#4: How to know if you're ready for embodiment work
Let me guess: you're wondering if embodiment work is right for you, or if you need to do more therapy first, or if maybe you're just not the type of person this works for.
I get it. I spent months circling around embodiment work before I actually tried it. I had every excuse. Too busy. Too in my head. Need to fix X first.
Here's what I learned: there's no perfect time. There's no prerequisite checklist.
But there are signs that embodiment work will serve you right now. And there are also times when other support might be more appropriate first.
Let's talk about both.
Signs you're ready (Spoiler: You probably are)
You've done mental work but still feel stuck
You've read the books. You've been in therapy. You understand your patterns intellectually. You can explain why you react certain ways, trace your behaviors back to childhood, articulate your triggers with impressive clarity.
And yet you still feel the same in your actual body. The anxiety still lives in your chest. The tension still grips your shoulders. The numbness still shows up when emotions get intense. The overwhelm still floods your system.
You have the insights. You're missing the embodied shift.
This is probably the clearest sign that somatic work will help. You've built the cognitive foundation. Now your body needs direct attention to actually release what's been stored.
You feel disconnected from your body
You go through your days mostly in your head. Your body feels like transportation for your brain. You hold your breath without realizing it, or you can go hours without registering hunger, thirst, or the need to pee.
When someone asks how you're feeling, you immediately go to thoughts instead of sensations. "I'm stressed about work" rather than "my stomach is tight".
You might feel numb, like you're watching your life from a distance. Or hypervigilant but disconnected from the sensations in your body. Or just not there.
This disconnection often develops as protection. If your body didn't feel safe to inhabit, you learned to live upstairs in your mind. This adaptation served you well and takes tremendous energy to maintain long-term.
Embodiment work helps you come back down. Gently. At your own pace.
You override your body's signals
You push through exhaustion. You ignore hunger until you're shaky. You override the urge to rest, to move, to express emotion. You've become really good at not listening to your body.
Maybe you learned early on that your needs were too much, or that pushing through was the only way to survive. So you developed an excellent override system.
The problem is that override systems don't distinguish between "I need to push through this one deadline" and "I've been pushing for six months and my nervous system is in crisis".
Embodiment work teaches you to listen to your body's signals again. To honor your needs before they become emergencies.
You struggle with pleasure
Pleasure feels foreign, indulgent, or vaguely threatening. You can't remember the last time you felt genuinely good in your body.
Sex might feel mechanical. Food is fuel, not enjoyment. Movement is exercise, not play. Rest feels like laziness.
When you're disconnected from your body, you lose access to the capacity for pleasure that lives there. Your nervous system is so focused on survival that it can't register safety or delight.
Embodiment work reawakens your capacity for pleasure as crucial information about what nourishes you.
Your emotions feel overwhelming or absent
You swing between extremes: either you're flooded by emotions that feel uncontrollable, or you feel nothing at all. There's no middle ground where you can feel your feelings without being consumed or shutting down.
When emotions show up, you try to think them away or they bypass awareness entirely and show up as physical symptoms: migraines, digestive issues, chronic pain, insomnia.
Somatic work builds the capacity to be with intensity without being overtaken by it. You learn to track emotions as sensations and develop nervous system resilience.
You want deeper access to your intuition
You're tired of second-guessing yourself. You want to trust your gut, but you're not sure how to hear it through all the mental chatter.
You make decisions by researching, analyzing, asking everyone's opinion, making pro/con lists, and then still feeling uncertain. Meanwhile, your body has been sending clear signals you've learned to override.
Intuition is your body's wisdom communicating through sensation. Embodiment work helps you recognize and trust these signals.
When other support might come first
Embodiment work isn't always the right starting point. Here are times when other forms of support might serve you better initially.
If you're in acute crisis (actively suicidal, in an abusive situation, struggling with severe substance use), you need immediate crisis support and stabilization first. Get safe, then somatic work can be incredibly powerful for long-term healing.
If you have no prior experience with therapy or self-exploration, jumping straight into embodiment might feel destabilizing. Building some cognitive frameworks first can create a helpful foundation, though this isn't a hard rule.
If you're looking for immediate relief, other approaches might be more appropriate. Embodiment work creates real, lasting change and takes time. You're rewiring nervous system patterns that developed over years.
If you're completely committed to staying in analysis mode, or if the thought of feeling emotions in your body feels absolutely intolerable, you might need more preparation first.
The real question
Readiness isn't a prerequisite. It's built through the practice itself.
You don't become ready for embodiment work and then start. You start, and you become ready as you go.
The real question is "Do I want this enough to begin even though it feels uncomfortable and uncertain?"
Because it will feel uncomfortable. You're learning to relate to yourself in a completely new way. You're challenging patterns that have run automatically for most of your life. You're dropping into a body you've been avoiding because avoiding felt safer.
That's uncomfortable work. It's also some of the most worthwhile work you'll ever do.
If I had to define readiness, it would be this: You're curious about what it would be like to actually live in your body. You're tired enough of how things are that you're willing to explore somatic work. You have some capacity to be with discomfort. You can find a practitioner who feels safe enough.
That's it. You don't need to be healed or have your life sorted out. You just need to be curious and willing.
You're already ready
If you've read this far, if you're asking these questions, if you're feeling that pull toward a different way, you're already ready enough.
Your body has been waiting for you to come back. Not perfectly. Not with all your shit sorted out. Just as you are, right now, with all your mess and brilliance and confusion.
The work will meet you where you are. The practice will teach you what you need to know.
Your body already knows the way. You just have to be willing to listen.
