Embodied Consciousness

Woodman’s own term, “reached through fifteen years of hard work” (Woodman 1993, p. 114), for consciousness that has descended into matter rather than fleeing it. The phrase names the inverse of the spiritual trajectory that Western religion, Platonic philosophy, and modern patriarchal culture have privileged — the ascent of spirit out of flesh. Against that trajectory, Woodman insists that the feminine side of God is “consciousness in matter. The wisdom in the body; the light in the cells; the subtle body” (Woodman 1993, p. 114).

The concept extends carl-jung‘s alchemical principle that the opus is conducted in materia — the prima materia is the living body — and gives it a phenomenology. To be embodied-conscious is to receive the transcendent experience of the divine through the body rather than despite it. “The subtle body within my physical body is the receiver that can receive that transcendent experience of the divine. Before my experience in India I had no subtle body to receive the spirit; I was not conscious below the neck” (Woodman 1993, p. 114). The pathology of its absence Woodman names addiction; the practice of its cultivation she names body work, breath work, and dream work conducted together. “If people go into a religious trance disconnected from body… they can’t control it and they go out of consciousness. Whereas, if they are well grounded in the body, and consciousness of that body is firm, they can receive powerful spiritual light” (Woodman 1993, p. 62). The load-bearing claim: without the body, there is no vessel strong enough to hold spirit.

Relationships

• somatic-unconscious
• conscious-feminine
• active-imagination
• coniunctio
• subtle-body

Primary sources

• woodman-conscious-femininity-interviews (Woodman 1993)
• woodman-addiction-to-perfection (Woodman 1982)