From Hiding in Concepts to Embodied Understanding

How I learned to think from the body instead of hiding in the mind

For most of my life, I've been a collector of perspectives - gorging myself on frameworks, models, and conceptual systems. I took pride in my ability to play with these ideas, to see how they fit together in novel ways, to create temporary wholes that revealed new aspects of reality. This was my art form, my way of making meaning in the world.

But recently I've begun to understand something deeper about this pattern. What could be seen as simply an intellectual gift was also a sophisticated defense mechanism - a way of staying safe by never having to fully stand in any one perspective. My conceptual agility, while genuine, was partially born from the fear of being wrong, of being seen, of being vulnerable. It's taken me years to recognize how this fear lived in my body - a subtle tension in my belly, a readiness to pivot, to reframe, to avoid the raw vulnerability of taking a stand.

The Architecture of Disconnection

We might think of understanding as operating across multiple layers - from raw sensation and energy, through felt sense and imagery, up to conceptual understanding. In a healthy system, these layers build upon and inform each other naturally. But trauma and early wounding can create disconnections, leading us to over-rely on certain layers while avoiding others.

This is what Iain McGilchrist calls "left hemispheric capture" - when our abstract, conceptual mind becomes disconnected from more direct forms of knowing. We retreat into the realm of concepts not just because we're curious, but because there's frozen pain in those lower layers we'd rather not feel. The body holds memories too painful to face, so we live increasingly in our heads, treating even our emotions as problems to be solved rather than experiences to be felt.

The Healing Journey

The path back to wholeness isn't simple. We can't think our way out of over-thinking. Instead, it requires a kind of unfolding - a gradual process of reconnecting with those more fundamental layers of experience. But crucially, this reconnection only becomes possible when we feel safe enough to face what we've been avoiding.

For me, this journey has involved two distinct phases. First came a long period of deconstruction - releasing deeply held implicit beliefs, letting go of defensive patterns, allowing frozen parts of my psyche to thaw. This was often painful and disorienting work, as I had to face the vulnerability I'd been protecting myself from all all my life. There were times when I could barely function, when the pain and fear I'd been intellectualizing for so long finally demanded to be felt.

Only after this deconstructive phase could a new kind of construction begin. Now, when I engage with concepts, it comes from a different place - not from fear or the need to prove or distract myself, but from genuine curiosity and the joy of exploration. It's what John Vervaeke calls "serious play" - deep engagement that comes not from external pressure but from authentic connection with meaning and truth.

The Body's Knowing

What makes this shift possible is reconnecting with the body's inherent wisdom. As Eugene Gendlin showed through his development of Focusing, the body holds its own kind of knowing - what he called the "felt sense." This isn't just emotion or sensation, but a whole way of understanding that precedes and exceeds conceptual formulation.

When we're disconnected from this bodily knowing, our intellectual engagement becomes a kind of "simulated thinking" - clever but somehow hollow. I can feel this difference in my own experience now: simulated thinking has a quality of strain, of effort, of trying to figure something out from the outside. Real thinking, grounded in the body's knowing, has a different quality - more like following a thread of meaning that's already there, waiting to be discovered and followed.

The difference shows up in conversation too. When I'm engaged in simulated thinking, I'm subtly defensive, ready to pivot or reframe to protect myself. When I'm thinking from embodied knowing, there's more space, more curiosity, more willingness to not know. Ideas can arise and fall away without threatening my sense of self.

Towards Integration

The goal isn't to abandon conceptual understanding but to ground it in something more fundamental. This creates the possibility for what we might call "embodied understanding" - where intellectual rigor meets somatic wisdom in a dance of genuine discovery.

This integration allows for a different kind of intellectual creativity. Instead of using concepts as armor, we can use them as tools for exploration. Instead of using ideas to avoid vulnerability, we can play with them from a place of fundamental safety and trust.

This more grounded way of engaging with knowledge often feels both more playful and more serious. More playful because we're no longer using it to prove our worth, more serious because we're genuinely attuned to truth rather than just intellectual entertainment.

The Wider Implications

This journey from conceptual defense to embodied understanding has implications beyond individual healing. We live in a culture increasingly dominated by abstract thinking and technological frameworks, where even our attempts at healing often become additional technologies of self-improvement. The disconnection from embodied knowing isn't just a personal pattern - it's a collective trauma response, a societal coping mechanism for pain we don't know how to face.

The path isn't about rejecting intellectual understanding but about grounding it in something more fundamental. When knowledge emerges from embodied knowing rather than defensive patterns, it has a different quality - more alive, more responsive, more capable of genuine insight and creative discovery.

But this integration presents challenges we're only beginning to understand. How do we create educational systems that honor both intellectual rigor and embodied wisdom? How do we develop cultural practices that support this kind of integration? How do we stay connected to bodily knowing in a world that constantly pulls us toward disconnected abstraction?

Perhaps most importantly, how do we hold space for the fear and vulnerability that arise when we start to thaw our frozen patterns? The journey back to embodied knowing isn't just an individual path - it requires new forms of community, new ways of being together that can hold both our brilliance and our terror.

This is more than just an invitation to a different way of knowing - it's a recognition of the profound challenge and possibility of our time. As our technological capabilities accelerate, our need for embodied wisdom grows more urgent. The integration of conceptual understanding and bodily knowing isn't just a path of personal healing - it is likely essential for our collective survival.

Real thinking isn't about escaping vulnerability - it's about allowing ourselves to be changed by what we discover. Sometimes this means letting our carefully constructed frameworks fall apart. Sometimes it means standing nakedly in not-knowing. Always it means staying close to the raw edge where concept meets experience, where understanding emerges not from defense but from presence.

Work with me: I offer one-on-one guidance helping people develop secure attachment with reality through deep unfoldment work. If this resonates, explore working together