INsight/ Somatic Inquiry Works

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Manila, 8 February 2026 — Where does leadership actually live: in your mind or body?

Story

Most leaders are highly trained in thinking about leadership. Strategy, frameworks, scenarios, trade-offs. This skill is essential—but incomplete. In real moments of pressure, the body responds long before analysis is finished.

Somatic inquiry brings attention to that lived response. Not as emotion management, but as information. Tension, ease, contraction, steadiness—these are signals about alignment, risk, and readiness that don’t show up in spreadsheets or slide decks.

Leaders gradually distinguish three modes: thinking about leadership, feeling leadership, and being leadership. The shift from the first two to the third is subtle—but consequential.

Challenge

Most leadership cultures reward speed, certainty, and verbal fluency. Pausing to notice the body can feel inefficient. Yet without that pause, leaders often act from habit rather than choice.

The body carries more than momentary stress. Accumulated strain can reduce range, resilience, and clarity. Somatic inquiry is not about choosing the body over the mind, but about bringing them back into conversation.

To support this, Grow3Leaders is hosting an upcoming workshop with a guest speaker introducing somatic inquiry from a mental health perspective. Members have welcomed the workshop enthusiastically, suggesting many leaders are ready to engage this territory thoughtfully.

Question

Before your next important conversation or decision, pause for ten seconds and notice what your body is doing. No fixing. No interpreting. Just noticing.

What sensations arise? What do they reveal about your readiness and alignment?

What changes when leadership is not only thought through, but inhabited?