An embodied experience: consciousness, coherence, and courage.
Session 2: A Deeper Dive
This resource is an extension of EMCC Global’s Disruptive Series, An embodied experience: consciousness, coherence, and courage, facilitated by Dr Hayley Linthwaite.
Our second session deepened our understanding of embodied movement as a tool to stay regulated and responsive through disruptive change.
We were guided by two practices from The 360 Emergence movement map: Waking the Wisdom Centres, and Dancing the 8 Directions, interwoven with an embodied exploration of Paired Strengths by Beena Sharma, Founder and CEO of the Vertical Development Academy.
The tools shared here are designed to support you beyond the series. Simple, transportable embodied practices you can apply personally, or bring directly into your work.
Session 1 Recap
You are not required to understand concepts from Session 1 to find value in Session 2.
However, if you missed Session 1 and are curious about:
Our “Why” - understanding dynamic disequilibrium, consciousness, coherence and courage
How the dance floor is a training ground for disruption
Ken Wilber’s 5 Up’s: A developmental map describing the different dimensions of human growth and integration
Five embodied movement practices for regulation, orientation, and awareness
Session 1 post-reflection questions
Beena Sharma’s Paired Strengths
Drawing upon all parts of ourselves, to move as one integrated whole.
What we call weakness is often just an untested strength.
When we encounter disruption, we reach for the familiar. We draw upon our greatest strengths to find our way forward. Under pressure, these patterns intensify. We can end up misapplying a strength, or using it to excess, past the point of serving us.
What we're far less likely to do is look for the complementary strengths that could balance things out — the paired strengths we haven't built or used often.
An underdeveloped strength doesn’t feel like an untapped resource. It feels like a weakness, a gap we can’t bridge, something we hide fearing it will reveal we are “not enough”. But it could be our greatest opportunity for growth.
Trying out the new and untested can feel uncomfortable, maybe even dangerous. If we name the fear, instead of letting it drive us, we gain access to a broader set of tools and capacities to help us through.
Below, we explore the arc of Paired Strengths (Strength → Excess → Paired Strength (rising) → Fear (falling) → Release) as part of the Dancing the 8 Directions, when moving in the direction of Within.
Waking the Wisdom Centres
Before we can move with wisdom and intelligence, we must awaken the places in which they are stored.
Sometimes your body knows what your brain has yet to comprehend.
You are an exquisite network of intelligence. Trillions of cells multiply into systems, building bones, brain and blood, right now, moving, breathing, sensing, feeling.
Wisdom centres are somatic locations where a vast amount of energy and intelligence meet. Each carries its own kind of power:
Root - safety and support.
Activate at the tailbone, the pelvic floor, the base: soften your knees, let your weight drop into the earth, and find a gentle bounce through the heels.Navel — vitality, the power to move, choose and generate energy.
Activate two fingers below the navel: let your hips circle slowly, wide and unforced.Solar Plexus - confidence and courage.
Activate just beneath the rib cage, where the ribs meet the stomach: let the ribcage slide gently side to side, hips staying quiet.Heart - blooms with boundless and infinite energy.
Activate at the centre of the chest, behind the sternum: lift the chest softly and let the arms move from the heart, reaching out and gathering back in.Throat - holds the seat of empowerment of your voice.
Activate at the base of the neck: small turns and circles of the head, jaw unclenched, tongue soft.Midbrain - witnesses, organises, and chooses.
Activate behind the eyes, where the brow, temples, and crown draw inward together: soften your gaze and let awareness move inward.Crown - connects you to something larger than yourself.
Activate at the very top of the head: let it rise gently upward as the spine lengthens.
Waking your wisdom centres in sequence, root to crown, imparts knowledge of what's already moving, what's stuck, and where.
It provides clues to things your waking mind has yet to discover, and guides where you need to focus.
Through intentional activation, you can bring your whole system online.
Dancing the 8 Directions
Most of us live facing forward. In challenging times, we focus on what’s ahead. Stay the path. Place one foot in front of the other. What happens when we open up 360 degree movement?
Disorientation does not mean danger.
As humans, we default to what's directly in front of us — literally and metaphorically. But disruption rarely arrives from where we're looking. It often takes us by surprise, and spins us off our feet as we try again and again to overcorrect back to the path we were walking.
The 360 Emergence's 8 Directions practice deliberately turns the body toward what's usually out of view: below, above, before, behind, to the right, to the left, within, and all around. It's how the body learns that disorientation does not mean danger.
Each direction is paired with a distinct developmental question. The dance becomes a way of physically rehearsing your answer.
Below, you’ll find a narration to guide you through the 8 Directions.
1) The Below: Earth
Feel the earth below.
SCRIPT:
"Feel the earth below you. Let your awareness drop into the soles of your feet, into the bones of your legs.
Notice where your body trusts the ground, and where it doesn't yet. Let the parts that feel safe teach the rest of you how to land.
Imagine an anchor extending beneath you, sunk into mud or rock, giving you room to move at the top while staying held below.
How do you stay connected to safety while still moving with what's happening around you, without getting pulled into threat and stuck there?
What is being aware of the below, for you? Let your body answer, not your mind.”
2) The Above:
The Great Mystery
Reach in the direction of the limitless sky.
SCRIPT:
“Shift your attention upward, past the crown of your head. Reach. Lift. Expand.
As you reach upward, what are you ready to release — even just a little?
This is the direction of vision, of limitless sky, of what is yet to come. How do you move when you remember you're part of something vast?
Drop a golden thread from the sky through your crown. It's yours to call on, unique to you. What do you need of this thread today? Does it lift you effortlessly, or does it connect you back down to the anchor you just built?
Let it pulse through you — bridging the unseen to the seen."
3) The Before: What is in Front of You
Step into the future, alive with possibility.
SCRIPT:
Turn your awareness to the space in front of you. This is the path of becoming — the future that is already whispering to you.
As you reach forward, feel where your power begins to return. Feel the air in front of you, alive with possibility.
Move as if you’re stepping into the future — are you moving with wonder, curiosity, perhaps a little hesitation?
Let your eyes fix on a single point ahead. Move toward it. Then let it go. Find another. Move again.
What are you moving toward, even without knowing? Can you let yourself be magnetised by your own potential?
Notice: you can move toward this… or not. Choice is here.
4) The Behind: What you Face Your Back to
Time is not a line. It is a spiral, a loop, a dance.
SCRIPT:
“Gently bring your attention to the space behind you — the unseen, the remembered, the ancestral. You are not the first to stand here.
As you move backward, what are you ready to take responsibility for — not as blame, but as authorship?
Behind you is a lineage — of love, of survival, of silence, of song. Shift your weight backward. Let your heels connect to the ground. Try moving without looking, trusting your body to guide you.
Invite your ancestors, known or unknown, to move with you. What does it feel like to move with the support of those who came before you?
Time is not a line. It is a spiral, a loop, a dance.
Where do you still carry weight? Now rewrite it, with breath, with shape, with instinct.”
5) To Your Right: An Ally for Action
The place of fire.
SCRIPT:
“Bring awareness to the right side of your body — the place of expression, of fire, of doing.
Shift your weight onto your right foot. Let your right arm extend outward, reaching, declaring, leading.
Try bold, decisive gestures — as if you're speaking with your whole body, making something known.
What becomes possible when your inner fire is allowed to move freely? Who or what stands as an ally to your right today?”
6) To Your Left: An Ally for Receiving
The vessel.
SCRIPT:
“Bring your awareness to the left side of your body — the side of reception, of dreaming, of mystery.
Shift your weight toward your left foot. Let your left hand lead you, like an antenna, or a tide.
The left side does not push — it listens, it pulls in what is needed. What happens when you surrender effort and enter the rhythm of receptivity?
Listen with your skin. Who or what stands as an ally to your left today?”
7) Within: Your Centre
The direction of truth.
SCRIPT: (An embodied Exploration of Beena Sharma’s Paired Strengths)
“Bring your awareness inward now, to your centre, your breath, your heartbeat. This is the direction of your truth, of integrity, of presence.
Let your movement arise from within, with no need to perform or impress. What is stirring in your centre? Move it. Breathe with it. Be with it.
Finding the Strength
Somewhere in you is a strength that feels most alive when you're using it — not your best behaviour, your best instinct. Find the joint that wants to lead.
What do you value about this strength? What does it give you? Let the answer come through your skin, not your mind — run it through your spine, spill it into your hips, out through your fingertips.
This is your medicine. Let it be unmistakable.
Excess
Now — when you become excessive in living into this strength, what do you become? Same shape, same quality — crank the volume up past ten.
Keep going, past the point where it's still serving you. Feel the strain. This is the cost of a gift with no off switch.
Rising — The Paired Strength
When this happens — when the excess has cost you what it's cost you — what would you like to become more of? Not instead of your strength. Beside it.
Find the joint that was locked open in excess, and this time let it find its opposite. Let it rise the way the strength rose earlier — same permission, same size. This is also you.
Falling — Fear
What do you fear, if you start focusing too much on this? Let your body answer in one shape only — small, immediate, true.
Feel the physical sensation of contraction — where it grips, the jaw, the solar plexus. This too has a shadow.
The Release
Both of them are in you now. The strength and its excess. The complement and its fear. Four points on the same compass.
Stop trying to choose between them. Let your body find its own rhythm — swing if you need to swing, settle if you need to settle.
Not as opposites. Parts of a whole. Nothing to reject. Nothing to fix. Just integrate.”
8) All Around: 360° Awareness
The movement of expansion.
SCRIPT:
“Extend your awareness outward, past the edges of your skin. Notice the space around you — the floor, the air, the others in the room.
Let your body reach into space. Try moving around an invisible shape outside you — orbit it, respond to it.
Imagine you're part of a web — every gesture creating a ripple. How do you respond when you remember you're not alone?
Feel your whole system now, all directions at once. What has reorganised inside you? And from this place, what do you naturally offer the world?”
Transporting Tools Into
Everyday Practice
These tools can be practised in seated in boardrooms, standing in workshops, or in curated experiential movement labs.
Importantly, they are not about performance. They are regulation, orientation, and awareness practices in the form of movement.
Some examples:
-Begin a coaching session or team check-ins with Waking the Wisdom Centres when people arrive scattered, distracted, or disconnected from their bodies.
-Use Paired Strengths in performance conversations or conflict mediation - anywhere a strength has tipped into its excess, or two people's strengths are quietly working against each other.
-Use The Below direction practice when a team feels destabilised by change and needs to locate what's actually solid before moving forward.
-Introduce The Above direction practice during strategic or values conversations, when a group needs to reconnect to a longer horizon than the immediate problem in front of them.
-Draw on Right and Left direction practices in 1:1 coaching, when someone struggles making hard calls on their own.
Post-Reflection Questions
This session was underpinned by Beena Sharma’s Paired Strengths exercise. This practice is a form of navigating polarities - a vital skill for navigating complexity and constant change.
Below are questions to reflect upon:
1) Strength that energises me: Name your strength. What do I value about this strength, and what do I gain from it?
2) Excess: When I become excessive in living into this strength, what do I become?
3) Paired strength: When this happens, what would I like to become more of?
4) Deeper fear: What do I fear if I start focusing too much on the paired strength I've named above?
5) Greater purpose: In what ways does taking care of my needs positively impact others on my team? And in what ways does not taking care of my needs negatively impact them? Where does your team currently only get to see the excess version of you?
6) Expansion: What would it look like to let 10% more of a paired strength into a real life situation this week - not instead of your strength, beside it?
Session 2 soundtrack
Further Research
I'm excited to be leading a research project into this emerging area of adult development, "Leading in Motion".
My hypothesis is that dance can be a vital tool for transformative development by simulating disequilibrium and rehearsing adaptive responses, such as emotional agility.
I'm working with a select group of leaders to look at how embodied movement practices influence growth in three critical domains:
Physiological regulation: recognising stress signals in the body and consciously responding rather than reacting in moments of challenge or ambiguity.
Emotional awareness: building agility, calm, and inner capacity.
Meaning-making capacity: opening new ways of perceiving and navigating complexity.
Want to know more?
Further Reading
The Way Out is Through, by Alis Anagnostakis of The Vertical Development Institute
Your Body is Your Brain, by Amanda Blake, Somatic Coach
The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, by Alexander Grashow, Marty Linsky & Ronald Heifetz
Dance for Neuroplasticity: A Systemic Review, by Lavinia Teixeira-Machado, Ricardo Mario Arida & Jair de Jesus Mari
Understanding the Path of Embodied Leadership, by Peter Hamil of the Strozzi Institute
An Introduction to the Neuroscience of Dance, by Sofia Amaral Martins
Your Brain on Art, by Susan Magsamen & Ivy Ross
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