Embodyoga from the Inside Out

Where Awareness, Anatomy, and Movement Meet

Philosophical and Somatic Inquiry Through Yoga

Embodyoga® is an intelligent and well-grounded philosophical and somatic inquiry into what it means to be alive — to live a full life — and simultaneously to engage in serious inquiry into the nature of life through the teachings of yoga.

Embodyoga weaves together the healing, therapeutic, and spiritual essence of yoga with cutting-edge insights from the field of body-mind consciousness. It fuses the emergent wisdom of Body-Mind Centering®, developed by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, with Hatha Yoga practices and Tantric Yoga philosophy. We seek to enter life with open awareness, to experience the full range of life’s gifts, and to honor the natural beauty and challenges that we are offered.

Curiosity Opens the Doors of Perception

Embodyoga® begins with a simple, transformative premise: our entire personal self— body, heart, and mind — is a sea of vibrating creative awareness. Each part of our physical and energetic form is an expression of awareness manifesting as our individual traits. We experience these layers of self as gradations of consciousness— all made of the same substance, all equally valuable, and all interwoven to form a system designed and primed for self-realization.

Through the gift of human consciousness, we are able to witness our essential nature: creative, bright, alive, and self-aware.

In practice, Embodyoga® harnesses the natural forces of curiosity and desire to guide deep exploration of the body-mind system. Our inner inquiry leads the way. Whatever the path, the destination is always the same: the revelation of unity that underlies all form. While we express unique individuality, we are also universal. At our core, we are awareness itself.

Embodyoga® invites direct experience of this unity—recognizing that the universal and the personal are not separate, but one inseparable continuum. This perception stays with us beyond the yoga mat, informing how we relate to ourselves and to others. When we encounter our inner, true self, it becomes natural to offer this understanding in all aspects of life. Love and responsibility for others grow from our capacity to see clearly and deeply into our own being.

Like a tripod relying on three legs, Embodyoga® is built on three essential pillars: Embodied-Inquiry, Santosha, and Viveka.

The Three Pillars of Embodyoga

Embodied-Inquiry provides tools for cultivating an honest, ongoing relationship with both universal and individual self. This is a judgment-free exploration of all aspects of our being. We learn to set aside distorted self-views—both inflated and critical—and become willing to see what is actually true. Real inquiry requires bravery and a commitment to honesty.

Santosha is the yogic principle of contentment. It encourages us to accept ourselves wholeheartedly, just as we are. Santosha does not mean resignation or inaction. Rather, it means fully meeting what is present before taking conscious and informed action. We practice contentment with whatever arises in the process of self-investigation.

Viveka is the power of discernment—the ability to distinguish what is true from what is not. A discriminating mind helps us know how to respond to what we find within and around us. Embodied-Inquiry is guided by the twin essential principles of Santosha and Viveka: radical self-acceptance and razor-sharp clarity.

These three pillars together create the conditions for the Universal to reveal itself naturally. They are the ground from which deeper truth emerges.

Embodied Anatomy, Developmental Movement, and the Embryological Foundations of Movement

Central to Embodyoga® are three primary fields of study: Embodied Anatomy™, Embodied Developmental Movement™, and Embodying the Embryological Foundations of Movement™. All three come from the pioneering work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, whose insights into the body and mind have reshaped how we understand embodiment.

Through decades of personal exploration and teaching thousands of practitioners and students, Bonnie developed a profound system of mapping the body based on direct experience—Embodied Anatomy™. She also traced how our earliest developmental movement patterns shape neurological and cellular integration, creating Embodied Developmental Movement™.

Bonnie’s current work is Embodying the Embryological Foundations of Movement. Bonnie’s revelations about how we continue to embody the original energy flows that created us in the first place — our embryology — align seamlessly with Tantric philosophy in its emphasis on full, conscious embodiment.

In terms of yoga, embryology laid down clear patterns of intelligence and movement of life force in our earliest days. These patterns and waves of integrating forces — prana — remain with us for our whole lives.

The foundational prana streams that arose during our embryology are not as esoteric as you may think! They are foundational to energy and consciousness flow. We can find, feel them, and free them in our own bodies to the great benefit of our health and embodied experiencing.

Yoga has long recognized what science now affirms: that matter is energy. Yogic seers went further, describing energy itself as intelligent awareness—the substance of the universe and of our own being. In Embodyoga, we begin with this understanding. Every part of our structure is an expression of Creative Intelligence. Through intimate experience of this matrix, we learn to live from the inside out.

To embody yoga means to enter the body-mind fully, with awareness, acceptance, and awe. It is to know that every cell is awake, alive, and self-aware.

This is not metaphor. Embodyoga® explores down to the cellular, sub-cellular and energetic levels, beginning with awareness itself and expanding outward through the entire human system.

Through direct exploration, using discriminative self-acceptance and keen curiosity, we learn who we are.

The Influence of Tantra

Tantric philosophy emerged about a thousand years after Patanjali codified the Yoga Sutras. Unlike Classical Yoga, which often treats the body as an obstacle, Tantra embraces embodiment as central to practice. Tantra recognizes that the body and world are sacred ground for inquiry.

In Tantra, the human being is a microcosm of the universe. By studying our own body-mind system—through sensation, relationship, movement, and awareness—we open to the Universal Reality. Hatha Yoga, which derives from Tantra, offers practical methods for engaging this reality through breath, posture, and perception. What we do in Embodyoga is continue the journey — in this case into the body — into the universal energetic foundations that live within, every living breathing moment.

Elemental Intelligence in the Body

Through Embodied Anatomy, we journey through the textures and densities of our form. We inhabit our cellular systems and tissues with awareness. Each layer of body expresses the elements differently.

Bones, for instance, are primarily earth: solid, still, and weight-bearing. Yet the marrow within them is dark and warm. It flows like hot liquid earth. Organs express volume and fluidity—earth and water warmed by fire. Glands radiate crystalline levity and support. They tend to relate to light, air, and space. Fascia provides a resilient, elastic web of connection, that finds much of its form in spaciousness and fluidity.

Though we appear solid, we are mostly space. And at the center of that space, yogis tell us, lies ananda—the most subtle of the elements. This too is embodied. Yoga invites us to realize bliss not as concept, but as direct experience of our own inner space. Ananda is the most profound experiential level of comfort. Ananda offers direct experience of being completely at home, safe, and simply alright in this skin.

Cellular Awakening

Embodyoga® is an experiential process of enlivening cellular awareness. Through asana, pranayama, meditation, and relational inquiry, we activate all levels of being. This awakens a clearer perception of our true nature. We begin to see: we are awake and alive in every part.

This awakening changes how we see ourselves and the world. We perceive unity and participate consciously in the dance of creation. Each person’s journey is unique. Embodyoga® provides maps and tools, not formulas. Practice is always fresh. Each moment is a new beginning.

Over time, this work deepens. Joy arises spontaneously. We discover that we are the Universal, expressing itself through individual qualities, textures, and forms.

Development Over Time

Through Embodied Developmental Movement, and Embodied Embryology we revisit movement patterns of early life. These patterns from our earliest days form part of the cellular foundation for neurological integration that continues to develop over our lives. Revisiting these energetic and movement patterns as adults supports coordination, emotional resilience, and cognitive clarity.

The deeper we go, the more profound and rewarding the process becomes. Ananda — the element of space — draws us inward. The familiar forms of Hatha Yoga—asana, breath, meditation—become vehicles for deep inquiry. We refine technique through cues from the inner body. Some practices are gentle and slow; others are strong and flowing. All are grounded in awareness.

Practitioners and teachers of Embodyoga® are drawn to practice by their curiosity and a love of inquiry. We are not here to impose ideas on the body or to strive for perfection. We are here to attend. To investigate. To be with what is real.

This is our process: to begin and continue to meet ourselves without preconception. To become intimate with our inner world. To welcome insight. Through this, we find that enduring self-acceptance is possible. And from that acceptance, joy has a chance to spontaneously arise.

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With love,
Patty

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