Come Home to Your Body: Not Just a Nice Idea—A Real Lifeline
I wondered what might come through if I took some time to unwrap the sometimes esoteric sentence, "Coming home to your body." Here’s what I have for you:
A reminder of what was always yours
Coming home to your body means remembering that you were never meant to live from the neck up. It’s the gentle return to what has always been yours: sensation, intuition, presence. It starts simply—by noticing how your body feels, and responding with care instead of critique.
It’s not about fixing or performing, but about relating to yourself with kindness. To come home to your body is to rebuild trust with your internal world and to let your felt sense guide you. This is how you begin to belong to yourself again.
Whew, that feels pretty complete. But if you're interested in reading more, turns out I'd love to say more:
Somewhere along the way, many of us learned to migrate upward—to live in the realm of thoughts, strategies, and mental gymnastics. Often as a much needed and brilliant survival technique.
Many of us became expert residents of our minds, while our bodies became unfamiliar territory or a land we try to control, manipulate and use till collapse.
The Practice of Return
Returning to your body is about restoring the trust that your sensations, signals, and aliveness are informative. Your No BS GPS, guiding us back again and again.
Just yesterday, 4 days into hosting friends I love, I started to have a pit in my stomach, sadness and turning in my heart. There was a downward energy as if someone had done something wrong, but no one had. Had I said yes when I needed to say no? I couldn't mark it with my mind. In all honestly I just wanted the feeling to go away, because I knew it'd get in the way of having fun and appreciating what was there.
Have you ever had that happen? Feelings you wish would just clear out?
Alas, technically, coming home to your body might look like:
1) Pausing until you’re able to
2) Notice what sensations arise.
3) Meeting that sensation with a layer of support.
For me the layer of support was explicitly naming to my friends the sensations I was having and explaining that I don't have a story to go with it yet so I'm not ready to verbally process. They appreciated the naming of it, because they sensed I was a bit off. So one small layer of support was being with what is, without rushing to fix it, and trusting in the vulnerability of friendships that can hold more than just joy.
Here are some easier starting examples of tuning into your No BS GPS:
- Being cold and grabbing a blanket.
- Feeling expansion and taking a moment to savor it.
- Feeling solid or strong and appreciating the stability of it.
- Noticing bone tired exhaustion or even a small wave of not quite with it, and pausing a bit longer.
- Noticing anxiety and perhaps moving your body or mind to help the flight and fight energy flow.
Attending to these sensations often feels peculiar at first and naturally becomes more comfortable and supportive over time.
As you begin to listen to the whispers of your body, you may notice desires beyond physical needs arising. Relational desires, day dreams and deeper longings. You may begin to sense the fears, shame, or grief, that love to sit right next to high hopes. It's still worth it (IMO).
This is where coherence and liberation emerge. This is the revolutionary act of reconnecting with your natural capacity to notice, respond, and get support.
The Return Home
Coming home to your body is remembering how to feel, rest, and rise.
It’s the moment you realize your body isn’t the enemy or an obstacle—it’s your ally. Yes, it can be uncomfortable. Yes, it moves slower than your mind (just get over it so you can enjoy X, y and Z!). But it’s also your compass and your belonging. When we move at the pace of our body and in honor of it, it is the proverbial pulling back of the arrow, in which is may seem like you're going backwards, but you are in fact increasing the range, which will propel you forward.
As Peter Levine says, "Go slow to go fast."
Coming home to your body is synonymous with coming home to yourself, it means you no longer have to abandon yourself to survive. (And here I honor those moments when abandoning yourself to survive was a wildly wise thing to do. Is it still true?)
It means reclaiming the safety, wisdom, and aliveness that were yours all along.
This is the work of liberation—not perfection. Not urgency. Not even constant calm. It’s the work of remembering what it feels like to be fully alive, fully present, fully you.
If you’re craving small daily steps of embodiment practices and nervous system support—I’d love to invite you into 21 Days of Untapped Support.
It's free and wildly useful.
77% of people finish because it’s simple, sustainable, and it works.
Come see how it feels. Bring a friend
With love (and a soft listening),
Sarah