This week’s experiment continues what we started last week in our exploration of how what we embody moves into, and affects, the quality of our daily life and interactions with others.

For this week. I invite you to deepen your exploration to include choosing a quality you’d like to embody more deeply and then spending time bringing it more tangibly into your life.  To embody something means to live it as part of your skin and bones, the very substance of your being.  For example, when you’re around someone who embodies awareness or presence, you don’t have to hear them say words about it – you just feel it.  The embodiment itself is an energy, an expression, that is tangible in its own right, with or without words.

And so, I’d like to invite you, now, to choose a quality you want to develop or deepen in your lived experience.  It an be anything at all – perhaps playfulness, centeredness, kindness, spontaneity, creativity, generosity – whatever you sense would add to the quality of your life.

Once you’ve chosen a quality you’d like to explore or deepen, take a moment to notice your experience of that quality.  For example, does an image come to mind that represents the quality you wish to embody?  If you do have an image, allow yourself literally to become whatever that image may be, so that you can experience the qualities you wish to embody from the inside.  For example, if you chose playfulness and find that you have an image of a kitten, become the kitten and notice your experience.  What emotional response do you have to it?  What state of mind and kinds of thoughts emerge from the lived experience of the image?  What do you experience in your body as the image?  What sensations do you notice?  Take whatever time you need to connect with the image.  In essence, you are giving yourself an opportunity to have a lived experience of being the quality represented by the image.

If you’re not a visual person, notice if you have a “felt-sense” of the quality you want to embody – a direct experience of it in your body.  Notice the sensations that convey the experience of embodying this quality.  There’s no right or wrong sensations to look for – just whatever emerges as you take in the felt-sense of the quality you seek.  For example, if you were continuing to explore playfulness, what sensations or sense do you have of playfulness?  Just spending time with your experience allows you to resonate with, and soak in, the essence of playfulness.

You may be someone who hears qualities rather than seeing or sensing them.  If that’s the case with you, what sounds encompass the quality you want to embody?  Take some time to listen and allow yourself to absorb the experience of the quality as it conveys itself to you.  In our example here, what are the sounds of playfulness that convey to you the essence of that quality?

The key here is to develop a lived experience of what you want to embody inside yourself.  Over time, by visiting this quality for a few minutes each day, you will eventually “absorb” it into your body-mind being.  You may notice a change in your behavior as you take in this quality more and more.  For example, if you choose to embody playfulness, you might find yourself spontaneously taking a moment to giggle with a child you meet on the street.  Or, if you’re practicing to embody centeredness, you might find yourself moving through difficulties with less struggle or distress.

Remember, there’s no right thing to embody, and no demand that you embody any particular thing.  This experiment offers an opportunity to choose a quality you think will enhance your life, or one that you’ve been wanting to develop, and then to engage the process of moving toward embodying it.