Embodied Leadership: Leading with Bodyfulness

Do you cringe, puff up with pride, or have some reaction between the two extremes when you hear yourself referred to as a leader or in a leadership role? Many connect being a leader with responsibility, respect, success, power, influence – but also often, with abuse of power or authoritarianism. We live in systems where our ideas of leadership have been shaped by family, school, managers, and societal norms. Not all these experiences have been pleasant.

When systems don’t have balance and are missing the healthy, trusting relationships that are needed for a democratic environment in family, organizations or community, power most likely will be abused. Because many of us have experienced such situations, we have mixed feelings about being a leader. Yet, lead we must – lead our life, lead our family, lead our teams, lead our organizations, lead our communities – formally or informally.

 I could write a list of what makes for unhealthy leadership, but there’s plenty of other lists you can look up. For me, the key factor for leading well is to be rooted in the fullness of being human. Our western culture and systems have for too long overvalued the importance of logic and the head brain, while leaving the body’s intelligence as something that is ‘woowoo’. The body is a source of knowing and action – scientific research now shows the value of the heart and gut brain – this is a knowing that is much older than our brain’s knowing. Reducing our leadership to be guided only by our mind while ignoring the body makes for disembodied leadership. It’s pretty hard to be fully present when you are disassociated from parts of yourself and it’s hard to connect with others and your own life when you are ‘here’ only with your mind. I am not suggesting strategy, thinking, planning, logic, and accountability be thrown out the window – but rather, the body be brought into awareness to inform us – making our systems wiser, intuitive, and even playful – to speak and act from a place of sensibility that is more fully whole, integrated, and human.

Often, I have taken part in exchanges about servant leadership, wholehearted leadership, mindful leadership – they all have merit and values that I admire and am on a constant journey to practice. As I have immersed myself deeper into how adults learn, change and embrace complexity and uncertainty, I am thinking and sensing more and more into the idea of bodyfulness. Yes, it sounds like a strange word – I thought so too when I stumbled across it in 2015, but that’s what happens when people come up with new words to try to capture a concept.

Now, as I’ve continued my exploration into leadership development and began on my own journey of being more present, I have a whole new appreciation for bodyfulness and the idea of embodied leadership. Leading in a bodyfulness way includes, in my opinion, heartfulness, mindfulness, gutfulness, and spiritfulness.

I’m no longer convinced that mindfulness fully captures the idea of being in a heightened state of being somatically awake to ourselves, others, and the context.

 With so many clients I work with, noticing the body’s reactions and sensations is a completely foreign practice, but it opens up so many perspectives and observations about deeply rooted unconscious triggers and behaviors.  To be rooted in our full humanity is not an easy feat. It’s a messy journey to undo the learning of years of practice in habits where we learned to disassociate from our body and emotions – either from experiences that were difficult, even traumatic, or inheriting organizational systems where we have been told emotions and body have no place at work. An important practice for leaders, especially during the complexity of a pandemic, is to learn how to be present to and stay in our whole body while we are with others – and then to nourish space for others to be embodied themselves.

 So how do we unlearn the weight of responsibility we put on our mind? How do we learn to inhabit our whole body? What do we do to come home to ourselves? What do we do to feel our feet on the ground, our weight in our chair (on those oh too frequent zoom calls)? What must we do to be fully in our body to appreciate and respect all its knowing? (What’s the knot in your stomach telling you when you see someone is struggling, but you don’t stop to inquire what’s going on? Or what conversation is the team avoiding when the tension is sensed and felt like a knife piercing through the meeting?) How do we learn to trust the messages from our bodies? They are our allies not our enemies.

 No doubt our coping mechanisms of disassociation from our bodies and emotions served a purpose at some point - they helped us get where we are today.  But times, they are a changing. The things that helped us feel strong, resilient, safe or confident just may be the things that are preventing us from feeling connected to ourselves, others, and most of the living world. Leading with mindfulness and bodyfulness is life affirming for the leader and the organization – it builds trust, reduces drama, creates clarity, reduces fear, affirms curiosity, generates generosity, and dare I say, increased efficiency and productivity.

 A team, an organization, a community, even a family, is a network of connections and relationships between humans and the world – being more fully human serves to validate our sense of belonging, safety, collaboration, and creativity.

And being more bodyfulness, supports us to be more human.

A more recent encounter with bodyfulness happened when I was reading Dr. Sharon Blackie’s book, The Enchanted Life: Unlocking the Magic of Everyday. I found this passage a bold invitation:

“...belonging begins in the body, and if we cannot be enchanted with the miracle of our own physical existence, how can we ever hope to become enchanted with the wider world, and our place in it? If we shut ourselves off from the vicissitudes of bodied existence, and hold the world at a safe distance, we seal ourselves away from its joy and wonder. From the pleasure of contact with human and animal, the softness of mist on early morning skin. From the cold shock of a briny sea, and the scent of bluebell slipping in through our nose and on down into our lungs."

 There are many practices that support increasing our bodyfulness ranging from breathwork, yoga, walking in nature (I’d say especially in trees), dancing wildly to being silly with a child. If you want to try something specific and intentional, give this a try:

 1.    Think of a specific situation that is currently perplexing you or is somehow charged and causing stress (good or bad).

2.    Notice what happens to your body. What form does it take on? Is it expansive or constricted? What part of your body is most affected?

3.    Exaggerate the feeling by ten. What do you notice now? What do you feel?

4.    Now stand up and shake that feeling and shape off.

5.    What outcome would you like for this situation you were thinking of? Imagine the outcome has come to fruition. What does that feel like? Notice what happens to your body.

6.    Exaggerate the feeling by ten. Notice what you feel. What shape does your body take on? Where do you notice the most energy?

7.    How do you feel about the situation? What else do you notice?

 Whatever you notice, give yourself permission to test this out in various situations. You may be so out of touch with your body that the first few attempts don’t garner immediate insights. Or you may need support in working through and learning to integrate body, mind and spirit.

 Going through life only with our minds leaves us with a limited perspective and ignores over 90% of our wisdom. I would imagine that bringing more bodyfulness into leadership is a rich resource and a beautiful call for humanity to wake up to the untapped resources our bodies hold for living more fulfilling, wise and ethical lives – as individuals and systems.  

xo