Modern embodiment discourse has arisen as a reaction to the Western world's fraught history with bodies. In a world of deep fracture from the natural world, the current emphasis on embodiment serves to help reclaim a relationship with ecology and with the sacredness of the immediate. But what does 'embodiment' really mean? For some, embodiment is synonymous with wellness. For others, embodiment is related to ongoing personal processing. Often, traditional cultures are held up as examples of embodiment. Yet traditional mythic and ritual visions of embodiment are very different from modern wellness embodiment and from therapeutic/psychological visions of embodiment. Bodies, in ritual, go through agonizing repetition. Bodies are driven to the point of rupture. In myths, bodies do not exist in a kind of happily embodied stasis — bodies are ripped apart. Bodies shrink. Bodies expand. The individual self in initiation is specifically meant to be taken to the brink and then ritually dismantled. Ritual and mythic visions of embodiment ask us to expand our vision of what the body is, to embrace all the paradoxes of embodiment. As we explore in this episode, sometimes, to be embodied requires tearing the body into pieces. Sometimes it requires soaring out of the body. Ultimately, we find that in mythic and ritual traditions, embodiment is less about us and our individualized journey, and more about the great transformative journey of the body of the community and the cosmos itself. This episode seeks to challenge some of the common narratives of embodiment discourse in order to help return embodiment discourse to its living, breathing, paradoxical body. Best listened to when you have time to devote your full attention, on a bumping sound system or with really good headphones.
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