Having empathy means that a person is capable of understanding the feelings of others. It is not enough to understand these feelings, however. To truly share the feelings of another one must take action to experience them. Embodied empathy in someone means that they have felt its effects on a physical level – such that they have felt it completely.
When empathy is embodied in this way it becomes tangible and is no longer something a person can choose to ignore – it becomes a part of them. Feeling something is a necessary but not sufficient condition for having empathy. Instead, it must be perceptible on a physical level and be expressed and performed. To embody empathy is literally for a person to give their body to an experience – to allow it to fill them completely. Only then can someone truly say that they have walked in another’s shoes.