Walsh - Embodiment - Moving beyond mindfulness

EMBODIMENT

Moving beyond mindfulness

Mark is the boldest embodiment facilitator out there.

Adam Wilder, founder of the Togetherness Festival

Mark Walsh brings embodiment to life with passion, irreverence, and grit. It makes a body want to celebrate!

Ginny Whitelaw Roshi, CEO, Institute for Zen Leadership

Although explicitly a technical book, in reading it one senses that Mark has lived his understanding from the inside out. The content of the book itself is his own embodiment. Brilliant!!

Guy Sengstock, co-founder of Circling

Mark has written a down to earth accessible classic thats much needed in our often numb world. Lets face it, sometimes he is a twat yes; but Im an ex rock star and this book is marginally better than groupie sex, drugs and rock n roll.

Jamie Catto, film-maker (One Giant Leap), author, workshop leader, ex Faithless singer

Fun, accessible, fresh, while still grounded and full of profound insight, Embodiment is a must-read for all humans.

Jessica Graham, author of Good Sex: Getting Off Without Checking Out

A brilliant book, distilling decades of embodied exploration with a unique blend of wisdom, wit, irreverence, and humour.

Joel & Michelle Levey, founders of Wisdom at Work, authors of Mindfulness, Meditation, and Mind Fitness

I love Marks book! It is not a treatise but a poetic call to remember what it is like to be embodied. The mixture of the lyricism with clear educational practicality is exactly what is needed to get people to return to the body

John Vervaeke, Psychology and Cognitive Science Department, University of Toronto, author of Awakening from the Meaning Crisis

The must-read book of the year in the Embodiment field. It offers a compelling, well informed, humorous and at times poetic feast of tapas to delight all appetites. Marks practical wisdom has helped deepen my own embodied leadership and I highly

recommend this powerful work to every other leader.

Dr Lynne Sedgmore CBE, former CEO of the Centre for Excellence in Leadership, leadership coach and interfaith minister

Mark Walsh offers a comprehensive overview of embodiment that is practical and empowering, and offers a platform from which this emergent field can and will continue to evolve. Embodiment is exciting, passionate, and useful!

Mariana Caplan, PhD., MFT author of Yoga & Psyche: Integrating Yoga and Psychology for Healing

Mark has decades of experience in developing practical activities and principles for discovering embodiment. He has generously shared them in this easy-to-read yet expansive book.

Martha Eddy, director of Dynamic Embodiment

This offering is less a book and more a string of pearls. It is a series of one page essays and poems that explain how cruelties arise out of body numbness. What is new and important in Marks book is his courageous description of his use of embodiment practices as part of his own work to heal his childhood traumas.

Paul Linden, PhD, aikido 6th dan, author, founder of Being In Movement Mindbody Education

Embodiment is very much a cut-the-crap book, charged with poetry, iconoclasm, personal anecdote, and a passion for helping us all recognise the sacred aliveness of the bodys intelligence. If you feel disconnected, if you yearn to return to a deeper truth in your life, pick this book up and welcome its provocations!

Philip Shepherd, author of Radical Wholeness and New Self, New World

Classic Mark Walsh! A collection of decidedly irreverent pithy, probing critiques of our culture-wide dissociation from our bodies. Enjoy!

Roger Walsh (no relation), MD, PhD, author of Essential Spirituality: The Seven Central Practices

Mark is a man of big vision and powerful intentionality for bringing the great benefits of embodiment into the world. I am grateful for this offering. Enjoy!

Russell Delman, founder of The Embodied Life School

In Embodiment, Mark gives voice to a joyous, angry, sensual war-cry the body ferociously reclaiming its primacy in a disembodied world.

Terry Patten, author, A New Republic of the Heart, co-author Integral Life Practice

This book offers a comprehensive view of the embodiment territory. The stories and suggestions range from raucous and racy, to tender and touching. There is food for thought and a plethora of helpful hints for student and facilitator alike.

Wendy Palmer, author of Leadership Embodiment

EMBODIMENT

Moving beyond mindfulness

MARK WALSH

First published 2020, by Unicorn Slayer Press

2020 Mark Walsh

All rights reserved. The purchase of this copyright material confers the right on the purchasing institution to photocopy pages which bear the photocopy icon and copyright line at the bottom of the page. No other parts of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

ISBN: 978-1-9162492-2-6 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-9162492-1-9 (ebk)

This book is dedicated to all those that created the work that I love: Paul Linden, Francis Briers and Alexandra Vilvovskaya particularly, for their service on the Embodied Facilitator Course. And also, of course, the woman/mystery cat-creature, whose embodiment feels most like home.

This is why embodiment is trending right now: the times necessitate it.

In times of chaos, the body is an anchor.

In times of mistrust and post-truth, the body is a source of wisdom.

In a time of disconnection, the body is where reconnecting begins. First to ourselves, then through that to meaning, then each other, and vitally, to the planet.

Standing in the ruins of writing this book, at midnight on the publication deadline, I find myself compelled to return to the acknowledgments. Writing this book took everything I had to give, and I am now satisfied that it is my best effort. There was literally blood, sweat and tears on the pages on many occasions; and I had to break and reform myself several times to finish it. The effort however was not solo, and there are many to thank.

I would firstly like to acknowledge the Embodied Yoga Principles (EYP) and Embodied Facilitator Course (EFC) communities for being the supportive laboratory for this book. Everything here has been tried, tested and developed in these communities in the UK and in Russia, as well as in workshops in over thirty countries. EFC UK co-founder Francis Briers was especially central to EFCs development and worked closely with me to develop several of the models in this book, and Alexandra Vilvovskaya has clarified many of them with her Russian elegance. The EFC tribe as a whole, though, has been the vibrant, playful, intense peer-learning crucible where our integrations and innovations have occurred, and hundreds of people have played a part. My close EYP colleague and friend Vidyadasa has also been instrumental and a huge support emotionally, more times than I can remember, and the ever-patient Catherine OMahony has held it together for many years with her frankly scary organisation and Walsh-whispering skills.

My gratitude also goes to my primary influences in the field of embodiment. Paul Linden has been a loving second father to me and has shown me that what really matters is kindness. He is perhaps the biggest single influence on me and the only one that I hold a direct lineage relationship with. Wendy Palmer of Leadership Embodiment and Richard Strozzi-Heckler (who led the way with working with the body in business and coaching are two big influences). Other major embodied facilitation inspirations that I would like to acknowledge include Stuart Heller, Ginny Whitelaw and Dylan Newcomb, all legends in this field and on whose shoulders this book stands.