Embodied Leadership

Are you aware that it is crucial for leaders to bring their bodies into focus as integral part of their practice and development? How often do you make contact with your body and recognize the information and energy it brings to your leadership experience?

Through my doctoral research I discovered that the most integrative leaders practiced with an awareness of their embodied experience. Some shared how their capacity to tune in to their nervous system assisted in developing greater regulation and presence. This embodied presence was a resource during challenging situations and relational encounters. Others shared stories of being called to lead from an internal imperative to act, which arose through a deep knowing that was beyond thought, principles, and externally imposed strategies. Rather, their bodies implored them to lean into vulnerability and risk with a courage of conviction that touched me deeply.

These leaders typically had a personal practice, such as mindful meditation, martial arts, or yoga, that fostered their capacity to know their body’s experience from the inside. This awareness is called interoception where sensing into the body brings bottom-up energy and information through the spinal column to the brain through the right hemisphere. This hemisphere receives experience through presencing where the whole can be sensed and known. (This is contrasted with left-hemispheric processing that is more representational and distanced from the experiencing of the phenomenon in focus).

The highly integrative leaders I spoke with experienced their embodied awareness as a resource, a source of strength and information that was inextricably linked with their overall development. In other words, their capacity to lead was linked to their ability to access their body’s experience, moment by moment as they encountered the situations calling them to action.

In future blogs, I will be exploring different aspects of embodied leadership including what it means for leaders and their development and how it enhances their ability for attuned and effective action.