How To Get Out Of Your Own Head - Mark Walsh - #230

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hi, friends, welcome back. My guest today is Mark Walsh, and today we are talking about embodiment, how to get out of your own head. I think in the 21st century, we spend a lot of time celebrating intellectual achievements and being cerebral in this scientific society, but there's a lot of enjoyment and wisdom that you can get from just getting into your body and allowing yourself to be more open and feel less constrained by the ruminating obsessive thoughts that go around your mind. Also, if you enjoyed this episode, you can go to theembodimentconference.org, which is linked in the show notes below, and you can sign up to what might be the biggest educational event ever in human history with half a million people attending, and you can go for free. That's Mark's event. It sounds really cool. And if there's more of the same that we go through today, I think it will be of massive benefit to a lot of you. So go and check that out. But for now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Mark Walsh.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. I'm joined by Mark Walsh. Mark, welcome to the show.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:24)
Pleasure, I've listened to it, so I'm happy to be on.

**Chris Williamson** (1:27)
Thank you, man. What does embodiment actually mean?

**Mark Walsh** (1:32)
Get asked that every single interview, there's different answers. One, you know your body is a part of you. It's not just like a pen, it's a part of who you are as a person, your body. The subjective view of the body.
The body as an aspect of our being, as an aspect of who we are as people. There's a reason if people lose an arm, they get more upset than if they lose a pen because it's part of them. Another term for embodiment would be the umbrella term for all the body mind arts. I've done martial arts, yoga, meditation, conscious dance, body therapy, improv, bodywork. All these things have something in common. They relate to the body for awareness and the body as part of who we are. Even though they look very different, they have this thing in common. We need a terminology for that. You could say body mind arts. You could say somatic arts. Embodiment is the word I tend to use. That would be another definition. Third definition could be a form of intelligence and we could drill down into exactly what the skill sets are within that. How's that for an opener?

**Chris Williamson** (2:36)
Nice, man. I like it. Considering embodiment to me, if you asked me to define it, I wouldn't really understand. Maybe I embody the role of a parent. I embody the role of a podcaster.
It's crossing the barrier between the mental and the physical whilst remaining in the body.

**Mark Walsh** (2:57)
Yeah. The common sense usage is actually quite close to the technical usage. We say such and such embodies leadership. We understand that there's only so much you can learn from a book. If someone said to you, I've read Chris, I've read a lot of books on kissing. I'm an amazing lover. I've looked at a lot of websites on how to drive a car. Do you want to lift a new car? So you might say, well, hang on.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:20)
That's one way of knowing.

**Mark Walsh** (3:23)
That's knowing about something, right? So if you listen to some of your podcasts to prep for this, it tends to be the Western philosophical tradition is to think about or to know about or to learn about. And that's useful.
Like, it's useful for me to know the capital of France is Paris. But that's quite different from the embodied knowledge of Paris. It's quite different from having your coffee in Paris. And there's a certain kind of light that comes up in the morning and being aware of that or the French way of being, God forbid. Or, you know, that manner of Frenchness. So this is a different kind of knowledge and requires a different kind of learning. So, you know, at school, I read every book in the library. I was in the Six Forms High School for American Listeners. I literally speed read every book in that library. And yet I was suicidal, drug addicted, miserable, failing at my first intimate relationships. And everyone was telling me I was really clever. They said, you've got high IQ, you know, you're a very clever guy.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:22)
And I said, if I'm so clever, why am I so miserable?

**Mark Walsh** (4:26)
What is education? How has education failed me?

**Chris Williamson** (4:30)
Well, the goal of education, especially at that age, isn't to make you happy.