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Anthea Bell | Embodiment Coach & Public Speaker

@ab_embodiment

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Coach to Creatives & Performers
Founder • AB Embodiment
Facilitator • Embodiment Training
Host • Embodied Podcast
Creativity | Visibility | Intimacy

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There is a version of fear that does not announce itself - and yet, unattended, will influence every aspect of the life you build.

Not panic; nor paralysis.

Patterning - an invisible thread running underneath your “personality”, actions & predictions, based on root beliefs and the meanings you made very early on...

You’ll feel it more than see it - in the hot/cold relationships you seem to attract, the opportunities you can’t quite will yourself to take, the hesitance to take action that materialises your deeper wish.

And I see it even in the women I coach who are extraordinarily “high-performing”. Capable, driven, deeply aware, incredibly effective - held back by an invisible block. Caught in the struggle: desperately willing growth, and yet inadvertently pushing the possibility of greater prosperity, connection & expansion away.

The story living through them, embodied in their tussle, isn’t always the one they think it is:

Not necessarily “I am not good enough”.

Go back further - deeper:

“I am not loved”.

The lie that gave rise to everything else.

A conviction so early embedded that most people have never named it. And yet when you trace back the people-pleasing, the overworking, the self-abandonment, the body-contorting, the ways we have made ourselves useful rather than present - it’s almost always there.

The practice for all of us is not to bulldoze through the stop sign. It’s to stay. To bring curiosity and care to the thing that has been protecting / preventing you for so very long. And to begin, slowly, to let the armour of efficiency / perfection down.

This is the territory I find myself most drawn to in my work. And it is exactly where Season 9 of The Embodied Podcast is going to go. The episode this clip is taken from is our Launch conversation - with one of the most inspiring women I’ve ever come to know... @enneagramjedi - a seminal figure in therapeutic circles, who’s life’s work has been guiding communities from fear, into love. You see her here for a flash, ahead of our full interview airing this Autumn. If you’d like to be the first to know, my newsletter link is in the bio.

A x

#Embodied #EmbodiedPodcast #SelfWorth by @ab_embodiment

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2 months ago

Something I want to offer to anyone navigating a relationship where the other person seems to shut down, pull back, or withhold.

—> This is arguably the most important thing to understand if you love / are drawn to someone whose relationship with intimacy, conflict or openness is fundamentally different from yours.

Their withdrawal is not a verdict on your worth. Nor your value to them, or their capacity for “love”.

It’s their best attempt - practiced, patterned, neurobiologically influenced and largely unconscious - to manage something that feels internally overloading.

The closing off isn’t directed at you. It’s directed at the strain they cannot yet find a way to digest. It’s a pushing back of what feels too much to stomach.

The pain you feel in response to it is real: truthful for you, because of what it brings up within you, and what you make it mean (again, often without knowing you’re perceiving through a filter)

The longing, the personalisation, the sense of being rejected. Truthful to your felt experience - meriting deep care.

And / but - as you tend to yourself, we have to also find the wider truth. That the sting for you, for us, comes from what pre-exists either in the relationship or inside of you.

If we’re talking about familiarity seeking, you may have been drawn toward someone in a more avoidant pattern precisely because your own history recognised it. Which means - the person who’s most able to meet your true need for warmth, for connection, for uninhibited closeness, is you. And, very simply, you may be facing a mismatch of need in this particular dynamic.

You as the answer isn’t a consolation prize.

It’s the most beautiful & meaningful work there is. From that place, naturally, the people you are drawn to and attach will change - as you do. As your truth with yourself, estimation of your wants, advocating in your own life, shifts.

If you want a deeper exploration of how to navigate intimacy blocks and difficult relationship dynamics, you’ll find a three part series on exactly this, waiting for you on the grid.

A x

#Embodied #Relationships #Attachment #Intimacy #SelfCompassion by @ab_embodiment

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23 days ago

Low self-worth and an inflated sense of importance are not opposites.

For many of us, creatives, those who have navigated addiction, mental health, the long road back to self, they are the same breath. I am nothing. I am everything. I am the reason it all holds together. I am utterly disposable.

The work with actors begins there. In that tension.

Because inside every creative is a drive, irrespective of fear, to be visible. To be entitled to a stage. To get big. And the only thing standing between them and full self-expression is a question they are still quietly asking:
Am I allowed?

The answer, always, is not a question of permission. It never was.
You have something to share. That is enough. That has always been enough.

If you’re working with this, I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

#YouAreEnough #Actors #Embodied by @ab_embodiment

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6 months ago

I can't be with myself. But I can't be with you as myself.

If that lands somewhere familiar - this one is for you.

Inside so many of us lives this tender conflict. A yearning to be known, felt, tended to. And an incapacity to be truly ourselves in exactly the conditions that could create real connection. Lived as. But never worked through.

When the sense of not-belonging is held deeply enough - imprinted somatically, reinforced behaviourally - it becomes impossible to let life in. Others simply can't compete with the far more frequent self-narrative the system has been running for decades. And so we move through the world at disjoint. Achieving, connecting, performing - and somehow, still ghostly.

What I've found - in a decade of supporting others through this, and navigating it myself - is that the pathway back isn't through waiting to be found by someone who finally sees you. That defers recovery for far too long.

It begins with presence. With the body. With the radical, unglamorous act of listening to yourself so consistently that the legacy of the unheard "just me" begins to correct.
And from there - honesty. With yourself and with others. Not simply saying what you want, but practising, piecemeal, the letting go of mirage.

These two things together create a wholeness that ends the lonely curse. And from wholeness, we finally begin to pattern the very relationships we felt so shut off from before.

I've explored this much more fully in one of my latest Substack posts - it goes deep, and I think if this reached you, so will that. 🔗 Link in bio to read.

A x

#Embodied #Attachment #SelfConnection #Relationships #InnerWork by @ab_embodiment

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2 days ago

I spent far too long trying to make myself “less”. I wonder if you relate?

Less warm, less open, less visibly moved by the world around me. More conveniently, or perhaps conventionally, neutral.

Operating from the belief that my sensitivity - this particular flavour of perceptive aliveness - was somehow naive or unfashionable. Burdensome perhaps, weak. At the very least, out of place in a world that seemed to amplify intellect, wordless authority and invulnerable emotional self-sufficiency.

I’d like to offer you the reframe that could have released a younger me.

The degree to which you allow yourself to feel - to be genuinely passionate about the mission you are leading; to love deeply, openly, without apology; to find beauty in all the busyness of the world - it’s not a liability.

Nuanced, yes. Sometimes painfully delicate, yes.

But turned right, validated, balanced - it’s also an attunement that creates deep resonance for those you touch. A soft welcome that facilitates shifts not possible in a more guarded, polished person. Your humanity, put simply, offers theirs. Opens theirs.

The most extraordinary creatives, artists and performers are those who liberate all of them in service of their art. Sensitivity, hope, rage included. Not as retaliation - as the permission to breathe into every corner of themselves.

SO:

If you were born noticing, feeling, atuning, adoring - don’t block yourself. Your mastery lies in your openness to be all of this, and embody it in the life you cultivate.

There is no other way you’re meant to be: just this. All of this. As you.

Let me know which part of this lands for you below.

A x

#Embodied #Sensitivity #Creativity #Visibility #DeepFeelers by @ab_embodiment

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3 days ago

We have become deeply uncomfortable with “need”. Or should I say, “neediness”.

In a culture that prizes cool detachment and self-sufficiency above almost everything else - to express a desire, a longing, a genuine wish for closeness or care, has been quietly reframed as weakness. Wanting. A lack that discredits its author.

So many of the people I work with have internalised that label - celebrated and famous as they might be. They’ve made “need” mean something about their worth. Their capability. Their validity to desire.

Here is what I want you to hear.

When someone tells you that YOU are too much, or that your needs are needy, they speak from their lens - their reaction to what you display. No more authoritative than yours.

Almost all they are ever communicating is that they do not have the capacity (or perhaps, willingness) to meet what you are asking for.

That’s data about them - and about the fit. Not a verdict on you. The labelling of you is a boundary aimed at ceasing your ask - which again, tells you something….

Sometimes the information is genuinely useful. Caringly expressed, feedback on patterns you might not have known inside of you.

A reflective pointer (consider rather than automatically assume its truth). And always, a guide back toward yourself - toward what only you can give yourself and/or toward relationships that are a better match for the full spectrum of your desires.

Be careful, about how deeply you allow the statement itself to land. How hard it hits, the ways it lingers… therein lies your history.

The truth is not that you are too much. It’s that you have been in conversation with someone who is not available for what you desire.

That is all. Un-clench accordingly.

A x

#Embodied #Relationships #Attachment #Boundaries SelfWorth by @ab_embodiment

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4 days ago

Some people leave this life in surrender, trusting that even the hardest parts, they were held by something larger. Will be now, held by skin beyond their own.

Others leave believing the world was always against them. Struggling and pushing a greater intimacy away, right until the end.

Echo Giesel Widmer @_ourecho_ has held passage with both.

What she’s found is that the patterns you see at death aren’t a departure - but a symbol. Of the strife and disconnected mistrust that so many fall prey to. Or, the buoyancy and faith they’ve spent a lifetime re-creating.

She points us back to presence - asking the sobering question of which reality we’re investing in. Perhaps, dislodging the conviction that what we feel we navigated, has to guide what we imagine we can create.

Choice is here. The question is: can our eyes open enough to see it?

Comment PODCAST and I’ll send you episode two.

A x

#EmbodiedPodcast #DeathDoula #Presence by @ab_embodiment

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5 days ago

The thing that so often stands in the way of someone in mental health crisis, wanting to heal - isn’t the desire to change.

It’s the self-blame / shame that’s become so persistent, so automatic, that they’ve stopped asking for help. A personalising, labelling, self-condemnation, that keeps them silent.

My addiction, my anxiety, my depression, means something debasing about me - and so, in a world asking for my betterment, or my performance, I best keep it quiet. Silently striving to improve a problem I can’t possibly solve from the same mind tortured by the problem.

Somewhere, we’ve lost our faith in & provision of connective forms of healing that actually help.

Your “ism” isn’t your fault.

You know it, but I feel forcibly required to remind you of it. However much you feel you might contribute to its continued impact.

You aren’t to blame. Nor is anyone else.

The place of sanity is to start with “currently, this is”. From that place of neutrality comes a springboard of options & actions that truly encounter your present experience without the heaviness of shame.

So many things feed into addiction. Understanding, compassionate review, are profoundly impactful strategies on the road to recovery. But nothing hits as deeply as learning to hold yourself through your experience while releasing the burden of identification with it.

I share my experience, because it’s our experience. You relate to one another’s, because our collective suffers from all the same pains & reprieves.

Don’t lose yourself in a label only ever meant to support your clarity - find the human beneath the pathology. Find freedom in all that you are, including this.

A x

#Embodied #MentalHealth #Addiction #Destigmatise #Compassion by @ab_embodiment

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9 days ago

Season Nine is live; steeped in conversations with the most insightful figures I know.

And as a little celebration - a gift.

I’ll be giving away a free 45 minute 1:1 session with me. All you have to do is leave a review for the podcast on your platform of choice, screenshot it, and send it to us via DM. Share this reel to your story for a second entry.

Now, to our first episode - and an opportunity to rewrite the narratives driving you.

How many of you are led by a socialised rule that limits not only your expression, but the fullness & authenticity you desire to create?

Be nice.
Be kind.
Be quiet.
Be selfless - so as not to risk the “:selfishness” that’s become a black mark in a simplistically moralised world.
Make of yourself different - for the benefit of another person’s comfort...

I wonder how many of these invisible requirements appear before you’ve even heard your own opinion, your own choice?

Dr Deborah Threadgill Egerton @enneagramjedi has made a career in naming the stereotypes and psychological tendencies that cut a life short of its full vitality - often programmed so young, we spend decades trying to outgrow our template.

The need to be small, to be safe, being one of them.

In this first conversation of the season, she offers a revision - one set to empower everyone who’s felt too afraid to expand.

This one is for every woman who’s ever shrunk to keep the peace.

Comment PODCAST and I’ll send you episode one.

A x

#EmbodiedPodcast #SeasonPremier #Visibility #Giveaway by @ab_embodiment

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10 days ago

Something I want to offer to anyone who recognises themselves as the one who pulls back.

Most of us yearn for intimacy. And yet so many of us find ourselves in patterns of withholding, erecting walls, keeping the people we love at a careful distance. And rather than judging that tendency, I want to invite a little curiosity toward it.

Because the pushing away is almost never about the other person.

When I have found myself in that place, the wall has been there because on some level, closeness felt like an intrusion. Not because I did not want connection, but because somewhere along the way, love and self-abandonment had become the same thing. If I say yes to you, I have to give you everything. And there will be nothing left for me.

When someone has spent their life giving beyond what feels comfortable, constantly tapped out by the demands of the world around them, it makes complete sense that intimate relationship becomes the place they finally, quietly, close the door. Not out of coldness. Out of a deep and unspoken need to preserve what little is left.

Understanding this, in yourself or in someone you love, changes the conversation entirely. The withdrawal is not a verdict. It is a signal. And it deserves to be met with curiosity rather than pursuit.

A x

#Embodied #Relationships #Attachment #Intimacy #SelfPreservation by @ab_embodiment

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11 days ago

Season Nine is here; and what a way to begin.

There’s a particular tensioning - a latent ache - from experiencing all the push of this world, without ever tasting its pause.

The digestion gap, the rest - when we ease back enough not only to soften, but to feel ourselves more truly here. To hear what’s whispering, open our senses, and notice the greater reality of which we are a part. A subtle, listening mysticism. And a balance - between our creativity, our drive, and the nurture that supports it.

Dr Deborah Threadgill Egerton @enneagramjedi has spent decades exploring the human condition - its psychological, spiritual & emotional foundations, its keenest challenges, and the pathways beyond them.

Her experience has taught her one, core truth -

That progress without nurture cannot sustain.

That achievement without community, connection and intimacy - is a hollow half of what togetherness gives. And that a life of outstanding “success” will never match a life of nourished purpose.

She calls us back to the feminine, as a principle that cares for our endeavours. That holds, and stewards.

Listen in - it’s hard to capture how much this interview gave me. Comment PODCAST and I’ll send you the episode in full.

#EmbodiedPodcast #SeasonPremier #Permission #Visibility by @ab_embodiment

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12 days ago

Reflecting on the Oxford Masters Transform Trauma Conference; 4-days of immersive learning with the greats of biopsychosocial health.

The past four days have been some of the most touching of my life - the ripple of deeply meaningful conversations, with figures devoted to evolving us beyond the isolation and dissociation so normalised in modern culture.

On Monday, I had the privilege of hosting an opening panel for Masters - showcasing the insights of @drtaraswart , @jamieclements_ and @rayyanzaf on what they coin the “meaning crisis”: the almost epidemic levels of dissociation, disconnection & uncertainty governing modern life. Narrowed stress states, adaptive patterns, addictive leanings, achievement drive - all moving us further away from the anchoring power of heart, spiritual, self-and-other connection that make life its most profound.

Throughout the talk, and our ensuing 3 days, what struck me most was the simplicity of what we truly need - what we long for. A sense of loving, living communion with all that’s here.
Biologically-programmed, evolutionarily-cued - the theme of almost all great art. All of it rests on our intimacy - rooted, in presence.

As I listened to Tara, Jamie and Rayyan - their personal stories & professional insights all confirmed the same thing. That for a human to live in peace, joy and harmony, they have to be able to feel their place within the family of things. And in a world that systemically divorces us from that perception - it takes a return to our base nature, and our most ancient traditions, to bring us home.

By anchoring to a purpose that includes, and yet transcends us - we find meaning.

By being willing to walk with curiosity, attunement and integrity - we open ourselves up to a radically different reality than the one individualistic culture would promote.

The greatest givers in life are often the most simple. In considering the evolution beyond trauma - I couldn’t think of a more powerful takeaway.

For a deeper dive into the week, my Substack this week goes further.

A x

#Embodied #TransformTrauma #MeaningCrisis #Oxford @masterseventsltd by @ab_embodiment

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15 days ago