Minding an Idea VII: Minding the Body, or Using All of Our Intelligences – Tina Geithner, Ph.D.

About seven years ago, I was faced with a choice between attending a wonderful, international, professional meeting in Southwest England or a coaching training with a skilled teacher/trainer in Banff, Alberta (Canada). I couldn’t justify attending both because of time away from work and the expenses involved. I was discussing my dilemma with a coaching colleague, Laurie, and she said, “What if you let your body decide?”, to which my immediate response was, “That’s a no-brainer, I’m going to Banff!” And so I did [go to Banff], and had no regrets. The choice felt organic and easy rather than being an agonizing and lengthy mental exercise in weighing pros and cons (mindful vs. mind-full). That experience was pivotal in recognizing the value of bringing more of my intelligence online than just my head brain or thinking brain.

Fast forward five years to an online course another colleague recommended to me: Amanda Blake’s Body=Brain (The Science of Somatics). Mandy is an extraordinary teacher. She trained with Richard Strozzi-Heckler (www.strozziinstitute.com) and is a master somatic coach. She has a degree in Psychology and is interested in embodied leadership, and her work is grounded in empirical research (a.k.a. hard science). Mandy presents thought-provoking content and provides exercises that help participants understand more about the body, multiple intelligences (in our head, heart, and gut brains), and what it takes to effect and facilitate consistent and lasting change. The somatic practices (practices that involve working in and through the body) that she invites us into as part of the homework between webinar sessions have the power to create change at the cellular level…really! And when we change ourselves, we also have an impact on others and on the larger system of which we are a part – our significant others, our families, our workplaces, our communities…the world.

In her new book, Your Body is Your Brain, Mandy writes: “We need leaders and everyday folks who truly embody a felt sense of interconnectedness, who have both the care and the skills to act with responsibility to the whole. These are people who have the courage to pursue what they believe in and take a strong stand for it, who are consistently able to bring their best to even the most challenging of circumstances, and who can work effectively with others—often across traditional boundaries—to create a new vision of the future. These skills have nothing to do with positional power and everything to do with personal presence. And the path to greater presence entails a journey deep into the wisdom of your body.”

Among the many valuable things about interconnectedness, the wisdom of the body, and presence that I learned in Mandy’s Body=Brain course (https://embright.org/body-brain ) is that we have head, heart, and gut intelligences…and we can access all three, use our whole “body-brain”. Our nervous system doesn’t just live in our head (our thinking brain); it extends throughout our body from the tips of our fingers and toes to the top of our head and everyplace in-between. And there are two other brains with independent nervous systems that work with our thinking brain, those of the heart (cardiac) or our feeling brain, and the gut (enteric nervous systems) or our instinctual brain. Hence, we have a whole body-brain that we can use to make choices about how to respond in different situations, what makes sense, what feels safe, what feels right. We take in information about our internal and external environments through various specialized receptors (cells that are sensitive to pressure, temperature, pain, tension and stretch, etc.) throughout our bodies. Then we process that information and make meaning of it (ultimately at the level of our head brain).

When we avail ourselves of information coming from our total body rather than just our head brains, we are able to make more informed, i.e., better, choices. How do we do this?  We can direct our attention, intentionally, to our heart and gut and the rest of our body. We can drop our attention down, out of our heads and check in with our heart – our feeling brain – the one associated with emotions, values, and relationship. What do we know to be true from this place? What connection do we feel with others? With ourselves? What makes us feel sad? Joyful? We can notice, without judgment, and incorporate the information we gather from our heart with that from our head brain. Maybe you can recall when you first met someone with whom you felt a heart connection, there was a warm feeling, a sense of belonging or kinship. Or when you met someone else and didn’t feel any resonance at all or maybe even a sense of aversion, a wanting to move away.

Dropping our attention down another level to our gut – our instinctual brain – we can perform a proverbial “gut check”.  How does our gut feel? Calm? Anxious? Safe? Threatened? Is it quiet or rumbling or churning? Do we feel “butterflies in our stomachs”? The gut-brain is the brain associated with our core identity, intuition/inner knowing, self-preservation, and mobilization (the fight, flight, freeze responses of the autonomic nervous system). It can tell us if a situation or person feels safe or not – physically or emotionally – and when we feel threatened, we may react by moving toward the perceived threat (fight response), away from it (flight response), or becoming immobilized like a “deer in the headlights” (freeze response) as a way of protecting ourselves.

We can also attend to other information that our body provides about temperature (hot, warm, cool, cold), pressure and tension (heavy, tight, strained, light, loose, relaxed), movement and energy (buzzing, humming, staccato, flowing). Trusting our gut might help us avoid an unsafe situation or help us avoid getting involved with someone who doesn’t have good intentions. Trouble is we often don’t consult or ignore the information available from our heart and gut brains because we have been so well trained in and rewarded for the use of our head brain in our [American] educational system and patriarchal corporate culture. Taking cues from our heart and/or trusting our gut may be a more feminine approach to decision-making and leadership and, thus, less well-known or accepted. And, this doesn’t mean our other intelligences are any less valuable or relevant. In fact, the ability to sense what is called for in a situation rather than to figure it out intellectually is much needed in leading and functioning in the midst of complexity…in situations where there isn’t a clear cause-and-effect relationship, the outcome is unpredictable, and there are multiple moving pieces and human beings involved (whose behavior is never entirely predictable!).

I’m not suggesting that we ditch our head brain in favor of our heart and gut brains, but that we make use of all three, that we mindfully bring our whole selves to leading and living our lives. So… the next time you find yourself stuck in “paralysis by analysis” or overthinking things, try checking in with your heart – your feeling brain, and your gut – your instinctual brain, and see what they have to tell you. Bring all of your intelligences (and more mind-fulness) to bear upon the situation you are facing and use your whole body-brain. You might be surprised at the messages there, and you may find a new ease in making choices. And as we become more connected with all three of our intelligences, we are better able to act with care and responsibility to the whole – to our whole selves (don’t we deserve that?), and to the whole world (Doesn’t the world sorely need that from us now?).