‘Embodiment is the future’: What is embodiment and is it the future paradigm for learning and teaching in higher education?

ABSTRACT In this opinion piece I present a brief introduction to embodiment and offer practical examples of embodied pedagogy. My overarching argument is that embodiment theory and practice merit a paradigmatic status in higher education pedagogies and a sub-theme is that using embodiment as a foundation for pedagogic praxis is usefully done in collaboration with the wealth of embodiment professionals working in different embodiment modalities across the globe. This piece includes some of the observations and practices I have encountered from such professionals.


Introduction
'Embodiment is the future!' proclaimed Mark Walsh, the leader of the Embodiment Conference in 2020 -perhaps the biggest online conference ever with over 1,000 speakers over 10 days and over 500,000 delegates (Embodied Courses Ltd, 2020).In general terms, embodiment theorists and practitioners refuse mind/body dualisms.They do not consider the mind to be separate from the body, and, positioning the 'mindbody' as a single, symbiotic entity, they consider how the two work together as an interdependent, communicative network.They therefore foreground the body's role in matters that are often considered abstract matters of the mind such as perception, thinking, memory, decision-making or learning.
Walsh's claim may be future orientated, but it does seem that embodiment is becoming more prominent at the present time.For example, Twitter, the BBC, Capital One and other corporations across the world are employing somatic coaches (who work 'somatically', that is, by connecting people to their bodies) to improve core needs of the workplace such as leadership, stress management, team relationships and staff wellbeing (see for example, the work of the late, internationally renowned somatic coach, Wendy Palmer (2020)).Somatic approaches are being increasingly deployed in other areas too.In therapeutic settings, for instance, they are now promoted as an important mode or aspect of therapy (Compassionate Inquiry, 2022; National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine NICABM, 2022;Salmon, 2019;Van der Kolk, 2015) and there are even therapeutic approaches, such as Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE), where the body rather than talk is at the foreground of the therapy (Berceli, n.d..).
The world is gifted with a wealth of professionals who have devoted their careers to foregrounding and deploying the body for different professional and artistic purposes.Somatic experts abound across the Arts and creative practices (Clughen, 2017); in embodiment coaching (Embodiment Unlimited, 2023); in the ever-expanding range of embodied treatments, and there is talk of embodiment in a variety of contexts from faith traditions (Jolley, 2022) to epidemiology (Krieger, 2005).For people involved in the world of embodiment, this is not news -embodiment is the norm and embodiment is everywhere.Yet when I mention the term 'embodiment' to anyone outside of the field, the question is usually: 'What's that?' with the questioner awaiting a pithy and, hopefully, engaging response which says much more than the standard academic 'it is a contested term' (even though it is).
Embodiment may be everywhere, but, from my experience as an academic in UK higher education (HE), it does not seem to be commonly known in learning and teaching cultures.It still seems that, though embodiment is an area that is burgeoning internationally, HE has far to go to catch up with the idea that it is essential for learning and teaching.Despite long-term advocacy for kinaesthetic learning (Robinson, 2006), embodied learning, a more holistic, mindbody approach to learning, is not yet a paradigmatic pedagogic approach across HE.
Embodiment has recently been deemed 'a hot topic' (Jusslin et al., 2022) for current and future pedagogies, however, and the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has named embodied learning as one of six new approaches to teaching and learning through which innovative pedagogies can be developed and scaled for 21st century learning (Paniagua & Istance, 2018).This may seem surprising as embodiment has been a part of pedagogical research for many years.However, new educational contexts, such as the current concerns for embedding wellbeing into the curriculum (Houghton & Anderson, 2017) and advances in scientific research into the interwoven nature of the mindbody (Doherty & Forés Miravalles, 2019) have considerably advanced knowledge of embodiment and further elucidated the need for it in educational practice.The time is ripe, then, to renew and update the focus on embodiment and to grant it a central focus for pedagogic innovation in the future.
As I note above, calls for embodied pedagogies are not new.Almost three decades ago, the great US educationalist bell hooks (sic) lamented in her pioneering work Teaching to Transgress: Education as a Practice of Freedom (hooks, 1994) that 'individuals enter the classroom to teach as though only the mind is present, and not the body' (hooks, 1994, p. 191).Nor is it the case that embodiment is not already present across HE disciplines.It is.Embodiment can be found in research methods (Ellingson, 2018;Leigh & Brown, 2021;Thanem & Knights, 2019); academic writing and writing support (Clughen, 2017) and in the HE classroom itself (Clughen, 2022;de Freitas & Sinclair, 2012).However, such work exists, as Leigh (2018, p. i) argues, in silos rather than as a coordinated whole-university endeavour for learning and teaching and the time has arrived, perhaps, for the development of this approach.In this regard, embodiment would be written into university strategies, policies and practices that address pedagogy, feature in staff development programmes and become a central concern both within and without the classroom.I offer the following as a question to structure whole-university design: 'How have I considered the body in this?' Asking such a question has ramifications across the university and opens up exciting possibilities for creativity and innovation in learning and teaching from an embodied perspective.It may invite, for example, course tutors to take pleasure or relaxation seriously in module and session design (the brain functions better when positive feelings are mobilised or when it is given a chance to rest); assessments may encourage students to write about an issue which has moved them or aroused feelings such as curiosity or incredulity; classroom designers may note that bodies need to movethat sedentariness is neither propitious to bodily health and mental wellbeing nor to executive function (how might designers of learning spaces such as large-tiered lecture theatres respond to this question?Might areas for rest or active rest even become a feature of 21st century classrooms?).
It seems that hooks' clarion call for embodied pedagogies might usefully be reissued and modernised for today's educational contexts: the eminent educationalist Guy Claxton (2015, p. 2), for example, has charged academia with being 'overintellectualised' and 'somatically impoverished' and, although I am writing about the UK context, there are also reports that this situation pertains elsewhere (Stolz, 2021;Hrach, 2021, p. X).
There are, however, exciting signs of change.In the UK, for example, OneHE (2023) has recently promoted whole-body learning (Lang, 2022), breath work and feelings in their CPD courses for HE professionals and calls to modify educational practices through the optic of embodiment are being issued elsewhere (Hrach, 2021;Loftus & Kinsella, 2021;Stolz, 2021).Researchers are even proposing that it be considered as a potentially new interdisciplinary research field (Hegna & Ørbaek, 2021;Stolz, 2021).Maybe, given such renewed interest, embodiment is the future of Higher Education?

What is embodiment and how does it relate to learning?
Embodiment, despite my caveat above, is a contested term (Leigh, 2018, p. i).The body may have been promoted in other pedagogies, but in embodiment theory and practice, the body is foregrounded to challenge Cartesian mind/body separation and draw out and work practically with philosophical understandings that the body is wholly interconnected with the mind, so much so that it is sometimes written 'mindbody' or 'bodymind'.It therefore considers the body holistically and in all of its facets -in its relationship with the mind and knowledge production (including how bodily health forms part of the mindbody relationship); the body's relationship with feelings (for example, it may offer a neurophysiological approach to feelings and behaviours and consider how the autonomic nervous system not only regulates bodily processes such as breathing, but can also impact on feelings and related behaviours (see Porges, 2022)); and with the social (for example, how the body is constructed historically and socially or how social relationships might be influenced by human embodiment).The OECD sums this up: 'embodied learning connects the physical, the emotional and the social' (Paniagua & Istance, 2018, p. 84).Embodiment research for pedagogical purposes then considers how such relationships might affect learning and has various foci that may emphasise different aspects of the physical, emotional and social.Embodied learning research may, for instance, consider how we can use the senses in knowledge construction (as in kinaesthetic learning), or it may look at issues of empowerment through the body and ask how bodies can play a part in resisting dominant cultural structures and their material effects (see, for example, Clughen, 2002).
Embodiment, then, offers a deeply philosophical optic from which to view life and different aspects of embodiment are foregrounded in embodiment work.The ontological nature of embodiment may be emphasised so Guy Claxton, the eminent Professor of the learning sciences can say: 'we do not have bodies; we are bodies.If my body was different, I would be different' (2015, p. 3) and Amara Pagano, founder of Azul conscious dance organisation, can proclaim that 'Embodiment is a remembrance of who you are' (Personal communication, 9 October 2022).
The emphasis on embodiment as ontological also opens the door for embodied approaches to social justice as we respond to and carry the marks of social oppressions in our bodies: cultural meanings are ascribed to bodies, bodies are disciplined, chastised and othered and their effects are material -they are felt, embodied -and embodied approaches to social justice highlight this.The Embody Lab (2022), for instance, offers a certificate in Embodied Activism which uses embodiment for the creation of a more socially just world.In education, social activism was, of course, the motivation for bell hooks (1994, pp. 13-22) as she encouraged the recognition of human embodiment as a route to 'engaged pedagogy'.Embodiment is who we are, then, and for educators, this means that students are not just learners, they are embodied learners whose bodies are constructed in myriad social settings.
The ontological aspects of embodiment are often emphasised in relationship to epistemology.Given the interrelationship of the mindbody, instead of the limited formulation of the Cartesian 'I think therefore I am', which erases the body from the thinking process, academics and practitioners involved in embodiment foreground the role of the body in both thinking and being.The body is a starting point for explorations of the world -fully embroiled with thinking and knowledge production as well as the location of being and selfhood.Academics can thus talk about 'the intelligence of/in the flesh' (Blackman, 2008, p. 57;Brennan, 2004, p. 140;Claxton, 2015), emphasise that the body is the means through which we know the world (Clughen, 2014) and argue that the body is also knowledge-producing (Clughen, 2014;Thanem & Knights, 2019, p. 1).Therapies are created in appreciation that the body offers knowledges that may not be accessible to the thinking mind.Gabor Maté's method of Compassionate Inquiry (See Compassionate Inquiry, 2022), for example, looks to the body as a route to finding out knowledges deeply held within the body in order 'to enhance your perception of what is not being revealed overtly'.
The ontological and epistemological aspects of embodiment and their implications are variously emphasised and developed in embodiment practices.This can be seen in the replies from the panel of experts at the Embodiment Conference (Embodied Courses Ltd., 2020) when asked to define embodiment.Ilan Stephani (2020), for example, refuses to define embodiment as to define is to delimit, to reify the body as a knowable object, whereas the body is a process, ever-changing in its aliveness: 'Embodiment is something that I choose to not be able to define' (Stephani et al., 2020).She conveys both the notion of the body as our being and also of the ways in which it offers extra-discursive ways of knowing and engaging with the world that take us beyond what is available through language: 'It is a source of tapping into aliveness where even words have become unreal'.Philip Shepherd (Stephani et al., 2020) describes embodiment as an unending, relational process rather than a static object of knowledge and so the body constantly offers new knowledges about our experiences of the world: 'the body is a resonator (. ..) the body processes a billion times more information than we can be consciously aware of (. ..) you can't grasp it, you can't pin it down, but you can feel it'.
Embodiment practitioners help us to work with the above understandings and offer us practical, embodied practices so we can feel and experience what it means, for example, to say that the body is core to ontology and epistemology.I now offer an example from Mark Wash (Stephani et al., 2020) and invite readers to notice whether they feel the difference between the aforementioned discursive explorations of what embodiment might be and an embodied one.To explore what is meant by embodiment, Walsh invites conference participants to: Take your arm and compare looking at it as an object, as a thing.(. ..)Or we can look at our own arm and say 'wow', this is part of me; this has written poetry and had fights . . .held my wife's face; and held my own face when I was separated from her and couldn't get a visa; and held a baby (. ..).This is part of me and my life!Walsh's exercise here is a neat demonstration of an embodied pedagogy -a pedagogy which foregrounds the body to access knowledge -here in its explorations of the disciplinary threshold concept 'embodiment'.It also demonstrates that bodies are historically constructed and are the loci of our personal histories.

Applications to higher education pedagogy
The issue for advocates of embodiment for HE pedagogy is how to make it easily accessible.Stinson (2019) describes her resistance towards using 'the E-word' (Stinson 2019, p. xii) and speaks of her frustrations with the off-putting, highfalutin language that can be encountered in embodiment studies which can alienate and dissuade people from taking embodiment and all it has to offer a life and education seriously.I feel similarly, that, if embodiment is to be embedded within HE pedagogy, then a pragmatic approach will be needed that can be nuanced as appropriate.Embodiment professionals use practical techniques as a modus operandi and a subargument of this piece is therefore to therefore propose that the academy engages with embodiment professionals to develop embodied practices for education.A complex, but exciting challenge of this is to decide which techniques would fit the specific contexts of higher education (and certainly some of them, such as tantric practices, may seem rather outré for academic cultures), but I will present some embodiment practices that I have learned during my training with Embodiment Unlimited for my certificate in embodiment coaching (CEC) that may have a general application (Embodiment Unlimited, 2023).

Examples of embodied teaching practices
'An embodied teaching practice requires recasting cognition as a whole-body enterprise' (Hrach, 2021, p. x).

Example 1: Wellbeing in the classroom
In the interests of sharing pragmatic, accessible heuristics to generate embodied HE environments, professionals might make use of the following observation by Dr. Scott Lyons (2021) in the MindBody Therapy Summit (The Embody Lab, 2021): 'The body is who we are and how we are'.
Embodied practices, as they work on the 'who and how you are', might be used easily in a learning environment as the following example demonstrates.The practice is regularly used by Mark Walsh, a tutor in my Certificate of Embodiment Coaching course (Embodiment Unlimited, 2023), and it is simply to fill the liminal space at the beginning of a class as registers are taken and students are arriving by asking the students how they are.In my own teaching as a Spanish subject Lecturer, I also invite them to ask each other.The tone of this enquiry is important -it should not be the conventional, throw-away, empty question it often is in the UK, but asked as an important question that should be central to our lives -especially our lives as learners.As is typical in embodied teaching, students can be invited to answer with their bodies (eg hands pointing to the top of their heads to indicate 10/10 and then descending on a sliding scale) so the whole group gets a sense of how people are arriving at the session.Tutors can invite participants to notice how they are and to respond in their own minds or in pairs to the information they derive from their self-questioning.Is there something they can do to enhance their physical health (such as stretching) or wellbeing, for instance?Is there something they can suggest to support how others are?In this, the relational aspects of embodiment are also brought into the classroom.
Finally, as this is embodiment and therefore the body is taken seriously, it must also be pointed out that what can seem even the simplest technique can provoke deep reactions and using embodied approaches might therefore give rise to unexpected responses, even to a seemingly innocuous question like 'how are you?'It may be that students do not wish to engage with discussions of health or how they feel, as maybe this is just too personal for them.This is why ethics are core to embodiment approaches and choice over participation is fundamental.Students are always informed that they can choose to answer or not.Tutors can also build choice into the question, for example: 'you could ask your partners how they are or whether something positive or interesting has happened to them this week'.
The act of genuinely asking our students how they are may be simple, but is not a glib one.The University Mental Health Charter (n.d..) advocates a whole-university approach to student mental health in the UK and deems that it is a principle of good pedagogic practice to 'consider and seek to impact positively on the mental health and wellbeing of all students' (The University Mental Health Charter, n.d..).The quick act of asking students how they are generates such consideration and can serve to establish a culture of care, a culture wherein 'how you are' matters, and it matters for many reasons, but in learning and teaching it really matters because wellbeing is essential for learning.The 'how you are' matters for the 'who you are': an embodied learner.
Porges ' (2022, 2009) polyvagal theory is widely adapted for embodiment practices.It offers a neurobiological analysis to argue that our physiological state can have a strong impact on a host of issues including cognitive processes and mental states and foregrounds the role of the autonomic nervous system in this (Gerbarg & Brown, 2016;Porges, 2022).Simply put: if our nerves are frayed, we are unlikely to be able to focus or think rationally.We need to downregulate the nervous system, then, and a way of doing this is to make the exhale of the breath longer than the inhale.The longer exhale is said to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, the calming part of the nervous system (Wagner, 2016).This can be used for many purposes in higher education, such as calming nerves before assessments or presentations or calming an overwhelmed mind before writing.

Technique 1 -'Breathing out the rubbish'
I asked Mark Walsh (Embodiment Unlimited, 2023) to suggest an easy technique that I could use with my students and he recommended the following, very simple breathing practice: 1. Invite students to take 3 breaths and to make the out-breath longer than the in-breath if possible.2. As they breathe out, say 'breathe out and let go of all the rubbish'.
I have used this simple technique with my own students to invite them to focus at the beginning of a session and it was so popular that they would actually ask me 'to do that breathing thing'.I would also note that the language used with embodiment techniques is as important as the practice itself.Here, we see a specific way in which the language used attempts to be more common-place and, as such, non-alienating, to make the practice more accessible for the learner.

Technique 2: ABC centring
The idea of 'centring oneself' is present in popular discourse and refers to a way of bringing oneself back to calm.ABC Centring (The Embodiment Channel, 2017) offers a useful structure for this process.It is used in embodiment coaching when people seem confused or overwhelmed.This is of use in writing support where students can often present with a confusion of ideas and the writing support tutor will work with them to bring clarity to their thinking and writing.The ABC Centring technique is a way of using the body to do this and proceeds as follows: A-Awareness: Invite students to become aware of their body.B -Balance: Invite students to notice the balance of their body (are they leaning forwards, backwards?Can they bring a balance to their posture?).
C − 1. Core relaxation.Participants take their attention to their core and relax their stomachs by squeezing them and releasing.2. Connection.Participants are asked to think about someone or a being (a pet) who makes them smile.
The two techniques above are simple ways of using the body to work with the mind.They are also founded in mindbody unity and exemplify teaching practices that 'recast cognition as a whole-body enterprise', to return to Hrach's (2021, p.x) point with which I opened this section.By diverting attention away from the busy mind and into the body, both techniques provide a useful mental break that, as neuroscientists argue, is vital for brain function (Immordino-Yang et al., 2012).Techniques that focus inwards such as these provide space for the hippocampal/neural replay that is crucial for the consolidation of learning and memory (Terada, 2018).As Immordino-Yang et al. ( 2012) put it, 'rest is not idleness' -the brain actively processes material when given time to rest.

Social co-regulation in learning, teaching and writing
Another core aspect of polyvagal theory that is commonly used in embodied teaching and coaching is the idea of social co-regulation.Porges (2022) states that the principle that galvanises his entire work is that humans need and constantly seek safety.We need it to function in crucial areas of life such as health and wellbeing, being open to others socially and to feel resilient -all core concerns in modern academia.The contribution of polyvagal theory to the science of safety is its recognition of the physiological aspects underlying safety: it argues that our sense of safety is neurophysiological and mediated and regulated by the autonomic nervous system (Porges, 2022).If our nervous system is on alert for threat or attack, we need to downregulate or calm it and this, for Porges (2022), is done through the body: our bodies need to tell our brains that we are safe.
A way of promoting safety is through social co-regulation: 'sociality is a neuromodulator', says Porges (2022, p. 11).This is the idea that we can help each other to feel safe (help each other's nervous systems to calm and reach homoeostasis) by giving cues of safety such as openness to the other, positive regard and a sense of connection.Bodies can help to regulate other bodies, then.Social co-regulation can be promoted in an environment that is set up to generate a sense of genuine, positive connections between its participants and this can be done through our bodies: 'An optimally resilient individual has opportunities to co-regulate physiological state with a safe and trusted other.Ideally, the "other" person projects positive cues regarding their autonomic state through prosodic voice, warm welcoming facial expressions, and gestures of accessibility' (Porges, 2022, p. 11).
How does this relate to learning and teaching in higher education?I shall now discuss two examples of teaching techniques for social co-regulation from my own experience of embodied teaching both as a student and from my own practice in which I have endeavoured to bring an embodied approach to my writing support activities.

Technique 1: Social co-regulation in online learning
Online teaching can generate feelings of disconnection from the group; it can generate feelings of isolation (especially if student cameras are off) and insecurity when you have not developed connections with others with whom to co-regulate.In my embodiment course, one simple technique used to encourage social co-regulation was to invite participants to turn their cameras on (though noting the element of choice in this) and simply to flick through the screen to see who you were drawn to, who seemed 'nice' to you, friendly or soothing.Many participants would smile when doing this and the activity also invited a group dynamic of being open to others.Not only did this give online participants a sense that they were part of a group, but that they were part of a group where participants were aware of the importance of social co-regulation.
Breakout rooms are obviously a place in which co-regulation activities could be structured into the environment, and the following example may also function well in the breakout room.

Technique 2: Social co-regulation in writing support
Writing is an academic practice where discussions of safety are highly relevant.When you present your writing to others, you can fear criticism, attack, humiliation, or, and this is a fear I regularly encounter with students, a poor grade.I used to run and teach in a writing centre and have written about the insecurities that students used to bring to me regarding their writing (Clughen, 2014).These were expressed in deeply embodied ways -one student memorably wrote to me with a sense of shame that she felt she needed to be 'spoon-fed', for instance (Clughen & Connell, 2015, p. 46).Such were the vulnerabilities and insecurities expressed in my writing support consultations that I knew I needed to bring a sense of safety to writing support.I did this through what I now know to be an act of social co-regulation.I introduced the following activity into my writing support sessions and found that it worked well to signal safety and to generate a positive, embodied connection between me and the students that would work with their insecurities around their writing and build their ongoing sense of confidence and resilience.
A common aspect of writing support is to engage with students at the level of ideasworking with them to bring clarity to what they want to say.I brought embodied connection into this process by asking questions such as 'Do you mind if I say what resonates with me in your work?' or 'Is it ok if I say what I love about your writing?'This would allow me to connect with the writers with genuine feeling by describing how my personal experience chimed with what they had written or said to me.I would actively show my pleasure, excitement, interest or curiosity regarding their ideas and writing, so my facial expressions, gestures and voice were accordingly open and welcoming, as polyvagal theory recommends.Thus the writing support session became 'embodied'a discussion of ideas, but a discussion in which two beings were relating in an atmosphere of genuine interest in the other and where feelings mattered and positive regard was expressed.My experience was consistent with the arguments from polyvagal theory that soothing forms of social connection would downregulate the nervous system.Students frequently spoke about 'feeling better' about their writing and I would also see how this would then free them to write.This was, perhaps, because they now felt safe to do so as they had received positive regard for their writing.
As a general principle for adopting an embodied approach to writing support, then, I would argue that creating activities that focus on soothing around writing and that generate positive social connections in response to another's writing is not just a pleasant thing to do, but a vital part of an embodied pedagogy that would respond to the 'enduring lifelong quest to feel safe' (Porges, 2022) which, I would argue, also makes its way into the act of writing.This practice is not, of course, limited to writing but could relate to any student output.Using a classroom activity where students only focus on what they like or love about a peer's work and how it speaks to them is a simple way of mobilising social connection and, perhaps, compassion within the group and of creating a moment of safety during the creative process, a process which can involve moments of doubt and vulnerability.
The use of polyvagal theory for teaching and learning and the related concept of a 'soothing pedagogy' has many applications beyond support for writing and assessment.Soothing pedagogies also speak to the social aspects of embodiment which recognise that our bodies are shaped socially and culturally and are potentially the loci of social wounds and trauma.Marc Mason (2022), an advocate for trauma-informed teaching and learning in HE, invites us to recognise that students 'carry their trauma histories with them into the classroom' (para.1) so educators need to be aware that trauma may be present in our learning environments.This, he argues, is an important awareness as 'trauma states do not promote learning' (para.4) and, when such states are activated, for example, when potentially upsetting content is discussed, then 'learning is very unlikely to take place' (para.6).Mason recommends that educators familiarise themselves with responses to trauma as presented by polyvagal theory and argues for teaching approaches that would be sensitive to this potentiality.For example, he recommends alerting students to potentially triggering content in classes so they can make a decision about attendance.The 'soothing pedagogy' I describe here therefore provides a pedagogic principle and approach that, drawing on polyvagal theory, recognises and responds to appeals to create regulated, trauma-informed classrooms.I also hope the simple technique I describe here of inviting peers to appreciate each other's work demonstrates how tutors do not need to be therapists like Mason to use teaching approaches that soothe, promote social co-regulation and create a pleasant space for all students.

Conclusion: Is embodiment the future of higher education?
The opinion advanced in this piece is that embodiment constitutes an exciting paradigm with which to take higher education into the future.Scholars working on embodiment have advocated interdisciplinary approaches in order to galvanise existing knowledges and practices into a more coherent approach for educational practice and research, an approach which is, as yet, still in its infancy (Stolz, 2021).What I add to this call is that we also need to look beyond the university to develop embodied learning and teaching for the 21st century.Higher education professionals, I argue, would find great benefit in working with professional embodiment practitioners and, given the range of exciting practices available, this would be a novel approach to move forward with embodied learning.Collaborative partnerships, I believe, would considerably enhance the knowledge and practice base of disciplinary experts.To widen the gaze beyond the university, I propose, in addition, that HE professionals might usefully take professional embodiment training and/or engage with embodiment communities and, to contribute further to existing calls to systematise embodiment within HE, I offer a glimpse into this world in this article.
I do not pretend, however, that it is easy to transfer work from professional embodiment practices into academia as it is either difficult to see how different modalities can be embedded and the cultural othering of the body in academia may even make them seem bizarre -students and staff may feel awkward or selfconscious if they are not used to foregrounding the body as a way of knowing and being.Here, I have endeavoured to suggest embodied pedagogies that might be more feasible and tolerated in higher education, but I am under no illusion about the difficulties inherent in moving towards an embodied university when experts in embodiment still report feelings of nervousness when asking students to do anything physical (Hrach, 2021, pp. 107-8).I hope, in writing this, however, that higher education professionals rise to the challenge.My belief is that embodied learning and teaching is a pleasurable, humane and indeed an essential approach to modern academic concerns and endeavours.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Lisa Clughen is a Senior Lecturer in Spanish in the Nottingham Institute of Languages and Intercultural Communication (NILIC) at Nottingham Trent University (NTU), UK.She also established and ran a writing and academic support centre in the School of Arts and Humanities, NTU, from 2002-2016.Her research centres around embodiment for pedagogy and wellbeing and her current focus is on mindful movement for student learning, mental health and wellbeing.