Apprentice Insights | I am learning to hold both

Dominica Smith Jun. 12, 2026

Dominica's essay beautifully illustrates the pendulum swing between ascension (soaring above the flesh) and embodiment (drowning in the wound), and the inner labor required to bring those two worlds into sacred balance.

I Am Learning To Hold Both

For a long time, I thought healing meant getting above myself.

Above the thought.

Above the feeling.

Above the memory.

Above the body.

I thought if I could become healed enough, disciplined enough, evolved enough, I would finally stop being touched by the things that hurt me. I would stop circling the same grief. I would stop returning to the same shame. I would stop needing so much reassurance from my own body.

There was a part of me that wanted transcendence because I was tired.

Tired of feeling.

Tired of explaining myself to myself.

Tired of carrying old stories in my muscles, my breath, my posture, my choices.

Photo by gryffyn m on Unsplash

So when I encountered teachings about witnessing, detachment, spaciousness,

surrender, and cutting through thought, I understood the beauty of them. I still do. There is a real mercy in learning that you are not every thought that passes through your mind. There is freedom in discovering that you do not have to obey every emotional weather pattern inside of you.

But I have also learned that the teachings we need can become the very place we hide.

Sometimes “witnessing” becomes a way to leave the room of the body.

Sometimes “non-attachment” becomes emotional distance dressed in holy clothing.

Sometimes “cut the thought” sounds like wisdom, but inside the body it feels like another abandonment.

And I say that with tenderness, because I have needed those teachings. I have leaned on them. I have tried to use them to become better, lighter, less reactive, less human. But there were parts of me that did not need to be transcended. They needed to be met.

This has taken me years to understand.

There were seasons when my body was carrying things my mind could not organize. I thought my repetitive thoughts were evidence that I was failing spiritually. I thought my emotional intensity meant I lacked discipline. I thought if I were stronger, more awake, more devoted, I would be able to rise above the ache.

But the body is not always trying to sabotage us.

Sometimes the body repeats because something has not yet been heard.

Sometimes the nervous system keeps returning to the wound because the wound is not asking for philosophy. It is asking for safety.

This is where embodiment became medicine for me.

Not as a trend. Not as a performance. Not as another identity to wear. But as a return.

Breath by breath.

Muscle by muscle.

Truth by truth.

Through movement, through voice, through the slow humiliation of realizing I could not think my way into safety, I began to understand that healing does not happen only in the mind. The body has to believe us. The body has to be included. The body has to be given a different experience, not just a better explanation.

For me, embodiment was not aesthetic. It was not soft lighting and beautiful language. It was confronting how much I had abandoned myself while trying to become good. It was seeing where I had performed peace instead of telling the truth. It was feeling the bracing in my ribs, the holding in my throat, the way my breath shortened when I was afraid to be honest.

It was painful.

And it was necessary.

But now I am beginning to see another edge.

Just as spirituality can become a way to bypass the body, embodiment can become a way to bypass the soul.

There is a way of doing “the work” that becomes endless. Endless processing. Endless tracking. Endless regulating. Endless naming of every wound, every trigger, every sensation, every protective pattern. And yes, there is value in that awareness. But awareness without orientation can become another loop.

A person can know every wound and still not be free.

A person can understand their nervous system and still not know what they are living for.

A person can become so loyal to the body’s history that they forget the body is also capable of becoming a vessel for something new.

That is the place I am standing now.

I do not want to use spirit to escape my humanity. But I also do not want to make my humanity the ceiling of my life.

I do not want to float above the body. But I also do not want to drown in the body.

I want to learn how to hold both.

The grounded and the lifted.

The wound and the witness.

The nervous system and the soul.

The truth of what happened and the responsibility of what I become next.

This is not a clean process. It is not the kind of healing that looks graceful from the outside.Real integration is often awkward. It asks more of us than either extreme.

It is easier to rise above everything and call it peace.

It is also easier to stay inside the wound and call it authenticity.

But integration asks for something more honest.

It asks me to feel what I feel without making every feeling my identity.

It asks me to witness my thoughts without using spiritual discipline to silence the part of me that is still hurting.

It asks me to take responsibility without collapsing into shame.

It asks me to honor my body without letting old fear become my authority.

That is growth for me.

Not becoming untouchable.

Not becoming perfectly regulated.

Not becoming a person who never aches, never reacts, never grieves, never needs.

Growth is that I can see more now.

I can see where I used spiritual ideas to avoid feeling.

I can see where I used pain to avoid changing.

I can see where I wanted someone else to give me the answer because trusting my own body felt too dangerous.

I can see where I confused intensity with truth, and where I confused detachment with maturity.

And still, I have compassion for the woman who did all of that.

She was trying to survive.

She was trying to be good.

She was trying to become light because life had felt so heavy.

I do not reject her anymore.

I am trying to bring her with me.

This is what I wish more healing spaces would make room for: the complexity. The fact that we can need discipline and tenderness. We can need accountability and compassion. We can need the body and the witness. We can need the ground and the sky.

The old traditions knew this better than we often do now. They did not separate the body from the sacred so casually. Breath, posture, sound, prayer, stillness, movement and devotion. These were never meant to be competing languages. They were meant to shape the whole person.

The body was not something to escape.

But it was also not the final destination.

The body was the instrument.

The place where truth becomes visible.

The place where devotion becomes practiced.

The place where spirit has to become honest.

That is what I am learning through my own work now.

In movement, I see how the body tells the truth before the mind is ready. In voice, I hear where I am still holding back. In breath, I meet the places where I am braced against life. In stillness, I remember there is something in me larger than the wound.

None of these are separate anymore.

My body teaches me where I am defended.My spirit reminds me I am more than my defenses.My life asks me to make that understanding real.

I think this is the next layer of healing for me: not choosing between ascension and embodiment, but refusing to use either one as an escape.

I want a spirituality that can touch the ground.

I want an embodiment that still remembers the sacred.

I want a life where my pain is not denied, but also not enthroned.

I want to become spacious without disappearing. Grounded without becoming heavy. Honest without becoming cruel. Soft without becoming vague. Strong without becoming armored.

Maybe that is what integration really is.

Not the absence of struggle, but a different relationship to it.

Not the end of pain, but the ability to let pain become wisdom instead of identity.

Not leaving the body.

Not becoming only the body.

And so I remain. Open. Uncertain. Willing. Trusting that something larger than my understanding is already at work.

Apprentice,

Dominica Smith