Integration and embodiment are necessary phases of the healing journey in energy healing. Energy healing is the process of clearing energy from the energetic system, enhancing an overall state of physical and emotional well-being. However, to actualize shifts from energy healing, integration and embodiment are necessary. What does integration mean exactly? And what is embodiment? They have to do with an intricate dance between the nervous system and the energetic body. Let’s explore these concepts further.
What is Integration?
When the nervous system is in a sympathetic state, often triggered by action or activity, energy actively moves through the body. In healing work, it’s necessary to move this energy, which stimulates the sympathetic nervous system. Once this process is complete, the nervous system needs to settle into a parasympathetic, or “rest and digest,” state for integration to occur. Integration means the nervous system and energetic body have calmed enough for the cells to shift and absorb a new state of consciousness. If we do not allow for the parasympathetic process following healing, our nervous system may continue to operate under the belief that we are never enough or not healed enough.
Integration is crucial for healing to transform on a cellular level. After actively clearing energy, the nervous system needs to decompress into the parasympathetic state. This allows new, fresh, and vital life force energy to integrate into the cells, enabling a shifted state of consciousness in the body. Making time for integration following a healing ensures the process is fully complete. It’s important to allow space, time, and integration between healings instead of jumping from one healing to the next in pursuit of more healing.
Integration can include rest, but it can also involve activities that bring joy, peace, decompression, or a subtle flow into the body. This might include extra sleep, journaling, slow movement, or walking in nature.
When we are in a parasympathetic state, there is more prana moving through the body’s meridians without requiring pressure or overthinking. This flow of prana, particularly in the lower body, supports further cellular and soulful embodiment, which will be explained next.
What is Embodiment?
Embodiment means prana (life-force energy) is flowing through the meridians of your body, bringing consciousness and presence—or flow—throughout. This includes areas where you might typically lose consciousness, like your legs, feet, and tailbone.
Bringing awareness and feeling your energy and presence in your physical body is a form of embodiment. Tracking where you feel emotions in your body is also a form of embodiment.
Embodiment involves muscle tone, physical movement, being present in your feet, and actions that bring you into your lower body. The wounds may still be there, but bringing consciousness to your body helps shift the energy.
Some ways to support embodiment include:
- Walking barefoot on the earth
- Slow walking in meditation, mindful of the sensation of your feet making contact with the ground
- Squats and exercises that engage your quads and glutes
- Feet stomping
- Stretching the lower body
- Hip openers and quad calf stretches
- Reclined and seated stretches
- Resting poses or positions
- Core toning and strengthening
Feeling connected to your lower body allows for opening and flow in your upper body!
