I’m increasingly struck by a curious contradiction in modern life. We are often very preoccupied with our bodies, how they look, how they perform, how to keep them “in shape”. Yet, many of us are surprisingly disconnected from our own bodies. We overlook the wealth of information, insight, and wisdom our bodies are constantly offering us.
Not long ago, I asked a client where she experienced herself in relation to her body. She laughed and said, “Oh my gosh, I live in my mind, almost outside and ahead of my body.” Around the same time, a friend shared how practising Pilates had quite literally helped her find her way out of deep grief and depression.
These moments remind me of something essential: we are embodied beings. We don’t live only in our thoughts or emotions. We live in and through our bodies.
As Richard Heckler writes, living in our body means experiencing life through sensations, feelings, and interactions, not just through memories or mental projections. It sounds obvious, yet everything we do in life, every relationship, decision, and achievement, happens through the body. The body is an essential content and enabler of our lives. And depending on how we inhabit it, it can either support or limit what feels and what actually is possible for us.
The Body as a Focus for Learning
Moshe Feldenkrais described the body as a largely neglected, yet vital area of learning. This raises an important question: how well have we learned to listen to our own bodies, or to the bodies of others?
Our physical form is not random. It is shaped by an ongoing conversation between our genetic makeup and our emotional life history. Stanley Keleman suggested that our body shape doesn’t just reflect how we’ve experienced life, it actively influences how we interpret the world and how the world shows up for us.
This doesn’t mean we are trapped by our bodies or doomed to repeat the past. Rather, it offers us an invitation. By learning to listen more carefully to our bodies, we can deepen our self-understanding and expand our range of responses to life.
What the Body Can Teach Us
When we pay attention to things like our posture, breathing, shoulder or jaw tension, facial expression, nervous system regulation, or even digestion, we begin to gather valuable information. These physical habitual patterns often reveal our deeper attitudes toward life. How safe we feel, our unconscious stance towards life, how much space we allow ourselves to take up, and what we believe is possible for us.
Over time, these patterns shape our self-image. We act in alignment with this embodied sense of who we are. Importantly, this self-image isn’t something we were born with. It develops through experience and interpretation.
Feldenkrais captured this beautifully when he wrote that our “self-image is smaller than our capacity.” In other words, we are capable of far more than we typically allow ourselves to express. Body-based learning offers a powerful way to gently expand that capacity and shift how we move through the world.
Practising Body Awareness
Body learning doesn’t have to be complicated. It can begin with small, everyday practices such as:
Noticing how you hold and use your body during daily activities
Observing how your posture and physical habits influence your mood, energy, and perspective.
Experimenting with subtle changes like standing differently, breathing more fully, moving in new ways, and noticing the emotional and linguistic shifts that follow
In ontological coaching, I’ve come to learn that the body can be the slowest domain to change. Yet, paradoxically, it can also be the fastest pathway to insight. A simple shift in posture or experimenting with an exaggerated movement can sometimes unlock an emotional or behavioural breakthrough far more quickly than through narrative work alone.
Our bodies often know the way forward. If we’re willing to listen.
Until next time, Carine
