Hollow Bone pics

The Hollow Bone practice is a centering practice that helps us center in gratitude.  There are two stories I want to tell you about that strongly influenced my development of this practice.

The first story is about the roots of Aikido. The old scrolls from which Aikido is founded and taught are written in the Japanese lettering, Kanji.  Aiki translates as harmony or spirit or energy. In NVC terms, we can think of Ki as being the empathic field, within which we include another person when we hold them in a space of empathy.

When these scrolls were first translated, there was a phrase which was translated as “extend ki.”  This phrase implies that extending ki is an active role taken on by the participant.  A generation later, when the scrolls were re-interpreted, this same phrase was translated as “let ki extend,” which implies an allowing way of a being and less of a doing.  In other words, it asks us to allow the energy to move though us, without hindering it.

The state of allowing energy to move through us is quite a different sensation than the active deliberate sensation of purposefully moving energy.

It is this distinction of experience that brings me to my second story.  It is about my friend, Steve Old Coyote, a Native American elder, story teller and wood carver who has lived quite a life and gained much wisdom along the way.  One day I visited him while he was carving and asked him what he was doing today.

His response was, “I am thinking about what it would be like to be a hollow bone, to let the experience of life move through me, rather than trying to make things happen or force the experience in a particular direction.”

And that is how this practice got it’s name. As you go through the exercise, keep in mind my Native American friend and the image of being a hollow bone, through which you “let ki extend.”

Remember, all the practices of NVC help us, not to do something, but to allow the energy of compassion to move through us.  It’s a centering practice of connection and gratitude.  When we have gratitude for something we can connect to it.  We have many resources around and within us, and by connecting/utilizing the faculty of our imagination, we can connect to them within and around us.  Take a look at a tree or flower out your window and for a moment be grateful for that plant.  Notice if you feel more connected to it now.

The Hollow Bone practice is a means of allowing ourselves to experience the natural connection we have with what surrounds us, to remember that we are connected to past, present and future resources and by the nature of the life that we engage through empathic field, regardless, of what we think, we are always loved.

Practice:

1. Stand and settle into your full length, the human line, into a stance with your head above your heart above your belly.  This is a stance of dignity, in line with gravity and the earth. As you take a breath, let out an audible sound on the exhale.  Remember, on the out-breath is when you let things soften.  It’s easier to tighten up when you breathe in than when you breathe out, so allow yourself to soften as you exhale.Open the channel of your body, soften your eyes, breathing in again, softening the tongue on the out-breath and let the back of the tongue soften as it rests on the bottom of your mouth. Take another softening breath out as you relax your shoulders, let the weight you might imagine carrying on them fall off for the moment. Breathe in again and on the out breath, release the sphincter.   Imagine opening the bottom of your feet to the earth.
2. Ask yourself, how would it feel if I felt a little more relaxed?  How would if feel if I let my eyes relax just a little more?  Bring it in as a question and a request, not a demand, and notice how your body responds in answer to your question, letting you know just how that would feel…..
3.  Take a full and relaxing breath.   Center in full and deep belly breaths.  Imagine you are using your breath to make more space in your body.  Imagine that, as you settle into your length, you are practicing a posture of dignity and grace.
4.  Bring into your awareness your purposeful commitment, something you want to devote your practice/your day/your life to, or a quality or virtue you wish to experience more of into your life.
5.  Bring your hands up to chest level with elbows having only a slight bend in them, and with fingers pointed forward, vigorously rub your hands together.
6.  Hold them apart, extend your fingers as if you’re reaching out to catch a big ball, feel the tingling in your fingers for a few moments.  Then bring the warmth and the tingling fingers to your heart, touch the heart and rub down to the belly, and just pat the belly and wake the belly up.
7.  Notice the tingling of energy in your hands.  Use your breath as a way to help draw, circulate and generate that energy, keep your body open and not constricted, as a way to receive energy from all around.
8.  Engage your imagination.  Imagine this tingling sensation as a stream of energy.  Then extend your fingers down, down toward the ground, imagine sending down roots through the bottom of your fingertips and the bottom of your feet.  Imagine these roots heading down and connecting to the organisms under the soil, to the other plants, to what’s above the soil, the animals, the insects, the birds, the air, the water, the ocean, etc.  With gratitude, connect to the earth and the life of this planet.  In your own way give thanks for the nature that is all around you.
9.  Then bring your elbows down to your sides with your hands open, as if you had a silver dollar in your palms that you were pushing out, arms still extended with the slightest of bend in the elbows, fingers still extended and about 6 inches to a foot away from your torso.  Palms are facing the body and fingers pointing to the ground.
10.  Imagine taproots moving down from the tips of your fingers, the soles of your feet deep into the ground.  With gratitude, connect to the earth and the life of this planet.  In your own way give thanks for the nature that is all around you.
11.  Turn your palms to the space behind you.  Like radar dishes that pick up the signals of what is behind you, feel into the space behind you.  Imagine it like a large soft cushion that is supporting your whole backside or a wind and you are the sail being filled. Let it hold you.  Imagine it being a support to you, as if there are many hands holding you up behind. Imagine reaching into what is at your back.  The support of the ancestors you had who were whole and healthy, the teachers in your life who have supported you and brought you understanding and wisdom, the great teachers in the world, the people who have inspired you, and the lessons that come through us through our own genetic history back to the beginning of time.  Stand for as long as you feel inclined, sinking in to that gratitude and appreciation.
12. Now extend your fingers out to your sides, about a foot to a foot and a half from your body.  Pay attention to your vertical axis.  Connect to all who walk beside you in your life, the multitude of friends, peers, brothers and sisters who surround you. In your own way be grateful for all who walk beside you.  As a daily practice, invite even those who are a bit difficult because they help you to see parts of yourself that you would never see with others.  Did you know that “lucifer” means light bringer? I often think of these difficult individuals as my light bringers, my lucifers.   Although they feel like the devil, they shine light on a place in me that no one else could.
13.  Now bring your palms to face forward and feel into the space in front of you.  Think of all the younger ones who we support and who will lead us into the future.  Think of those who bring fresh perspective, lightness and buoyancy to our lives, those who remind us to play, to view the world with wonder and awe.  In your own way, give gratitude for those young ones in your life.
14.  Now take all these resources that are all around us, under our feet, at our back, at our sides, in front of us, and hold them.  Bring your arms up to shoulder height with fingers still extended like a big chalice or cup, and hold them;  just feel the bounty, the fullness of the cup, of all that you have when you connect to it and appreciate it.  Make a mental note of how this experience feels so that you can recall it and draw it back quicker and quicker.
15.  Now, while holding these resources, bring your arms to the front of you extended forward at shoulder height.  Offer this bounty and notice that this is an open stance, through which you can also receive.  You can offer and receive at once.  Reach out in a way that gently and bountifully offers what you have and receives what you are being handed.  Reach out to what is reaching towards you.  Reach with your whole self.  Dedicate and reach out to what it is that you are wanting to put out into the world and what you want to receive and connect to: a state of openness.  This is how we replenish and renew ourselves.  This is the hollow bone.

Hollow Bone Nano Practice

You can make this practice as long or as quick as you want, it can even be as short as just one minute.  Just go move through these phases…

Stand in your full length, take a deep breath, exhale loudly, relax into your full length, rub your hands together, touch your heart, pat your belly, give thanks to the earth, reach behind you, give thanks to all that supports you, out to the side, thanks to all who walk beside you, to the front, to all who are in front of you.  Hold them up, offer, and receive.

Conclusion:
Our needs are not something that we don’t have access to;  they are simply something we can draw up from within us.

How was it for you?  How did you feel before?  How did you feel after?  What does it feel like to feel open?  Make a mental bookmark or note of how it felt.  When you make note of the feeling and bodily sensations, they will become more familiar and you will be able to come back to the feeling more quickly.   Remember, life is not about being centered all the time, it’s about recognizing when you are off center and being able to come back to center more quickly.

It takes only a few seconds for us to center ourselves, to remember that we are never alone, and that we always have access to bringing these resources through us.  Our needs are not something that we don’t have access to, they are simply something we can draw up from within us.  You can center any time, anywhere.

The darkness of night is coming on fast, and

The shadows of love close in the body and in the mind.

Open the window to the west and disappear into the air inside you.

Near your breastbone there is an open flower.

Drink the honey that is all around that flower.

Waves are coming in; there is so much magnificence near the ocean.

Listen! Sound of big seashells, sound of bells!

Kabir says: Friend, listen, this is what I have to say:

The Guest I love is inside me!

Research on the heart has expanded tremendously in the last several years.

All around us we see evidence of our ability to receive perceptions and impressions from beyond hearing, tasting, touching, smelling and seeing. Some people call this our 6^th sense.  What I would like to offer here is a brief sampling of some of the science around this kind of perception and the studies around “the field” and communication.

I am not claiming this to be the truth of how things work.  It is how I lean in my own understanding  and at the very least, although there is not necessarily the science community in agreement about this work, there is ample phenomenological evidence spanning several decades of study and testing  that point in the directions I am suggesting below.

The Sixth Sense

The sixth sense might be thought of as intuition. It is our ability to see the elusive signals that are beyond the range of the physical senses.  It helps us to discern what is behind the masks we have learned to wear.  In relationship and conflict the sixth sense allows you to see intent, which in threatening situations helps us to see the action forming in the body before any move is made.

Surprising Heart Facts:

• The most powerful force from the heart would be enough to shoot water six feet into the air.  The amount of force that is actually needed to move the blood through the entire length of the body’s blood vessels would lift a one hundred pound weight one mile high. 

• Approximately two gallons of blood move through 60,000 miles of vessels in each of our bodies.

• Contrary to popular belief, the heart does not pump blood through the whole body; the whole body, including the blood, pumps and moves the blood through the whole body, in unison.

• Between 60 to 65 % of heart cells are neural cells (brain cells).

• The heart and the brain are inextricably linked and the heart possesses its own nervous system and could be considered as a specialized part of the brain.

• The heart has its own stored memories and processes meaning within a variety of emotional experiences.

• The heart is vastly more than a muscular pump. It is one of the most powerful electromagnetic generators and receivers known.  It is, in fact, a highly sensitive organ of perception and communication.

• The oscillating electromagnetic waves of the heart emit waves 5000 times more powerful than the brain.  This is measureable by modern instruments up to 10 feet from the body.

The Electromagnetic Heart

Blood carries signals and pulse waves. It is a powerful electric conductor, as well as being extremely complex.  The heart’s energy field that it creates, emits and uses to communicate with other energy systems (the rest of the body or other organisms) is extremely varied and complex as well.

We have heard of the mechanical pacemakers that people use to stimulate their hearts to beat.  The original pacemakers have been around since before humans.  These natural pacemakers are large groupings of cells, millions of them that have entrained to one another, like synchronized swimmers or tuning forks resonating together. It begins early on with the initial pacemaker cells emitting an oscillating rhythmic beat and, as new cells emerge, they begin to oscillate in unison with them. Millions and millions of cells, oscillating in unison, send out stronger and more powerful electromagnetic pulses as they accumulate and synchronize.

Our heart sends out organized patterns of energy and this has been shown to directly affect the functioning of other organs and organisms outside the heart.  The merging and entrainment of our hearts with other electromagnetic fields encountered is very natural to us because we have experienced this since early on.  This entrainment first occurs before birth.  We are immersed and grow in our mother’s electromagnetic fields in-utero.   Electroencephalogram and electromagnetogram readings have shown us visually that the fields of the mother and child naturally entrain.

“ The mother’s developed heart furnishes the model frequencies that the infants heart must have for its own development in the critical first months after birth.”

Joseph Chilton Pearce

At the most basic levels, the mother’s feelings toward the child about whether the child is welcomed or loved, is communicated within the mother’s electromagnetic field to the growing embryo.   The embryo receives and deciphers specific, embedded and encoded information – just as a radio receiver can decode radio waves and its multitude of stations. Children are born into this way of communication. We are born intimately involved in the information coming from others’ electromagnetic fields.  You might say that it is our birth tongue.

The heart, like a radar tower, continually scans for communications and information.  When it hits other biological oscillators and their accompanying electromagnetic fields, as with all fields that come in contact with each other, the heart experiences alterations in its own electromagnetic spectrum.

The way the field is altered conveys information. When two or more fields synchronize, information is conveyed.  The way these oscillating fields of energy patterns meet and perturb one another and experienced in human beings is unique.   They are experienced as emotions.  Like notes on a piano, these encounters might enhance one another by creating harmonies or various intriguing combinations or they might create dissonance and noise that are difficult to listen to and disturbing.

The slightest emotional change, due either to internal or external factors, quickly manifest as a change in the heart rate and the field it generates. The heart is an extremely sensitive sensory organ of perception whose domain is that of feelings. 

Within our bodies we have many biological oscillators that weave and dance together to manage our selves.  The three most powerful are heart, gut (GI Tract) and brain. When the electromagnetic field from our heart meets another electromagnetic field, we feel a range of emotional impressions.  Our emotions are, in part, our experience of the information encoded within those electromagnetic fields in combination with the changes that have occurred in our own field as we encounter them.

Heart Coherence

There have been many studies showing the heart as an organ of perception.  The studies have focused on what happens when the heart’s electromagnetic field is intentionally changed as a person shifts his/her attention from thoughts (what will I do today, calculations, etc), to sensory stimuli and feelings. IE. Internal (listening to the heartbeat) or external (noticing how something looks sounds, feels, or smells)

Researchers John and Beatrice Lucy explain,

“ The intention to note and detect external stimuli results in slowing of the heart.”

Try this:

Moving your attention away from thinking and placing it on external stimuli or on your heart, slows the heart, and begins a transformational cascade that alters your physiological, emotional and cognitive processes.  The heartbeat does not slow down when thinking processes are linear, such as math or planning your day.

It is interesting to consider that heart focused perception does not habituate. Another way of saying this is that, perception through the heart remains new through each experience.

Focusing your attention externally produces dilation and soft focused eyes, instead of pinpoint focus (this is an activity of the sympathetic nervous system), while increasing peripheral vision, at the same time that the heart slows. (An activity of the parasympathetic nervous system).  To over simplify, the sympathetic part of the nervous system is connected with flight or fight, the parasympathetic, with rest and ease.  Placing your attention in external stimuli or in the heart, in this way brings both these systems online in a balanced manner! The more meaning and interest found in what you see the greater the number of physiological changes that occur. Again, you can recognize this state as softer focused eyes, slowing of the heartbeat and the body relaxing.

Linear thinking breaks the calm state. Linear thinking, such as, internally using words and thoughts, increases the heart-beat rate and the sympathetic nervous system activity. The same thing happens when we speak, store, use and retrieve words or symbolic information. Heart-centered processes initiate coherence. The rhythm of the heart sets the rhythm for our entire system.  The hearts rhythmic beat influences the brain’s functions that control the autonomic nervous system, cognitive functioning and hormones.

Coherence is the harmonious cooperation, and order among the subsystems of a larger system that allows for the emergence of more complex functions. 

Steven Buhner

Coherence includes synchronization, entrainment and resonance.

Our heart’s rhythms reflect our emotions and our emotions reflect our heart rhythms.  These changing rhythms appear to modulate the field generated by the heart, resembling how a radio wave can broadcast music by modulating the waves. Heart researchers say that emotions go with every experience and every emotion modulates and restructures the field.

Heart coherence is initiated as we move our attention from the brain to the heart. This is done by bringing our attention to our heart or by focusing our attention on external sensory cues and what we are feeling.

The mind, heart, belly entrain during coherence and their oscillations synchronize with one another.  When our thinking/linear process take lead of the other (nonlinear systems) the resulting mixture of wave patterns show up as different systems.   When nonlinear systems lead (the heart and unconscious cognitive activities including those of the brain that are nonlinear ), they synchronize to a common frequency.   The combined system combines within a single oscillation. With the coherence of non-linear oscillators, the amplitude of the combined waveform is much larger than any one alone.  There is more depth and power to these coherent signals.

Aikido focuses on the gut as the primary center of consciousness, the main oscillator.  The gut has its own extensive, elegant and separate nervous system and neural cells.   Whatever oscillator becomes the focus, the other systems begin to entrain and boost its power.

Heart Oriented Cognition

When the brain entrains to the heart, the brain becomes more in tune and connected with the body.  Conversely, when the brain leads, there is less connection between body and brain.  Shifting attention to heart oriented perception, mental chatter is reduced and the sympathetic and parasympathetic and blood pressure systems become more balanced directly linking the heart and brain, allowing communication and information to flow freely.

When the heart leads, the brain shifts to coherence.  The brain’s functioning affects the cortex, which directly works with perception and learning.

“The major centers of the body containing biological oscillators can act as coupled electrical oscillators.  These oscillators can be brought to synchronized modes of operation through mental and emotional self-control and the effects on the body of such synchronization are correlated with significant shifts in perception”

William Tiller

Leading with the heart improves the self-organizing abilities and collaboration of ones mental and emotional states. This creates a more highly ordered physiological state that effects the functioning of the whole body, including the brain. This state enhances intuitive awareness and a more effective decision-making capability that is beyond the normal capacity of the mind and brain alone.

During heart to brain entrainment, the brain and heart waves oscillate together. When this occurs the brain’s wave patterns work embedded within the stronger field of the heart.

Hippocampus activity increases when attention and cognition are shifted to the heart and the brain entrains to the heart.  All of our sensory systems converge in the hippocampus. The increased activity of the hippocampus region stimulates the stem cells there and begins to form new stem cells.  During heart coherence there is a reduction in cortisol (hormone produced by stress) production.  This directly improves hippocampus activity as well.  The hippocampus receives and sifts through the patterns of information, taking in meaning from information within the signals. From there this information about meaning is sent to the neocortex where it is entered as memories.

“Shifting attention to any particular organ, in this case, the heart increases registration of the feedback from that organ in the brain.   The shift to heart awareness initiates an alteration in body functioning via physiological mechanisms that operates through neural registration of organ feedback. “   Stephen Buhner

We have been habituated to the thinking/analytical modes through our schooling and culture where we are taught to locate our selves in the brain and not the heart.  Over time the heart begins to lose coherence when the heart synchronizes to the brain’s oscillating wave patterns. It starts to relate to a linear rather that a nonlinear waveform.

With this in mind it begins to make more sense that in a culture where schools are oriented to favor the brain almost exclusively over the heart, rewarding thinking over feeling, detachment over empathy, that heart disease is the number one killer in the US.

We have learned that an even heartbeat is a healthy heart.  Newer studies show how the more predictable and regular (linear) the heartbeat becomes, the more dis-eased it actually is. This same phenomenon shows up in other diseases like heart disease, aging, fetal distress, MS, depressions, panic disorders to name a few. Emotions come, in part from the EM field that the heart receives and generates. A disorder, non- diverse, narrow, noncomplex EM field will produce emotional experiences, like depression and panic attacks, that are themselves disordered narrow and restricted in scope.

To be healthy, the “heart must remain in a highly unstable state of dynamic equilibrium.” Steven Buhner

Increasing heart coherence and heart/brain entrainment boosts production of immunoglobulin, preventing infection and leads to improvements in disorders like heart congestion, asthma, diabetes, fatigue, auto immune conditions, depression, AIDs, post stress disorder, and more.

Ecosomatics

As we take a new look at the heart, far from being only a powerful pump, we can understand it as an organ that catches information not only from within, but also from the world around us.  Here we begin to not only talk about the cells and organs within our bodies communicating, we begin to explore our interdependence within the greater ecosystem.  Our bodies and Nature are in a constant and dynamic collaboration.  To begin to understand this one only needs to notice the deep feelings that come up when we spend time in wild landscapes or when we see the vast ocean or Niagara Falls, for instance.  Those externally generated feelings are a valuable and essential source of emotions for humanity, because we were born not only from our mother’s wombs, but also from the wilderness of the world.  We evolve and develop surrounded in our mother’s electrometric fields, as well as within the greater EM field of the Earth.  In this way we are a part of the ecosystem and the womb. This relationship and information exchange is deep within our cellular memories.

The heart takes in this information and processes the external events encountered. In response it changes its patterns, rate of beats, pulses waves, electrical output, hormonal production and neurochemical releases. 

 The heart works as a conductor/receiver of depth information from the outside world and communicates to the central nervous system (CNS) and brain.

Studies show that these responses in heart function to external phenomena have a similar impact on brain function, as when we take in information through our five senses.

EM signals received and experienced as emotions by the heart also have embedded meaning and this meaning can be drawn from the emotions just as meaning can be drawn from the visual and audio signals we receive. Most of us have been raised in ways where we have learned to ignore these subtle messages received from the heart and have blinded ourselves to the resource of the heart as an organ of perception.  Recognition that our electromagnetic fields having a natural capacity to interact and synchronize with multitudes of other types of electromagnetic fields, that is, with ecosystems and members of those ecosystems – is nearly atrophied.

Our language like all languages carries the wisdom of the heart—

Big hearted, Heartfelt, Hearty, Hearts desire, Kind Hearted, Courage of Heart and so on.  If we are having a difficult time or not feeling connected from the hearts messages we become Heartsick, Heart Broken and have Heartache. Someone disconnected to the heart’s connective messages are heartless.

“Our body and brain form an intricate web of coherent frequencies organized to translate other frequencies and nestled within a nested hierarchy of universal frequencies”.  Joseph Chilton Pearce

All living organisms, exchange EM energy through contact and between fields.  In humans, 18 inches away up to touch is the most powerful. These waves carry encoded information in similar ways that radios and receivers carry music.

Not only does a coherent heart affect our own brain wave patterns it affects those around us as well.  A coherent heart field is measurable by instruments up to 10 feet away.

Different individual’s fields can entrain with one another’s.  With entrainment between individuals a wave is created by a combination of the original waves increasing their power and depth.  When we send out a heart coherent field filled with compassion, love and attention, other living beings respond to us by becoming more compassionate, loving, interested and connected.

The Intuitive Healing Arts and Empathy

When a loving practitioners’ generated fields are detected and (naturally) amplified by ill people, healing rates increase, pain decreases, hemoglobin levels shift and new mental states occur. The receiver’s receptivity also plays a part in the outcome in that the more open he or she is to the caring that is offered the more he or she will entrain with an external electromagnetic field of the practitioner.  The practitioner continually adjusts with the client.  Our heart fields are nonlinear and as the healer shifts toward coherence, there is an alteration within him/her.  By paying a close and practiced attention to internal changes and perceptions, the practitoner can extract information and meaning from the patient’s interior world.

Through inner reflection the patterns of the patients dis-ease will show up and by noticing and changing their own patterns back to health; the practitioner can become aware of the processes and the road to health.

Beyond this, the patient, in a state of entrainment within the practitioner’s field will move toward greater health.

Over time and evolution all living organisms, have learned to use these fields as a medium to communicate. There is a constant mix and blending flow of information-loaded EM fields. It is part of the communication dynamic of living organisms within ecosystems, an aspect of their co-evolutionary interdependence.

Electromagnetic fields support the integrity of organisms for strengthening physical structure and healing when injured, as well as for protection against hostile organisms.   These fields are primarily used to strengthen cooperative interactions among organisms within ecosystems.

Take a walk sometime, and with this information in mind, pay attention to your internal state of being and how it feels while walking in the depths of Nature to explore and better understand this interconnectedness and your own perceptions.

For the second year in a row an early fall storm soaks us with an inch of rain, followed by a robust sun. The air is thick and damp and the windows in the dojo steam over as the heat of moving bodies transforms the space into a translucent glaze of moisture. Despite the focused heat my waning garden reminds me it is not spring, as does the thickening light and the Vs of geese that arrow south. Mice, voles, and Brewer’s sparrows scurry in the underbrush, amending their rhythms to imminent change. As I harvest the last of the tomatoes, lettuce, and squash I’m reminded of what seeds were planted in the spring, both in the receptive earth and in my psyche. If we stop and quiet ourselves there’s a transparent abundance in this turning toward winter. Heeding our fragile place in its unfolding we are inevitably led to gratefulness. I perform a deep bow to the fence posts, to the corn, to the stones, to the gophers that ate the melons, to the emptiness of mind, to Life.

Our body is precisely the medium of exchange with this field of awareness we call Life. The body is life, it is the interface with life, it’s the ground in which we participate with the air, the falling leaves, the smile of a grandchild, the doe and its fawn darting through the live oaks. In concert with other bodies- waving our limbs, sighing and laughing, shouting to the night sky, walking into a shared unknown – we co-author a story that can be told an infinite number of ways, a pluralism that is mysteriously One. Our sentience is not a body in seclusion; it is birthed by our direct encounters with the terror of the night as well as the delight of a fresh Roma tomato dribbling off our chin; and everything in between. Let’s not fall into the trap of thinking that our capacity for conscious reflection is the result of only partnering with our self, rather than with the world at large.

Here’s a profoundly simple way of practicing that partnership: Align along your vertical line, extend through the crown of the head up towards the heavens and through the soles of the feet down to the earth. Now draw in a breath and let the vertebrae and rib cage swell while you both settle and straighten. Do this again, each time feel, and imagine, that the breath is connecting the world with your most inner places. Pull the breath from the outermost edge of the cosmos and feed it to your cells and let it expand your soul, and your skin. Notice how it is all tied together: breath, tissue, sensation, community, energy, self, the Mystery. Now say “Thank You” from this Unity.

Take It Easy, But Take It

Richard

Poem:

The Last Rites of the Bokononist Faith
(excerpt)

God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, “Sit up!”
“See all I’ve made,” said God, “the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.”

And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.

I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God.
Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn’t have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud
that didn’t even get to sit up and look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honor!

Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!
I loved everything I saw!
Good night.

~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
(Cat’s Cradle)

Book Recommendation: Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome by Joy Degruy Leary, Ph.D., Uptone Press, 2005. This is a powerful inquiry into how the impact of chattel slavery on African Americans has produced an intergenerational trauma that has largely been ignored. Dr. Leary sounds a wake up call that is clear and often painful. Through the lens of history and psychology she spells out the cost of embodying this history of trauma for African -Americans as well as for everyone in this country.

with Richard Strozzi-Heckler, Ph.D., and Staci Haines

History of Strozzi Somatics

For the last 40 years, Strozzi Institute has been training leaders in business, education, military, non-profit, social change, and many other domains. What distinguishes our work is our unique mind-body approach to developing a greater capacity for effective action. Some have seen this approach as cutting-edge; others have seen it as marginal at best. Despite a long history of positive results, the question “What does the body have to do with leadership?” remains bewildering to many.

As science turns its attention to the study of the brain, this question is becoming easier to answer. Discoveries in neuroscience confirm that the somatic approach we use is actually the most direct route to developing the behavioral and interpersonal skills that exemplary leaders share. This explains why over time, our Embodied Leadership methodology has come to be seen more and more as “the missing piece” to transformational learning and leadership development.

However we didn’t start with the science. Our somatic approach grows out of a lineage that stretches back decades and often, centuries, drawing upon what people have observed across time and culture about what it takes to become an exemplary citizen, leader, and human being. The work is grounded in traditions that have influenced human transformation for generations, including Eastern and Western philosophy, meditation, and martial arts. It also draws upon relevant work in more contemporary disciplines such as psychology, linguistics, management theory, and bodywork. Each of these time-tested domains has made an important contribution to our understanding of the nature of being human. Strozzi Institute’s place in these multiple streams of wisdom has been to interweave their insights and then focus the lens on questions of leadership. In designing our programs we used what has worked for generations, paying close attention to the results as we experimented with applying those lessons to today’s needs. Over time we have built a truly transformative discourse on somatic leadership.

Now, new research in neuroscience further validates what our intuition, successful results, common sense, and satisfied customers have been telling us for years. Rather than being marginal, cutting edge, or a “complementary” approach, Strozzi Somatics is shown to be fundamental. It turns out that by including the body, we have been addressing the heart of leadership all along.

Two Major Contributions of Neuroscience

The Biology of Human Behavior

One of the most significant contributions neuroscience has made to somatics is the newly scientifically supported insight about how relational and behavioral learning occurs. We now know that this sort of learning is largely a biological process. In response to one’s relational and emotional environment, individual brain cells undergo both structural and biochemical changes that make them more likely to fire. Although this process goes on throughout our lifetime, it is in especially high gear during the early years of life when the brain and body are developing rapidly. In simple terms, this means that the pattern of relating that took care of your most basic needs for love and survival when you were young literally shaped the very structure of your brain. This shaping – known as implicit memory – develops primarily through biological and behavioral responses to sensory, social, and emotional cues. These messages register in the brain much faster than their cognitive, rational, logical counterparts. In fact during the first two of years of life, implicit memory is the only sort of memory that our brains are capable of recording.

Because of this, our biological structure makes certain behaviors more easily accessible to us than others. For example some people are quick to anger, others are eager to please, and still others are quick to give up in resignation. These inclinations persist into adulthood, and are closely tied to one’s sense of identity and security. Because they are embodied, they operate below conscious awareness and become automatic habits that drive our actions, sometimes despite our best intentions. While these patterns of response are definitely changeable – studies of neuroplasticity show that the brain is far more malleable in adulthood than was g once thought – they are also fairly resistant to change. After all, these tendencies developed out of an impulse for survival, and since you’re here today reading this, they’ve clearly been effective.

Consequently behavioral change can feel threatening, unsafe, or disruptive, because strong impulses around identity and survival often get triggered in the process of pursuing a new way of being.

This is why exclusively intellectual learning, while it is certainly useful for gaining new information, is ultimately insufficient for transformational leadership development. Take Carlos as an example. Carlos is a terrifically friendly guy. This nice-guy persona is a big part of his self-image. However he has received feedback in his performance reviews that he’s an overly accommodating leader. In his eagerness to please everyone and make sure that the whole team is happy, he fails to make definitive choices or set clear standards. He has a good grasp of his problem, having read widely about the importance of decisive leadership. He’s aware of the cost to his team’s success and his own career. He’s developed a great deal of insight about himself by talking at length to colleagues, coaches, and peers about how his tendency to be overly accommodating is hampering his success. Still, the ability to take more decisive action is simply not at hand for him.

This is because he’s trying to address a behavioral tendency that was learned through noncognitive, biological processes with a primarily cognitive solution. While this is the most commonly used approach, it is, unfortunately, a tremendously limited strategy that in most cases falls short. Shifting a behavioral tendency requires social, emotional, and biological learning. You simply cannot get this kind of learning through bullet points on a slide. You can’t even get it through personal insights and “aha’s.” The part of the brain that governs behavior speaks a different language and learns in an entirely different way.

In order for Carlos to become more decisive – in other words to embody decisiveness so that it’s an easily accessible quality that’s always available to him – he needs to reproduce the process by which he learned to be accommodating. One way behavioral tendencies originally become embedded in our nervous system is through relational and emotional experiences that are repeated over time. This is exactly what Carlos needs to engage in: an ongoing practice that addresses the emotional and relational aspects of being decisive.

At Strozzi Institute, we specialize in developing these kinds of practices for leaders. A fundamental underpinning of Strozzi Somatics is that what creates durable personal change is not intellectual learning but rather highly relevant practice. This claim reflects what scientists are now telling us about how implicit memory forms. Behavioral tendencies are built biologically through recurrence over time. We can only change them in the same way: by engaging the whole self –physiological, emotional, social, intellectual – in ongoing, repeated practice.

The Intelligence of the Body

Another significant contribution neuroscience has made to somatic work is the discovery that our intelligence lies not just in the brain, but rather in the body as a whole. The brain extends down your spinal cord and out to the furthest reaches of your body through the central and autonomic nervous systems. But beyond this long-known body-brain relationship, there are multiple new findings that illuminate the nature of this connection even further.

There are at least two other centers of the body that have been shown to have some functions that are surprisingly similar the brain in your head. Recent work in neurocardiology suggests that the heart has an extensive intrinsic nervous system that enables it to process information and to learn, remember, and make functional decisions independent of the brain. Similarly, the relatively new field of neurogastroerentology has demonstrated that there is another “brain” in the gut – known as the enteric nervous system – that also functions nearly independently of the brain inside your head. It is because of this that you can digest food without a second thought; it’s also why a person can be “brain dead” but still have the ability to process nutrients. In fact, the brain in your gut sends signals to the brain in your head nine times for every signal in the other direction. In other words, your gut has more influence over your mind than you might have imagined! While your heart and gut definitely do not “think” in the cognitive, rational sense of the word, they do pick up critical information from both inside and outside the body and translate it into actionable information.

Furthermore, the brain itself devotes most of its real estate to sensory and emotional processing, rather than cognitive, intellectual thought. It’s long been known that the left side of the brain specializes in logic, language, and reason, whereas the right hemisphere is better at recognizing social cues, non-verbal signals, and sensory information coming from inside the body. Lately it’s also become popular to refer to the “reptilian,” limbic, and neocortical aspects of the brain: three roughly anatomical groupings that have different but overlapping functions. While the reptilian brain mediates physiological processes such as heart rate and respiration, the limbic system primarily mediates emotion, and the more recently evolved neocortex is the seat of logic and reason. The structures that store implicit memory – the kind of relational and behavioral learning I referred to earlier – are located primarily in the limbic and reptilian systems, and are heavily influenced by the right hemisphere of the brain.

Looking at the brain in this way, it becomes clear that conventional strategies for learning the interpersonal skills of leadership inadvertently neglect a great deal of our intelligence. Intellectual approaches to learning address only about one third of our brains, and virtually ignore the wholebody intelligence that lies in our heart, our gut, and the rest of our body. Furthermore, conventional cognitive-based learning rarely reaches the part of our intelligence that is primarily responsible for governing social interactions and behavior – those key interpersonal skills that effective leaders must learn to master.

Behavioral learning is a complex psychobiological process. It stands to reason that leaders who want to unlearn, re-learn, or learn new behavioral and relational skills must follow that same process for the best possible chance of success. At Strozzi Institute we focus on bringing more of our natural intelligence online. We don t forgo intellectual learning; rather we expand upon traditional learning modalities to include sensory and emotional learning as a route to developing the capacity to take new action.

Key Distinctions for Purposeful Leadership

Feeling

Our Claim
At Strozzi Institute we use several key distinctions that support people in developing greater leadership capacity. One of the most fundamental is feeling, or in other words, increasing conscious attention to and awareness of sensation, mood, and emotion. Feeling is about focusing attention on your direct, in-the-moment experience of life. It is a critical skill for anyone who wants to develop their capacity for compelling, effective leadership.

We typically begin our programs by teaching people how to feel more. Conventionally the words feeling and emotions are used interchangeably, but we teach leaders how to feel more than just their emotions. The more you feel, the more you contact the life energy that is constantly moving through you in the form of both sensations: pulsing, streaming, heat, tension, lightness; and emotions: passion, joy, grief, fear, indignation.

Feeling is a natural part of our intelligence, although it’s often overlooked or neglected – sometimes deliberately so. Our claim is that skillful internal feeling results in skillful external action. The more you can feel, the more effective you can be in almost any situation. By feeling more, you add both intelligence and power to your actions. This is because feeling more opens the door to becoming more responsive and less reactive. As you increase your capacity to handle a wider range of sensation and emotions, you start to see options and possibilities that are invisible to you when you’re in the midst of a knee-jerk reaction. When you feel more, you have greater access to information that’s critical for action. As opposed to just thinking your way out of
a difficult situation, you have the ability to tap into more of your intelligence.

Science Says
As it turns out, the rational decision-making centers of the brain are heavily influenced by information from emotional and sensory centers – so much so that people who suffer certain kinds of damage to the emotional parts of their brain become utterly incapable of making a decision. Even if they have all the necessary information, they are unable to choose between competing options because they can’t get a sense of their own preferences. These discoveries make it clear that relying exclusively on your rational thinking mind is not only incredibly limiting, it’s not actually how we are built.

Yet somehow we’ve learned to mistrust our feelings as unpredictable, fickle figments of our imagination. Nothing could be further from the truth. There’s no doubt that feelings and emotions can be difficult for our rational minds to make sense of at times. But as author Jonah Lehrer points out in the book How We Decide, these feelings “actually represent an enormous amount of invisible analysis.” The brain extracts patterns from our environment and experiences so that we can incorporate the lessons of the past into future decisions. When we encounter new experiences, these patterns are expressed as feelings. This is how executives who rely heavily (and successfully) on their intuition, hunches, and gut feelings just know which direction to take without a lot of analysis. Learning to put this intuitive intelligence to use both purposefully and effectively is one of the unique benefits of a somatic approach to leadership training.

It’s easy to forget that feelings such as these are inherently embodied, sensory experiences. One way scientists observe feelings in the lab is by measuring the electrical conductance of the skin. As it happens, during fetal development skin cells arise out of the same cluster of cells that eventually grows into the spinal cord. Later in life, the skin – the largest organ in our bodies – consistently recognizes patterns much more quickly than the rational mind. This happens repeatedly over a wide range of research: first people’s skin conductance will change, then their actions will change, and only later – sometimes much later, if at all – will they be able to explain their change in behavior.

We experience these inextricably entwined emotional and physiological signals by feeling them. They operate faster than our intellect and are always influencing action and behavior. That’s not to say that the invisible analysis of feelings always draws accurate conclusions or guides us to the best course of action, any more than intellectual analysis does. The implication for leaders is simply this: trying to set feelings aside and make the most well-reasoned decisions possible is not only unwise, it’s actually impossible. Rather, its learning to skillfully integrate the wisdom of our feelings with our powerful intellect that gives us the best possible platform for making decisions and taking action.

For Example
Ultimately, feeling more is what makes purposeful leadership possible. Emotions tell us what we care about. When we attempt to disconnect from our feeling self, as we often do in our professional lives, our most fundamental concerns go unaddressed. Think of the leader who is praised, valued, and rewarded at the office but barely knows her own children. Or the procurement leader who looks the other way while his suppliers engage in damaging mining and labor practices.

Our times call for a greater ethic of care and responsibility. There is too much at stake – both in our own lives personally and in the life of the world – to shut off, ignore, or devalue the wisdom of our feeling self. That’s not to say that giving everything over to emotions is an appropriate alternative. It’s skillful internal feeling – being able to read your own internal signals and respond to them appropriately – that results in more skillful external action. This is a competence that can be deliberately cultivated.

How We Train for Feeling
We begin by introducing clients to the language of sensation. Without this language, it’s difficult to make fine distinctions and accurate observations. Imagine if your only words for emotion were angry, happy, and sad. With such a limited vocabulary, it would be impossible to sort out the subtle differences between enthusiasm and curiosity; resentment and resignation. For most of us, our language for sensation is limited to just a few terms: good, bad, comfortable, uncomfortable. We help people expand their vocabulary for sensation by teaching them how to notice subtle differences in temperature, pressure, and movement. As a result, people begin to open up to whole worlds of their own experience that they were previously unaware of.

We also teach people how to use this language to observe their moods and sensations while they’re in action, interacting with others. This allows leaders to discover and track their own reactions while they’re participating in relationships, holding conversations, and taking action. This is one of the hallmarks of our work and what makes it both practical and actionable: we have participants put their learning to the test in real-life situations. This orientation towards ongoing self-observation during daily activities helps people see their direct, in-the-moment experience more freshly, without as much interference from the filters of implicit memory. As people become more familiar with their automatic feelings and reactions, new choices open up and the possibility of taking a different action comes within reach.

Results We’ve Seen
As a result of learning to feel more, participants in our programs increase their commitment to act on behalf of what they truly care about. After participating in one of our programs, a Vice President at a well-known national bank instituted an Environmental Council to improve materials and energy use within the company. A senior executive at another firm negotiated a part-time working arrangement so she could spend more time with her young son. This simple action inspired many of her colleagues to re-evaluate their own priorities. Rather than negatively impacting her career, within two years she was promoted to the next level and was pregnant with
her second child.

Research on mindfulness has shown that where you focus attention can literally change the physical structure of the brain. With enough repetition, the practice of mindfully attending to feeling states while in action can begin to supplant old conditioned patterns and pathways with new, more resourceful ones. We’ve seen it happen over and over again: leaders who can feel more also experience more empathy for others, stay more consistently connected to what’s important to them, and are more able to be the kind of person they want to be. This results in their becoming more purposeful, consistent, and trustworthy in both their professional leadership
and in their personal lives.

Centering

Our Claim
If you’re going to feel more, you must also develop the ability to handle a wider range of emotions and sensations. Inevitably, life puts pressure on us. The ability to manage one’s own mood and positively influence others mood in the face of pressure, stress, and difficulty is a hallmark of an exemplary leader. However for many of us, high-pressure situations bring out our worst. Strozzi Somatics helps people feel their reaction to pressure without either ignoring it or being driven to act on it. Our centering practice creates a space between feeling stress and acting stressed; feeling angry and acting out of anger. By learning how to create this space, leaders develop greater choice in their responses and more capacity to take action consistent with their values.

Science Says
Our bodies are exquisitely designed to deal with pressure, fear, and stress. This is an inherently protective force. The part of your brain that scans for danger is virtually always paying attention. It filters experience through the amygdala and the hippocampus – closely related structures in the brain that are associated with determining threat and safety (amygdala) and with memory (hippocampus). In other words, how you determine what’s safe and what’s threatening is significantly influenced by implicit memory; by the conclusions you’ve drawn and the patterns you’ve embodied based on your prior life experience.

Because of this, if in the past you experienced something as threatening or uncomfortable, you are more likely to experience it that way today even if it is in fact perfectly safe. Some trigger in your experience that feels (note: feels) like a threat, danger, stress, or pressure will travel through your amygdala and hippocampus and activate your sympathetic nervous system, more commonly referred to as your fight / flight / freeze response. Changes throughout your body begin to occur immediately: cortisol levels rise, your heart beats faster, your pupils dilate, and you may begin to sweat. Your body is preparing for action. Depending on your unique way of dealing with stress, you may be more inclined to lash out in anger, freeze with fear, withdraw into your shell, or give up your ground in an attempt to appease. And all of this can unfold in milliseconds in response to
a simple comment by a colleague.

Under this kind of pressure, you’ll revert to your most embodied behaviors; those that are most practiced, most easily accessible, and most to hand for you. This is highly adaptive and a sign of great resilience. It means you don t have to think in times of danger – you can just act. Whatever worked well in your early life environment – whether you were rewarded for not crying, as is common for boys in America; praised for striving to be the best in the face of obstacles, as is common in many education-oriented cultures; or found safety by fighting back against bullies or older siblings – is what you’ve been practicing the longest. And what is practiced persists.

This is because, in neuroscience terms, neurons that fire together wire together. The more often a certain pattern is activated in your brain-body system, the more accessible that response becomes, until it’s strongly wired into your nervous system and very easy to trigger. In fact it even becomes part of your character and identity, such that others will assess you – and you may see yourself – as the kind of person that is typically accommodating, or aggressive, or attentive, or agitated. In this way, the very process of adaptive resilience, while it is at first helpful, can later come back to haunt you by making you more automatically reactive and less choiceful in your responses to the everyday events of your life.

For Example
Let’s take Shelly as an example to illustrate this point. Shelly is known in her organization as a results-oriented go-getter. Mid-way through negotiating a deal with another company, she discovered that her team couldn’t deliver what she had promised. Her immediate and automatic reaction was a feeling of frustration, anger and betrayal, accompanied by sensations of tension in her fists and face, a racing heart, and shallow breath. These sensations and emotions prompted her to simultaneously blame and scold her team and at the same time push them to do the impossible. Unfortunately this produced even more resistance from the team, exacerbating her problem even further.

In this particular high-pressure situation, Shelly was defaulting to anger, confrontation, and command and control. This is one of her embodied, automatic responses under pressure. As the second youngest sibling of five in a boisterously noisy Italian-American family, she learned that to get others to pay attention required her to be quite forceful. She also played a mean game of basketball, and while her state-championship team valued sportsmanship, winning was valued even more highly. These life experiences shaped her to be aggressive and forceful when something significant was at stake. While that capability may have worked well in the past and may even be an asset in her job, in this case it’s limiting her effectiveness. This aggressive way of being is no longer producing the results she wants.

This is all completely understandable; even unavoidable. It’s simply how we are built. We come to embody behavioral strategies that work under one set of circumstances, and then we can t help but continue with those actions even after circumstances have changed. The question is how can we become more resilient and resourceful when faced with the inevitable pressures of life?

How We Train for Centering
We answer this question by teaching leaders a centering process that allows them to realign their entire psychobiology around a central care or concern. In teaching people to feel more, we give them more practice at noticing and experiencing uncomfortable sensations (clenched jaw, shortened breath, furrowed brow, churning stomach) without having to immediately take action to make the feeling go away. This creates the space for more choiceful responses. Then we give them a way to shift those sensations, moving from discomfort and contraction to a more centered, open presence.

The practice of centering involves aligning the physical body so that it is holding the least amount of contraction possible. This counteracts the action of the sympathetic nervous system, which sends signals for your muscles to contract and ready for action in the face of a perceived threat. Centering is not just a physical practice, however; it also includes the non-physical action of connecting with what you care about and who you want to be. This combination of physical recentering with re-centering in what has meaning and matters to you is a powerful practice for building a new response to pressure. Centering is not simply deep breathing, nor is it repeating affirmations, nor is it a relaxation technique. Rather it is an active realignment of your entire psychobiology – mind, body, and being – with what’s most important to you. This opens the possibility of taking action that is more aligned with who you are, how you want to be in the world, and where you’re going.

Results We’ve Seen
For Shelly, the capacity to re-center gave her a different, more resourceful way to engage with her team. She was able to request flexibility from the team in a non-aggressive manner, helping them see how it was in their best interest to support the project. This opened the people on the team to be more willing to work with her. Although they still could not deliver on the promises she originally made to the other company, both she and they were able to face that reality with more collaboration and creativity, bringing everyone’s intelligence to bear on solving the problem. Working together they adjusted deadlines to accommodate the full range of their commitments, and came up with a solution that satisfied the needs of all parties.

New research has shown that how you organize yourself physically can change your state of mind, impact hormone levels, and affect behavior. Over time, with enough repetition in enough different kinds of situations, the practice of centering and re-centering can build a new embodied response: a more resourceful set of actions that become the new familiar, comfortable, and more choiceful way to respond under pressure. At Strozzi Institute we teach leaders how to attend skillfully to their sensations, tolerate the physical discomfort of emotional and relational triggers without having to take immediate action, and shift their attention and sensation to access a more centered, grounded, and resourceful presence. What we see is that people consistently change their response to pressure in highly resourceful ways. People who used to shout in anger become better listeners; people who habitually shrink from conflict become more capable of taking a stand for their own dignity and standards; people who find themselves tongue-tied in high-stakes conversations become more relaxed and creative under pressure; people who have difficulty executing on their commitments become competent in fulfilling on their promises and responsibilities.

Studies of neuroplasticity have shown that the structure of the neural networks in the nervous system changes depending on what we pay attention to, and how often we pay attention to it. As Shelly paid more attention to her default tendencies under pressure and trained to replace those tendencies with a more centered presence, she changed her actions, her conversations, and ultimately, her results.

Presence

Our Claim
These new, more resourceful ways of relating ultimately produce a stronger leadership presence. Presence is an ineffable quality that often seems to defy definition. At Strozzi Institute we see presence as an inherently relational quality; others assess you as either having a strong presence, or not. We have found that the magnetic quality of leadership presence is not merely an accident of birth but can actually be learned and embodied.

Science Says
We primarily read presence, authenticity, and trustworthiness through non-verbal cues. This involves the right hemisphere and the limbic system of our brains: the aspects most devoted to reading social, emotional, and non-verbal signals. According to research done by Albert Mehrabian at UCLA, up to 93% of communication is non-verbal, including gestures, posture, and tone of voice. Research done by Paul Eckman at UCSF shows that facial expression of emotion is extraordinarily consistent cross-culturally, suggesting a biological basis for non-verbal communication. A smile, a blush, or a look of disgust are all embodied responses to social and
relational experiences.

When you think about how long spoken language has been around in comparison to how long we humans have been around, that makes sense. Both developmentally and evolutionarily, before we began using language we made sense of the world somatically. Early in human history, when language was at its most rudimentary, we navigated the world primarily through sensory means and communication happened largely through expressions and gestures. Even now, every single one of us relies exclusively on a somatic reading of the world as an infant and toddler.

In addition, recent research on mirror neurons has revealed some startling new news about how our brains make sense of what other sentient beings are doing, thinking, and feeling: on the inside, we mimic each other all day long. If you see me lift an apple and take a bite, similar neurons in your own body and brain fire, even if you don t take the same action. That’s part of how you understand and make sense of what I m doing. Although these studies have thus far focused largely on motor activities and have not yet been conducted on more ineffable states such as presence and authenticity, there’s speculation among scientists that mirror neurons are part of our biological apparatus for empathy. There is enough evidence to hypothesize that these mirror neurons may play a role in helping you sort the trustworthy and the real from the charlatans and the fakes.

In other words, we have developed highly sophisticated non-verbal means of making sense of each other and the world. We can t not do this; there’s no way to turn this process off. It’s simply running all the time – a part of the human operating system, if you will. People are reading for authenticity and presence all the time, and when it’s there we know it and can feel it. We are drawn to leaders who embody a strong and compelling presence.

For Example
Recall the last time you were interacting with someone who drifted off in the middle of your conversation because they were daydreaming, fiddling with their smart phone, or otherwise attending to distractions. See if you can recall what that interaction felt like for you. How satisfied were you with the exchange? How connected did you feel to that person? What was your level of openness and trust?

Now remember the last time you were with someone when you knew you had the full focus of their attention. Even if there were interruptions from time to time, you had the sense that this person was really with you, and that what you had to do, say, or share was genuinely important to them, and they were truly listening. How did this interaction feel different? What was the impact on your sense of connection, trust, and satisfaction?

That is the power of presence.

There are countless implications for leaders here. I’ll point out two in particular. First, presence is an essential component of building trust. When you are fully attentive, open, and connected, others feel that. We know this because we see it in our programs all the time. We’ll ask one of our participants to shift their body and mood in a way that brings them more present, and the whole room will respond with an audible intake of breath. Everybody recognizes presence when it occurs.

That kind of unmistakable presence opens a greater opportunity for genuine connection. When people are attended to with sincere interest, they become more open, more willing to engage, and more willing to follow your lead. This sort of presence is not a technique that can be put on like a coat; rather it is an embodied way of being that produces an overall assessment of trustworthy leadership.

Second, presence inspires action. Great leaders speak their mind with both passion and compassion, putting the full emotional force of their convictions into their words. Think of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, or Ghandi’s proclamations about resisting British rule. As much as the message itself, how the message was delivered is what motivated millions to take action.

Presence – or its lack – has enormous consequences for leaders. Presence grants genuine leadership authority by building trust and inspiring others. This is quite a bit different from the leadership that is conferred by position, title, or status. In our courses, we see over and over again that when one person becomes fully present, they influence those around them to become more present, too. It’s an almost irresistible force, which perhaps accounts for the magnetism of strong and trustworthy leaders. Your presence can bring others into the game, silently inviting them to sit up, take notice, and take action.

How We Train for Presence
We see presence as a function of feeling, centering, and attending. This means allowing more life energy to move through you by feeling your sensations fully, aligning and relaxing your physical body, centering in what you care about, and attending to yourself and others simultaneously. In other words, the more fully embodied you are, the more present you can be.

Paying attention to what you’re feeling immediately brings you present, because sensations only occur in the present moment. The more relaxed you are and the more aligned your body is, the more life energy can flow through you. This means you’re presencing yourself in a whole, unified way rather than squeezing off some part of your lived experience. That results in a stronger presence that others can, through all the non-verbal means we’ve just discussed, actually feel. As in the example above, you know when someone is present with you, or not.

The practice of centering helps you become more present, open, and connected. The ability to center in action while you’re taking care of the business at hand – even and especially when the world is spinning in chaos around you – is a critical leadership skill. It allows you to stay connected to others and be in the present-moment experience, rather than being run by your historical filters. Centering is a practice of aligning your system to access to all of your intelligence: gut, heart, head, and every other part of you. It helps you become more relaxed and less reactive, more resilient and less rash. This sort of centered presence builds trust with others.

Finally, presence is a function of how and where you focus your attention. People assess you as being fully with them; the felt sense of your attention is neither absent nor overbearing, but simply… present. This comes from attending to your own experience and concerns while simultaneously attending to the cares and concerns of others. This blend produces the assessment that you’re able to stand up for what you care about while giving enough ground to truly listen to and legitimize others. And like feeling and centering, this is a skill you can develop.

Results We’ve Seen
Leaders who learn to feel more and center themselves begin to develop the kind of trustworthy magnetism that is a fundamental aspect of leadership presence. Some people are magnetic but you can t trust them because they’re too reactive. Those who practice the skills of Embodied Leadership^TM become less reactive and more responsive. They’re able to listen better, and legitimize others more. Because they’re centered around what they care about, they’re also more consistent in word and deed. Others can sense this congruence in them, and it builds trust. This ability to build trust through one’s presence is a critical skill for any leader.

The Promise of Embodied Leadership^TM

People come to Strozzi Institute with typical leadership concerns, such as how to generate change, articulate a compelling vision, mobilize others, build more trust with and amongst their team, resolve conflict in productive ways, and find a satisfying sense of balance both personally and professionally. While some still claim that leaders are “born, not made,” at Strozzi Institute we have repeatedly seen people learn to embody the qualities that exemplary leaders share. Through holistic training that addresses the biological self, the emotional self, the relational self, the ways we make meaning of the world, and our capacity to take action, leaders develop new personal and interpersonal skills. Participants leave our programs able to more consistently bring the qualities of presence, commitment, accountability, vision, resilience, dignity, and respect to a wide range of life situations. As a result, leaders expand their ability to imagine a new future and bring it to life by effectively coordinating the action of teams.

Our mission at Strozzi Institute is to develop leaders who embody pragmatic wisdom, grounded compassion, and skillful action. Over 95% of participants leave our programs satisfied that we have delivered on this promise. In addition to gaining valuable new leadership skills that they can immediately put into action, many participants express gratitude for the tremendous positive impact on their personal and professional lives. Frequently our clients go on to send their friends, colleagues, customers, and family members to us for additional learning.

Yet even our most satisfied customers have been hard pressed to explain why working through the body is such an effective way to develop leadership qualities. For most of us, the idea of integrating the body into leadership learning is so far outside of what we’re accustomed to that trying to make sense of it remains a mystifying puzzle, even when we’ve experienced the benefits ourselves.

Thankfully, new research on the brain is opening a window that sheds light on the biological underpinnings of somatic learning. We now know that our training closely parallels the natural human process of social, emotional, biological, and relational learning that goes on throughout our lives. Neuroscience is starting to point towards a somatic approach as a crucial, non-optional aspect of leadership development. It’s an extraordinary and unexpected finding, but it turns out that at the heart of leadership development lies a whole human body: history, longings, loves, biology, breath and being. Through this work, it is our great privilege to support leaders in embodying a broader and deeper capacity to act with consistency, courage, and deep care. We invite you to join us.