We never take the time to reflect, even for a few minutes, as we move from one task to another. Reflection is a phrase often misconstrued – it’s about learning time about oneself and one’s impact – it is also an opportunity for restoring and resetting oneself to show up well to the next task or meeting. Self-reflection is a skill and significantly benefits from an understanding of how we humans function and, most significantly, how our nervous system functions.

Learning how to utilise our body wisdom is a potent gateway to healthily and effectively manage the many stressors of this world, at work, at home and in society. Much is changing in the world, with increasingly numerous and complex demands and challenges landing on us all. Many of these trigger us into our survival patterns of flight, fight, freeze or fold that are embedded in the programming of our nervous system. All are responses to help us somehow deal with threat and survive. The culture of our westernised world also tends to bombard us with low grade stressors, such that we are always ‘switched on’, negatively impacting our wellbeing. We are unfortunately not so good at – or practiced at – ‘switching off’ and into true rest and recovery. When the demands on us are high and persistent, we will likely be making more withdrawals on our energy reserves than deposits. We become depleted, with often just enough energy for maintenance and sometimes we burnout. Depleted, there is not sufficient energy for learning and change which, along with movement, is the most energy demanding call on our system. We can, however, learn skills to help us be better able to respond to what is being asked of us and what we are asking of life.

Humans are social beings, significantly affecting and being affected, by others. We naturally co-regulate and we do this from the moment we are born, with our care givers and throughout our lives. As we move to adulthood, we also learn to self-regulate, although to varying degrees based on our life experience and our co-regulation experience with others. A feature of excessive stress is dysregulation – a poor ability to manage our energy and responses appropriately to the situation and the impact we want. If a leader shows up dysregulated, not only are they not at their best, they will trigger whoever they are meeting into a dysregulated response, unless that person has the sufficient skills to selfregulate – which then places an additional demand on that person’s energy budget as they recover. Consistently showing up dysregulated creates a culture of dysregulation, which is a culture that is less than it could be and one that demands a lot of energy to be spent responding to an experience of not being safe and secure. This is not supportive of creative and high performance and it is not creating wellbeing that is a foundational experience of being at our best. Here is one way in which the buck stops with leadership.

Under stress and dysregulation, we tend to contract in body and mind, reducing access to the executive functions of our brain and depleting our range of choices. We respond from our habitual reactive patterns that are not necessarily the best choice for the situation. We also tend to disconnect from others and are on alert for threat – often misreading signals – so that we see danger where there is none. The state can become reinforcing. In contrast, we all know that at our best, we feel open, engaged, expansive, grounded, connected, creative, energised, and we feel safe and secure. We feel confident to venture out to meet challenges and we are more willing to risk, fail and learn. It is an experience that, sometimes, just seems to happen to us, and it is one we can also consciously create through embodiment practices. How a leader shapes themselves, shows up and centres themselves in relation to what is in front of them, can extend and enrich the possibilities of what that leader and those around them can say, do and be. The way we are shaping ourselves in mind and body has consequences.

Embodiment works with a set of processes and practices and a philosophy and psychology to support leaders and others to develop and extend their leadership capacities. This approach works with the natural inherent interweaving of our mind, emotions and body, working from the inside out and from the outside in. The way we sit, stand and more generally the way we shape ourselves – this is more than the typical body language approach – influences the way we perceive, think and relate. When stressed or dysregulated, the brain, along with the nervous system, is primarily engaged in survival strategies and access to our executive function is reduced. We do not easily change with thought alone. The easiest and quickest way to regulate and come into balance is through the breath and reorganising the body. This reorganisation is particularly effective through the practices of establishing a centred presence. A centred presence opens a leader to a grounded capacity to be with what is arising, in a flexible, adaptive and creative way. Learning how to centre, leaders can be self-resourced and connected in such a way that they are able to show up transparently and with a vulnerability which has the quality of strength rather than imagined weakness.

A leader engaging in these body and mind practices is working with some of the latest findings in neuroscience and biology around human performance and the ancient principles of Eastern wisdom, Taoism, Zen and the martial arts. The old and new, pointing in the same direction and blending theory, practice and pragmatic action. We have an inherent understanding of centre, which can be developed and refined. Ask people about being centred and they all know that experience and, asking them to sit in a centred way, they tend to take a similar posture with feet flat on the floor and shoulder width apart, grounded and also relatively upright, balanced and symmetrical in the body. The words they use to describe this state, are calm, confident, ease, flowing, expanded and uplifted. Quite a collection of qualities, so why don’t we take ourselves there more often? The answer is, of course, habit and those pressing survival patterns and strategies which will win out when we are not paying attention. We can however, with practice and awareness, recognise when we are entering one of those survival patterns and make a shift towards a more resourceful centred state.

Elements of centring are a breath practice, supporting a posture that is uplifted, grounded, balanced and open, an expansion of our awareness to enhance a sense of relationship with others and the context, a releasing of tensions and an inviting of ease. When we find centre, the cognitive, emotional and intuitive intelligences work collaboratively together. We have more capacity and more flexibility and adaptability. We perceive with more clarity of thought and act with more compassion and we are more able to handle pressure, build better relationships and are more comfortable facing the unknown. A centred state like any other is transient, life moves. The trick is to learn to recognise when we are triggered and off balance and then how to shift our state to one that is more resourceful and effective. Here is the value of self-awareness and reflective practice. When leaders learn to work with the body-mind in this way, aligned to how evolution has designed us, they manage themselves better and set a tone that is much more evident of the qualities of wellbeing. They become positive role models. With practice and refinement, they can change a culture, they open up the potential of creativity and what it is possible to say, do and be, individually and together.

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