Advocates of embodied or carnal ethnography, including Loïc Wacquant and others, argue that researchers must immerse themselves in the physical and social worlds of their participants to the fullest extent possible. This methodological stance privileges procedural or practical knowledge over so-called cerebral or passive knowledge, and assumes that, with enough persistence, any researcher can undertake such immersion despite potential risks. But what happens when the researcher has limitations—physical, cognitive, or emotional—that prevent full participation or immersion? This article critiques the methodological imperative of embodied ethnography through the lens of disability. Drawing from my experience as a researcher with a hidden disability, I reflect on the ethical and methodological dilemmas of embodied research. During my fieldwork with commercial fishermen, I was invited to join participants at sea—a valuable opportunity for immersive ethnography, but one that posed serious risks to my health and wellbeing. Declining these invitations forced me to reconsider traditional ethnographic expectations and instead embrace a research approach that accounted for my embodied constraints. Rather than seeing this as a failure of ethnographic rigor, I argue that these limitations generate unique insights, fostering reflexivity, critical distance, and methodological creativity. This work also critiques the binary between “participant-observer” and “observant-participant,” demonstrating how the disabled researcher occupies a liminal space between these categories, neither claiming nor collapsing epistemic distance and insider/outsider status. Ultimately, this article calls for methodological inclusivity that moves beyond the assumption that immersion is the gold standard of qualitative research. Rather than striving for a universal imperative of embodiment in fieldwork, ethnography must embrace a plurality of approaches that acknowledge the diverse ways that researchers engage with their fields.