is feeling through the body, moving with the body, and responding somatically.
In all of my offerings, I intentionally integrate movement-based somatic methods and expressive practices into each journey. This isn’t optional extra work - it is central to supporting each of us access the wisdom that lives in the body, not just the mind.
Why Embodiment matters
In an era of digital connection and surface-level contact, embodied practitioners are needed more than ever.
We are the ones who:
Build authentic belonging
Create real safety for emotional expression
Guide others into deeper trust with themselves
Lead from lived experience rather than textbook answers
Embodiment isn’t a skill you perfect, it is an ongoing practice of presence, curiosity, and integration. In my experience, as I have deepened my own embodiment, my ability to support others do the same has grown exponentially.
Embodied Practice is PERSONAL and COLLECTIVE evolution!
For me, the transformation that ripples out comes from us first and foremost, then to our inner circle of loved ones, then our wider community and into the world with how we show up, how we share our gifts and how we relate to the natural world around us.
An embodied practitioner is:
A learner of life, a steward of presence, and a guide toward deeper human connection.
This work begins with the self and I am devoted to these practices and supporting others in this work to continue sharing their gifts and creating connected communities.
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