Whilst I’m no longer doing regular client work, I continue to support a group of Leadership Embodiment (LE) practitioners to maintain their practice. In the most recent day we spent together, a perennial question arose: how do we make good on our intention to centre in challenging moments?
I responded with something that seemed obvious to me – perhaps so obvious that I hadn’t said it before: we practise in between such moments, we practise when life is good.
Jaws dropped, realisation dawned.
For any embodied skill, we practise because the body learns in a different way to the mind. Whilst the mind can quickly grasp a concept or model, and sometimes even apply it immediately, the body learns more slowly, through experience and repetition. To become adept in a physical discipline, we build neural pathways and develop ‘muscle memory’. This takes time and application.
Whilst I consistently emphasise this aspect of LE in my workshops and writing, I know it doesn’t always ‘land’. I often wonder why – what do we find so difficult about practising a practice?
In my case, I didn’t understand the principle of practice until I took up T’ai Chi whilst at Lancaster University. Doing a full-time MBA, and knowing my propensity to work too hard, I decided to choose one extra-curricular activity and prioritise it. Selecting T’ai Chi, I quickly realised that, if I didn’t practise what I’d been taught in each class, I wouldn’t be able to build on it in the next. If I was to learn the ‘form’, a sequence of flowing movements that characterises T’ai Chi, I couldn’t ‘wing it’.
This insight was heightened by an experience during some partner work. As I struggled to respond in the way that we’d been shown, I realised that my embodied auto-response was precisely the opposite of it! Later, I wondered whether this might apply beyond T’ai Chi – perhaps many of my habitual ways of engaging with adversity lacked grace, skill and/or flow.
Looking back, this was probably the moment that prompted me to embrace LE so passionately when I encountered it 12 years later. Which brings us back to the LE practice day.
As we explored the necessity of practice – or of preparation or rehearsal, if you prefer – I referenced a recent substack post by neuroscientists Richard Davidson (Richie) and Cortland Dahl (Cort). Their focus is principally on meditation and wellbeing, and the themes of practice and navigating the emotions that arise in difficult moments are central to their work.
In the post that I shared with the LE group, Richie and Cort describe a conversation with Daniel Goleman (Dan, Emotional Intelligence). In it, Cort asked: how do we go about handling anger (and other emotions) as we experience it/them? Dan replied:
… you practiced before. It’s not the first time you got angry. You get angry. We get angry at this and that in life … [these] are opportunities to rehearse.
It’s the repetitive nature of life experiences that allows us to prepare ourselves to navigate them more skilfully. We begin by noticing when anger (or another emotion) arises and pay attention to how it shapes what follows – for ourselves and others. We might then seek out more skilful ways of approaching these moments – which we can try out the next time one occurs.
For me, the LE centring practice provided an effective way to work with my angry nature – and this motivated me to put in the practice. Wendy Palmer, the founder of LE, described three types of practice:
- Ritual practice – such as practising on the hour, whenever the phone pings, when stopped at traffic lights and/or waiting for the kettle to boil;
- Immersion practice – such as using the centring practice as a support for meditation or participating in an LE workshop; and
- Practising in real time – regarding each adverse event as an opportunity to practise (or rehearse) for the (inevitable) next one.
The third type of practice relates to that described in the substack post – and, if we regularly engage in the ritual and immersion forms of practice, we amplify the principle of practising before.
Contemplations
- What recurring challenges in your life and/or leadership might benefit from practising before? How do you typically handle these moments? What consequences flow from this, for you and others?
- What resources or practices do you already use to steady yourself so that you can handle challenging moments with grace, skill and flow? How might you strengthen the neural pathways for these resources and practices?
