We talk about mindset, strategy, communication, decision-making, emotional intelligence, and resilience. Leaders are encouraged to think clearly, act confidently, and respond well under pressure. All of that matters.
But what if some of the most important leadership signals are not starting in the mind at all?What if they are starting in the body?
In this episode of Breaking the Chain, host Nathaniel Chapman sits down with James Edgar, Chief People Officer at Signature Discovery and founder of The Black Polar Bear, to explore somatic coaching and its growing relevance in modern leadership.
With nearly 30 years of leadership experience across sectors including financial services, manufacturing, facility management, and advertising, James brings a grounded and practical view to a topic that many leaders may still find unfamiliar. Somatic coaching is one of those areas that can feel underexplored, even for people who spend a lot of time thinking about leadership, coaching, and human performance.
And that is exactly why the conversation matters.
Because in a world where leaders are dealing with constant change, rising complexity, pressure, anxiety, AI disruption, and increasingly human challenges at work, the ability to understand what is happening below the surface is becoming essential.
What Is Somatic Coaching?
Somatic coaching begins with the body.
The word “soma” refers to the body. Somatic coaching helps people tune into their lived experience, not just their thoughts. Instead of only asking, “What do I think about this?” it asks, “What am I experiencing?”
That shift may sound subtle, but it is significant.
In many workplaces, especially in Western corporate environments, analytical thinking is highly valued. Leaders are rewarded for logic, problem-solving, strategic thinking, and the ability to make fast decisions. These are important capabilities, but they are only one part of the leadership picture.
The body also holds emotions, experiences, patterns, and information that influence how people show up, interact, lead, connect, and respond under pressure. Somatic coaching helps leaders access that information.
It is not about abandoning logic. It is about widening the lens.
A leader may intellectually know that a difficult conversation is necessary, but their body may already be preparing for conflict. Their chest may tighten. Their breathing may shift. Their posture may close. Their nervous system may move into a defensive state before they have even entered the room.
Somatic coaching helps leaders notice those signals before they become unconscious behaviour.That awareness creates choice. And in leadership, choice is everything.
It Is Not Just Body Language
One of the most useful distinctions in the episode is the difference between body language and somatic awareness.
Body language is often interpreted from the outside. Someone crosses their arms, and people assume they are defensive. Someone avoids eye contact, and people assume they lack confidence. Someone leans forward, and people assume they are engaged.
Somatic coaching is not about reading someone from the outside and assigning meaning to their posture like a badly trained office detective. It is about helping the individual understand their own internal experience. Body language may affect other people, but the real question is what that body language is rooted in. In other words, what is happening internally that causes the body to show up that way?
That is where the leadership work begins.
If a leader walks into a conversation tense, closed, defensive, or overly forceful, the issue is not simply how they appear to others. The deeper issue is what is happening inside them before they speak.
- Are they bracing for conflict?
- Are they trying to protect themselves?
- Are they reacting to a past pattern?
- Are they entering the room already expecting tension?
Somatic coaching does not stop at the visible behaviour. It asks leaders to understand the root of the behaviour.
That is what makes it powerful.
Why Leaders Get Stuck in Their Heads
In this episode, James shares that when he first encountered somatic coaching during his coach training around 12 years ago, he was sceptical. He describes himself as highly analytical and admits that the practice initially sounded like something that might feel too “new age” or abstract.
Many leaders would probably relate to that reaction.
In business environments, people like models, frameworks, slides, metrics, and clear processes. The body can feel less tangible. Less measurable. Less neat.
Naturally, this is deeply inconvenient for corporate life, which prefers everything in a box, preferably colour-coded. But James explains that the impact of the practice surprised him. Through a short roleplay and coaching exercise, he noticed patterns in himself that he had not fully seen before. That awareness helped him become more choiceful about how he responded.
This is one of the key ideas in the episode: somatic coaching helps interrupt repeated patterns.
Leaders often get stuck not because they lack intelligence, but because they keep approaching the same situations through the same internal pathways. They overthink. They analyse. They dwell. They prepare for threat. They repeat behaviours that once protected them but may no longer serve them.
Somatic coaching creates another way in.
Instead of trying to think your way out of every challenge, it helps you notice what the body is doing, what it is holding, and what it may be trying to communicate. For highly analytical leaders, this can be especially useful. It gives them access to information that does not always appear through logic alone.
The Body Knows Before the Mind Catches Up
One of the strongest threads in the episode is the idea that the body often signals stress before the conscious mind fully recognises it.
The body and nervous system work together, and how mass information flows upward from the body to the brain. This matters because leaders are often trained to focus on what is happening cognitively while ignoring what is happening physically.
But stress rarely begins with a neat mental notification saying, “You are now becoming dysregulated.” Unfortunately, the human body has not yet developed a professional dashboard for emotional chaos. Rude, but here we are.
Instead, the clues are physical.
- A tight chest.
- A clenched jaw.
- A restless foot.
- A shallow breath.
- A sinking feeling before making a difficult call.
- A rush of heat before receiving feedback.
- A sense of contraction before entering a high-pressure meeting.
James gave a personal example of feeling tension across his chest before difficult conversations. He noticed that he would enter those situations already braced for conflict. By learning to settle, open up, and bring his breathing down, he could avoid walking into the conversation carrying the very tension he feared.
That example is important because it makes somatic coaching practical.
It is not about abstract self-awareness. It is about noticing, in real time, how your body prepares you for certain situations, and then choosing whether that preparation is actually helpful. Sometimes the body is trying to protect you, but other times it is preparing you for a fight you do not need to have.
Leadership Under Pressure: Fight, Flight, Freeze
The conversation also explores the classic fight, flight, and freeze responses, and how they show up in corporate environments.
In the workplace, these responses do not always look dramatic. A leader in fight mode may become forceful, defensive, impatient, or overly controlling. A leader in flight mode may avoid the conversation, delay the decision, or withdraw from discomfort. A leader in freeze mode may become quiet, indecisive, overwhelmed, or unable to act.
The challenge is that modern workplace pressure often triggers ancient survival responses.
We have replaced the tiger in the bushes with everyday workplace stressors. Feedback from HR, a difficult meeting, uncertainty about promotion, tension with a colleague, or a high-stakes presentation can all trigger strong internal reactions.
The body responds as if there is danger, even when the “danger” is an uncomfortable email or a meeting request with no context. Humanity really did build offices and then gave everyone nervous systems designed for forests. Brilliant design work.
This is why regulation matters.
Leaders cannot always control the pressure around them. But they can build the ability to notice what pressure is doing inside them. That ability supports clearer thinking, better communication, and healthier leadership behaviour.
Why “Head Down, Keep Going” Eventually Catches Up
Many professionals are taught to keep going. Push through. Stay productive. Deliver under pressure. Keep your head down. Move to the next task.
That may work for a while, but it eventually catches up.
This is where somatic awareness becomes closely linked to wellbeing. The body often holds the cost of pressure long before a person is willing to admit they are struggling. Leaders may continue functioning, but their internal system is carrying more than they realise. Panic, anxiety, imposter syndrome, and the way people can operate in heightened emotional states without recognising what is happening.
Somatic coaching helps leaders pick up the clues earlier.
Instead of waiting until burnout, breakdown, or emotional overwhelm, leaders can learn to notice the early signals. They can regulate before the situation escalates. They can pause before reacting. They can create space before the pressure takes over.
This is not indulgent, it is responsible leadership. Leaders need to tune into what they need in order to be better leaders, partners, parents, colleagues, and people. It starts with the individual before it extends outward to others.
You cannot create calm for a team if you have no relationship with your own internal state.
Practical Tools: Breathing, Scanning, and Shape
There are several exercises that leaders can begin using immediately, including box breathing, centering, body scanning, and posture awareness.
Box breathing can help settle the nervous system by bringing rhythm and control back to the breath. Body scanning encourages leaders to move attention through the body and notice sensations such as heat, cold, tension, heaviness, or restlessness.
These practices help move leaders out of overthinking and into awareness.
The shape of your body and how leaders hold themselves physically in different situations can be influenced through somatic coaching. Through three dimensions: height, width, and front-to-back orientation.
Height relates to dignity. In difficult situations, people may physically shrink, lower themselves, or collapse inward. Width relates to openness. Under pressure, people may close in, tighten, or protect themselves. The front-to-back dimension relates to time and orientation, including whether a person is leaning too far into what is coming or pulling away from it.
These physical shifts matter because they change the way leaders experience themselves in the moment.
- A leader who can notice their body contracting can choose to open.
- A leader who can notice themselves bracing can choose to settle.
- A leader who can notice their breath becoming shallow can choose to slow down.
- A leader who can notice tension before a meeting can choose not to carry that tension into the room.
That is the difference between reacting unconsciously and leading with intention.
The Head, Heart, and Gut Exercise
One of the most useful exercises is the head, heart, and gut reflection.
When facing a decision or dilemma, leaders can ask:
What is my head saying?
What is my heart saying?
What is my gut saying?
The value is not in forcing all three to agree. In fact, the insight often comes from noticing where they differ. A leader may intellectually know that a decision makes sense, but emotionally feel uneasy. Their gut may be sensing risk before they can fully explain it. Or their heart may be pointing toward a value that the spreadsheet does not capture.
This is not about treating “gut feel” as magic.
The body as an extraordinary processor of information. Human beings are constantly reading tone, timing, facial expressions, energy, patterns, previous experiences, and emotional context. Sometimes what we call instinct is the body processing information faster than conscious reasoning can explain it. The head, heart, and gut exercise gives leaders a way to slow that down and listen more carefully.
For leaders stuck in procrastination or over-analysis, this can be especially useful. It offers another route into clarity.
What Leaders Can Learn from Athletes
The rituals athletes use before high-pressure moments: golfers resetting before a shot, rugby players preparing before a kick, performers using small physical actions before going on stage. These routines may look like superstition from the outside, but they often function as a reset.
The athlete is not just repeating a habit. They are regulating the body, clearing distraction, and preparing for performance. Leaders can learn from this.
The workplace has its own high-pressure moments: board presentations, feedback conversations, restructuring decisions, difficult client calls, salary discussions, team conflict, public speaking, and moments where uncertainty is high.
Leaders may not be standing on a sports field, but their bodies still respond to pressure.
This leads to people identifying as a “corporate athlete,”. If professionals are expected to perform under pressure, recover quickly, make decisions, manage emotions, and lead others through uncertainty, then they need practices that support performance. That does not mean turning the office into a rugby warm-up session, everyone can relax, It means recognising that performance is not purely mental. The body is part of how people prepare, reset, recover, and lead.
Why This Matters in an AI-Driven World
The episode also points toward a bigger question: what becomes more valuable as work becomes more digital and AI-driven?
AI can support productivity, analysis, content creation, automation, and decision-making. It can process information quickly and assist with tasks that once took hours. But it cannot replace the human experience of trust, presence, connection, emotional nuance, and authentic leadership.
As technology becomes more powerful, the human side of leadership becomes more important.
People still need leaders who can create clarity when things feel uncertain. They need leaders who can regulate themselves in pressure-filled environments. They need leaders who can listen deeply, communicate honestly, and build trust through presence.
Somatic coaching strengthens those human capabilities.
It helps leaders become more aware of how they show up, how they respond, and how their internal state affects the people around them.
In an AI-driven workplace, leaders will still need to do deeply human work: hold difficult conversations, navigate fear, support growth, manage conflict, build belonging, and create environments where people can perform without losing themselves.
That requires more than technical skill and It requires presence.
The Real Leadership Skill Is Awareness
We need to reform leadership from the inside out. Leadership is not only about what a person says. It is not only about strategy, confidence, or executive presence. It is also about the internal state from which a leader acts.
A leader can say the right words and still create distrust if their body communicates tension, defensiveness, or disconnection. A leader can have a strong strategy and still struggle to bring people with them if they are not congruent. A leader can be intelligent and experienced, but still repeat patterns that limit their impact.
Somatic coaching gives leaders a way to notice those patterns.
It helps them understand when they are bracing, shrinking, closing, rushing, avoiding, or overthinking. It gives them practical ways to settle, reset, open, and respond with more intention. That is why this conversation matters, because the leadership skill nobody talks about may not be another framework, checklist, or performance model. It may be the ability to notice what is happening in your body before it becomes your behaviour. And in a world of constant pressure, complexity, and change, that awareness may be one of the most powerful leadership tools available.
For leaders, HR professionals, coaches, and anyone navigating the pressure of modern work, this conversation offers a practical reminder: leadership does not only happen in the mind.
Sometimes, the body knows first.
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