I’m ecstatic to update that I am officially donnnnne with finals week and on winter breaaak! Like the last rep of your last heavy squat set when you rack the weight with a satisfying *clank*, or the final push on a cardio workout where you cross the finish line and then breathe a little more deeply – phew! I’m happy to report that it was an RPE 6-ish. Meaning it felt pretty doable, but wasn’t easy by any means. It’s kind of amazing to me how much I care about my writing. The rubrics were all very flexible and generous, like I could pretty much write anything reasonably coherent and get a passing grade. But it matters to me that I feel like what I’m saying is true to who I am, and how I want to represent myself in the world. So, in that spirit things took longer than I anticipated, like 5-6 hours of writing per paper instead of my estimated 2-3 hours. But it felt worth it to write from my integrity.
Now I have some more time for self care, which I will gladly lean into for the next several weeks with various things like exercise, spa days, baking, doggie adventures, maybe a snowy adventure too ☃️. And having some writing momentum and dare I say habit, I am excited to share some learnings from the semester that I didn’t quite have the time to write about before.
As I talked about last time in Insight Is Overrated, a lot of writing is insight-based, meaning it’s making a big assumption that the person reading it is motivated enough to act on the new information and positively transform their behavior, feelings, communication, and environment. I suggested that based on my learnings that this is not the case – people are often not motivated by new insight, which is an interesting insight – but what is the alternative, really? Embodying change.
Embodying change means integrating new ways of thinking, feeling, and acting into your physical being, making transformation sustainable by moving beyond just ideas to a lived experience, often through body-based practices that build awareness of physical sensations, emotions, and habits to align with desired values and goals. It’s about becoming the change you want to see by bringing your body, mind, and spirit into alignment for lasting growth (at long last!), rather than relying on insight and willpower alone.
Let’s say you’re a habitual hard charger who is trying to practice being nicer to themselves. Let’s say you like to run. You’re in the middle of a run on the iconic bay trail, and you can feel your typical level of effort. Charging hard as you do, it’s close to your perceived limit. Such a familiar place to be. Hello darkness, my old friend. You see a park bench along the path that looks out over the bay. It’s nearing sunset at 4:30pm, and you can make out the golden gate bridge through the misty fog and array of orange and pink colors along the skyline. You decide to suddenly stop running, and just sit on the bench, taking it all in for a number of breaths. You can feel your body relax, your heart rate and breathing slow. It feels nice. You’re embodying the change that was before only an idea, an intention. The rest of the run, you are only going a little bit slower than before, but it feels remarkably different.
Let’s say you’re feeling depressed and are trying to find energy to get up and do anything. Embodying change can be choosing one physical action—standing by the window, stretching your arms, or washing your face—allowing your body to begin the shift before your mood catches up. It might mean placing your feet on the floor and noticing their contact with the ground, letting gravity support you, or taking a slow breath while sitting upright instead of lying back down.
It can also be focusing on sensory input—feeling the temperature of the water on your hands, noticing the light coming through the window, or rubbing your hands together to create warmth—giving your nervous system simple signals of safety and presence. Rather than aiming to feel better right away, the goal is simply to stay with the sensation for a few seconds, letting your body register movement, temperature, or contact.
From there, embodying change might look like linking one small action to another. Standing becomes walking to the kitchen, walking becomes filling a glass with water, and drinking water becomes sitting in a chair instead of returning to bed. None of these actions require much motivation or optimism. They only ask you to respond to what your body can do at that moment. Over time, these repeated, embodied actions teach your body and mind that movement is possible even when energy is low; even when there isn’t a thought that makes it make sense. This gradually builds capacity to do more impactful things with this in the same spirit, i.e. without relying on willpower or self-judgment.
The deeper insight that you can play with if you like is that among your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, there is no hierarchy, or “person in charge.” Rather, there is simply integration, meaning the interaction of those parts. When you act from an integrated, embodied place, it feels true to who you are. This is why the grounding exercises from the last blog are so important if you’re having big feelings and stuck in the loop of trying to think your way through them. Just make a small move that feels like it’s in a helpful direction, whether or not it makes concrete, cognitive sense.
In Western culture, thinking is supposed to rule, which is why willpower is so mistakenly centered as the most important thing. This is not supported by evidence. So, if you are noticing in yourself a tendency to focus on your thoughts rather than feelings or nonverbal, bodily sensations, I encourage you to start exploring those less familiar things, as disorienting as it may feel at first.
In a radical, liberatory way, when you practice integration/embodying change, you are breaking the cycle of forcing change through effort alone. You are replacing control and self-override with responsiveness and trust in the body’s internal wisdom. You are freeing yourself from self-blame and internalized oppression that tells you your worth is measured by discipline and productivity, rather than by your capacity to listen to and care for your whole self.
Mauricio