From Knowing to Feeling: When Faith Became Embodied

For much of my life, my faith lived in my head.

I believed.
I professed.
I showed up.
I served.

Yet underneath it all, my body was in constant motion fight, flight, brace, endure.

Day in, day out. Doing the “right” things. Saying the “right” prayers.
But living with a quiet sense of disconnection, restlessness, and no clear sense of direction.

I didn’t have language for it then, but my nervous system was exhausted, and my heart was holding far more than I knew.

My healing journey began not with more striving, but with learning something simple and confronting: how to listen to the body’s language.

Through somatic work learning the felt sense , I began to notice sensations, rhythms, responses that had been ignored for years. Tension. Constriction. Numbness. A low hum of anxiety that prayer alone had not quieted.

And something unexpected happened.

As I slowed down enough to feel, I began to sense

Christ’s presence not just around me but within me.

Not as an idea.
Not as a belief I needed to reaffirm.
But as something experienced.

For the first time, what I had long professed with my mouth was being felt in my body.

What surprised me most was this:
God’s presence no longer felt conditional on “good days” or moments of worship or emotional highs.

It became steady.

Like a gentle hum.
A rhythm.
A flowing current beneath everything.

Christ felt present not just in peace but in discomfort.
Not just in clarity, but in confusion.
Not just when I was composed but when I was dysregulated.

It was as though my body finally had the safety to recognise what my spirit had known all along.

“The Kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21)

This wasn’t new theology.
It was new access.

Before this, I moved through life without direction, functioning, surviving, doing my best yet often living in fight or flight.

I loved God, but I didn’t feel anchored.

My days blurred together.
My body carried urgency without purpose.
My heart longed for something I couldn’t name.

And then, slowly, as I learned to listen beneath the surface, I realised something profound:

God had already placed the calling within my heart, but my body needed safety before it could be revealed.

Today, sitting in church, I came across a verse I had read before, but never felt:

“The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out.” Proverbs 20:5

And suddenly, everything made sense.

The heart is deep water.
Not shallow.
Not rushed.
Not accessed through effort alone.

Insight is not force.
It is presence.
It is attunement.
It is learning how to approach the depths gently.

This is what somatic work offered me not an alternative to faith, but a way of drawing out what God had already placed within.

So many Christian women have learned to override their bodies:

• to stay composed

• to spiritualise discomfort

• to mistrust emotion

• to keep moving even when the body is pleading to pause

But Scripture never tells us the heart is dangerous, it tells us it is deep.

And deep waters require wisdom, patience, and safety.

Somatic work teaches insight. It helps us listen beneath words and beliefs, where unprocessed fear, grief, and longing live waiting not to be fixed, but to be met.

When the body feels safe, the heart begins to speak and when the heart speaks, calling becomes clear.

This is why I do what I do.

Not to pull women away from faith, but to help them come home to it in a way that is embodied, integrated, and whole.

Healing didn’t make my faith louder.
It made it truer.

What I once believed, I now feel.
What I once sought externally, I now sense internally.
What once felt distant now flows steadily through me.

The heart’s deep waters were never empty, they simply needed insight to be drawn out.

If your faith has lived mostly in your thoughts, but your body longs to feel what your heart believes, this may be an invitation. Embodying His grace is not about striving harder or fixing yourself, it’s about creating safety to experience Christ’s presence as steady, near, and within.
Through a somatic, Christ-centred approach “embody his love”, we learn to listen to the body’s language so the heart’s deep waters can be gently drawn out.
Or read further our blog :Christ in the Body: Somatic Healing and the Death of the Old Self