Your Body Knows More Than You Think
Updated: Sep 12
I've spent my life studying the body.
For 25 years, I've taught movement, fascia, breath, embodiment, and structural organization. I know how the spine is designed to move. I understand how the skeleton supports us, how the body distributes force, and what happens when we lose access to that support.
And yet, this year has reminded me of something I think is easy to forget:
Knowing your body intellectually is not the same as being in relationship with it.
I know what healthy posture looks like.
I know how to organize my spine.
I know how to move.
And still, when my attention moves elsewhere, my body can quietly return to patterns I've practiced for years.
Not while teaching.
Not while exercising.
Not while lifting something heavy.
Those moments are often the easiest because the demand is obvious. My body knows what to do.
It's the ordinary moments that reveal the deeper story.
Sitting at my computer.
Reading.
Driving.
Holding a conversation at the dinner table.
Working for hours with my attention almost entirely in my head.
These are the moments when I can lose contact with the body that is actually carrying me.
And when I lose that relationship, familiar patterns tend to take over.
Not necessarily because anything is wrong.
But because the body is always organizing around what it knows.
Posture Begins Before We Think About It
We often imagine posture as something we consciously choose.
Stand up straight.
Pull your shoulders back.
Engage your core.
But the organization of the body begins long before conscious instruction.
Your body is continuously sensing, adapting, distributing effort, creating support, and deciding where to soften and where to engage.
Much of this happens outside of conscious thought.
Which is why knowing more about posture doesn't necessarily change how we inhabit ourselves.
Knowledge can tell us what to do.
Relationship allows us to perceive what is actually happening.
That distinction has become increasingly important in my own work.
Because the question isn't simply:
"Am I sitting correctly?"
It's:
"What is my body doing right now?"
"Where am I supported?"
"Where am I working harder than I need to?"
"What am I not perceiving?"
That kind of attention changes the conversation.
Your Body Reveals What You've Practiced
Consider the way you sleep.
Many of us naturally curl inward. The shoulders round. The spine flexes. The hips draw upward. The arms fold toward the body.
This isn't inherently wrong.
It is information.
Our bodies develop familiar ways of organizing themselves, especially in moments when we're not consciously directing them.
The same thing can happen during stress, concentration, uncertainty, or simply a long day.
Breath becomes smaller.
The front of the body begins doing more of the work.
The back body disappears from awareness.
The jaw tightens.
The shoulders begin to carry what the skeleton could have supported.
Eventually, these patterns can become so familiar that we stop noticing them altogether.
They simply feel like us.
But familiar does not necessarily mean inevitable.
And it certainly doesn't mean that our bodies are broken.
It means there is more to perceive.
The Support You've Forgotten You're Standing On
One of the greatest shifts in my own practice has been restoring my awareness of my back chain.
Not strengthening it.
Perceiving it.
Feeling the back of my body.
Feeling the architecture of my skeleton.
Feeling the ground beneath me.
Feeling the relationship between my bones, tissues, breath, and space.
When I can actually perceive the support available through my back body and skeleton, something changes.
The front of my body doesn't have to grip quite so hard.
My neck doesn't have to carry the weight of my head alone.
My jaw softens.
My breathing expands.
Movement becomes quieter.
And often, less effort is required.
The skeleton begins doing more of what it was designed to do.
The tissues don't have to compensate as much.
Support becomes something I can experience rather than something I have to manufacture.
This is a very different relationship to the body than constantly asking it to perform better.
The Spine Is Designed to Receive Force
The natural curves of the spine create an extraordinary architecture for distributing and absorbing force.
Force doesn't have to stop in one place.
It can travel.
It can be received.
It can be distributed through the larger structure.
I've become increasingly interested in what happens when we remember this—not only mechanically, but experientially.
Because the body is not separate from the way we experience the world.
How we meet physical force, sensation, uncertainty, intensity, and change are all part of our relationship with ourselves.
This doesn't mean that every physical pattern has a psychological meaning.
It means that the body and our experience are in constant conversation.
And when we experience more support, our relationship with what we're encountering can change.
Not because we've finally learned how to "regulate" ourselves.
But because we're no longer meeting everything from the same place.
This Is Not About Better Posture
This is why the work I teach isn't about remembering to sit up straight.
It's not about creating a perfect body.
It's not about controlling every sensation or correcting every pattern.
And it's certainly not about transforming yourself into someone better.
You are not a problem to solve.
The work is much more interesting than that.
It is learning to perceive.
To notice the subtle ways you organize yourself.
To recognize where you're gripping, collapsing, compensating, or disappearing from your own awareness.
To feel the support that is already available.
To explore movement athletically and intelligently, from the back chain.
To release unnecessary effort.
To trust the body's intelligence enough to listen before deciding what needs to change.
Over time, these moments accumulate.
You begin to recognize your own patterns sooner.
You begin to have more choices.
You become more familiar with what genuine support feels like.
Not because you've memorized better posture.
Because you've developed a deeper relationship with the body you're actually living in.
The Body Is Not Asking to Be Fixed
I think this is one of the most important shifts we can make as women.
We have been taught to approach the body as a project.
Something to improve.
Something to manage.
Something to discipline.
Something to fix when it hurts, changes, ages, or stops behaving the way we want it to.
But what if the body is asking for something else?
What if it is asking to be known?
What if the sensations we've been trying to get rid of are also information?
What if support is less about doing more and more about becoming available to what is already there?
And what if the deepest form of embodiment isn't becoming better at controlling the body, but becoming more intimate with it?
This is the work that continues to fascinate me after 25 years.
Not mastering the body.
Relationship with the body.
Because relationship changes everything.
This is part of what Jacqueline Burbage and I will be exploring together at Sacred Soma, our week-long retreat in Costa Rica, November 15–21.
This is not a retreat for women who need to escape their lives or reinvent themselves.
It is for women who are already deeply engaged with their lives and are ready for something more intimate.
More space.
More quiet.
More nature.
More truth.
More laughter.
More time to hear themselves beneath the noise.
Throughout the week, we'll explore tissue intelligence, imaginal meditation, fascia-informed movement, breath, the architecture of the body, and the kind of core integration that arises when we begin working with the body's own design rather than constantly asking muscular effort to hold everything together.
But more than anything, we'll practice relationship.
Relationship with sensation.
Relationship with the body.
Relationship with movement.
Relationship with rest.
Relationship with ourselves.
And we'll bring that relationship back into the ordinary moments that make up a life: walking, sitting, breathing, reaching, resting, being with other women, and simply inhabiting ourselves.
Because embodiment isn't something we achieve during a retreat.
It is something we carry home.
If you're longing to feel more supported from within—not through trying harder, fixing yourself, or chasing transformation, but through discovering a more harmonious way of organizing and orienting to yourself—I hope you'll consider giving yourself this week.
The most potent investment we can make isn't always in becoming something new.
Sometimes it is choosing ourselves long enough to become quiet and discover what has been here all along.
Much Love,
Amalia
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