Our bodies are the vessels we occupy from the start of our lives, but so many of us feel disconnected in this home we have within ourselves. If we live in our bodies, how can they feel so foreign to us? For a whole lot of reasons, we’re taught to ignore body wisdom even though it holds the most potent information about ourselves and how we move through the world.

How do we get acquainted with our body wisdom and why is keying into this innate knowledge so important? In this episode, we’re joined by licensed clinical professional counselor, dance/movement therapist and author, Erica Hornthal.

We talk about movement and body awareness and why it’s critical to our ability to be, live, create and heal.

When the body is the source of your pain, no one wants to revisit that. But we can’t escape our bodies. You’re bringing the place where the pain happened with you all the time, you may as well dialogue with it. -Erica Hornthal

Four Things You’ll Learn In This Episode

-Our bodies never stop speaking

Human beings are always moving, even when we think we’re stuck in a freeze response, there is still so much happening within. How do we learn to decode what our bodies are telling us through even the smallest of movements?

-How to find safety in your body

One thing that cuts us off from our innate body wisdom is how we’ve been conditioned to sit still and not “act weird”. How does this impact the movements we do make and how do we learn to move on our own terms again?

-Meet in movement

People don’t have to understand your body’s messaging to support you. How can we use mirroring to recognize, validate, and normalize what people are feeling?

-Movement speaks where words fail

Before we can process a thought and speak it, our bodies have already felt and noted something. How do we use this to move through the world with more self-awareness?

Guest Bio

Erica Hornthal is a licensed clinical professional counselor, board-certified dance/movement therapist, author, and the CEO and founder of Chicago Dance Therapy. Since graduating with her MA in Dance/Movement Therapy and Counseling from Columbia College Chicago, Erica has worked with thousands of patients aged 3-107. Known as “The Therapist Who Moves You,” Hornthal is changing the way people see movement with regard to mental health. Erica is the author of Body Aware and The Movement Therapy Deck. For more information, head to https://www.ericahornthal.com/ and follow @‌the.therapist.who.moves.you on Instagram.

You’ve likely heard about the “whole body yes” and “whole body no”, and maybe even practiced using these to make your decision-making process a little easier. But choosing is really hard when we don’t feel that nudge from our body wisdom, and we just feel “meh” about the whole thing.

When it’s not a definite yes or no, we’re stuck in limbo, and that’s a dangerous place to be.

Learning to locate ourselves within a moment of indecision can be as simple as taking a breath. It interrupts the patterns of anxiety, fear, and adrenaline, and that creates a whole new structure for us to make a decision that is based on our actual wants.

How do we figure out what we want when it’s not a whole body yes or no? In this episode, we talk about the quickest way to cut through indecision.

Finding your “no” actually opens a space for “yes”. -Katie Hendricks

Three Things You’ll Learn In This Episode

-How to identify your energy source

What’s the difference between introverts, extroverts, and INTIMATE extroverts?

-The space between a whole body yes and a whole body no is limbo

When we feel ambiguous about a choice, how do we find the answer by locating ourselves?

-Learn to trust your inner signals

A lot of our confusion and doubting our own experience is the result of mixed messaging we receive as children. How do you identify your wants when all you know are the rules and regulations of what we were told to do?

The Choice Map

The old way of showing up to work meant shoving our emotions away, not being vulnerable and putting on a facade of confidence, no matter what. Admitting you were afraid, unsure or overwhelmed? That was an absolute no-no.

The problem is, this also meant we were showing up without a lot of the intelligence we actually need to have emotionally healthy workplaces and great results.

Today, we give our emotions a seat on the team, we tap into the intelligence of our feelings, and we are vulnerable when we feel afraid or uncertain. Not only does this create a new way to work, but a new language for living. It allows us to band together as teams and face this rapidly changing world as an emotionally intelligent unit.

How do we invite emotional intelligence to work? Why must this process start with committed leaders? In this episode, co-founder of The Conscious Leadership Group, Diana Chapman shares how work is changing for the better and how we can start working alongside our feelings.

Vulnerability in leadership is now an act of courage, not an act of weakness. -Diana Chapman

Four Things You’ll Learn In This Episode

-The intelligence of fear

It’s okay to say “I don’t know”, “I’m doing the best I can” - how do we demystify being vulnerable and what impact can it have on even the bottom line?

-Pay less in “drama tax”

Teams cut off from their emotions pay a lot in “drama tax”. How does this weigh our teams down, and how can we create awareness of this dynamic and get our team out of reactivity?

-The rise of bottom-up leadership

The old way of introducing changes to a workplace was for leaders to tell people what to do. Why do leaders need to commit to befriending their feelings before anyone else?

-Teach the class

If something we don’t want happens, how can we use play to recreate the situation and laugh our way to creative solutions?

Guest Bio

Diana Chapman is the co-founder of The Conscious Leadership Group. She is an advisor to exceptional leaders who has worked with over 1000 organizational leaders and many of their teams, and is a founding partner at Conscious Leadership Group. She has created and implemented professional onboarding and ongoing programs—based on the comprehensive body of work she developed with CLG co-founder Jim Dethmer—with clients such as Asana and Esalen. In addition to facilitating CLG Forums in the Bay Area for founders, venture capitalists, and CEOs, Diana facilitates YPO Forums and Chapters worldwide. She also trains coaches in conscious leadership in the CLG training program she and Jim created. Diana co-authored the best-selling book, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success, in 2015. She has been a speaker at TEDx, Mindful Leadership Summit, Wisdom 2.0, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Haas School of Business, YPO, and Kauffman Fellows.

Moving house, they say, is one of life’s most stressful events, but it doesn’t have to be. Sure, it stirs up a ton of emotions and learned patterns, but with the right awareness and intention, it can be a magical time and a beautiful voyage to a new world.

We can discover new parts of ourselves, deconstruct feelings as they come up, and treat the move as a trampoline to jump into the future with ease and excitement.

Moving to a new home also reveals something deeply rooted in us. The way we navigate all transitions surprisingly tells us a lot about the biggest transition we’ve ever made - being born. With curiosity, we can examine this pattern and use this time to heal ourselves.

How do we move with ease and essence? How do we honor all the difficult emotions that come up, while also celebrating this amazing transition?

In this episode, we talk about how a situation most people find chaotic and stressful offered many beautiful moments to be, play, and love!

You’re going to continue moving through life in the same way you first learned to make transitions unless you change the pattern. -Katie Hendricks

Three Things You’ll Learn In This Episode

-Accompany your whole self to the new place

When we commit to revealing rather than concealing, we get access to all these delicious tools that allow us to move through transitions with greater ease. How do we bring that forth?

-Turn towards each other

If we’re experiencing a transition with a significant other, how can we create a shared space of safety, nurturing, and celebration?

-The work works

Of course, moving won’t be a smooth process and wobbles are par for the course. How do we recover and recommit to tapping into the magic?

This just in: science has confirmed what we’ve known (and have been practicing for years) about the power of paying attention to our body sensations.

In a world of doom scrolling, depression, anxiety and fear, the solution lies within - in the amazing treasure chest we have in our bodies. We have an inner garden of sensory data, feelings, embedded experiences, and subconscious communication but many of us are cut off from it because we live in our heads.

When we make our bodies our friends and drop into that body wisdom, we instantly unlock liberation, readiness, creativity, engagement, and the ability to move through everything from discomfort to fear and complex traumas.

How do we trust and key into the wisdom our bodies already possess? What gifts does this inner landscape hold for us? In this episode, we talk about a recent article that proves the power of investigating what our bodies tell us, and simple ways to start checking in daily.

What’s going on inside you offers such guidance and wisdom and if you’re able to listen to it, you’re adding a whole new color of paint! -Sophie Chiche

Three Things You’ll Learn In This Episode

-Drop out of the verbal and enter interoception

Our cognitive wisdom is only a tiny part of our entire inner landscape. How do we explore the rich continent that is our whole body wisdom?

-The power of keying into your body

How do we learn to give attention to our body sensations - even the slightest catch in our throats - and describe our inner landscapes?

-Your body is your friend

Why doesn’t society want us to tap into our body’s wisdom? Why are we conditioned to live in our heads?

Don’t mix prints, you’ll stand out too much. Don’t wear horizontal stripes, it makes you look wider. Wear what looks good, even if it doesn’t feel good. Behind every woman is a rigid set of fashion rules that stifles our expression, creativity and keeps us from accessing the play that comes with fashion.

What if we took the inside out approach to fashion - starting with our essence and letting our fashion choices flow from that?

Imagine if we could stand in front of our closets every morning and think of ourselves as the canvas and our clothes the paint that expresses who we are.

How do we break fashion rules and create rules around our expression instead? How do we use our inner no’s and yes’ to dress in a way that feels good? In this episode, we talk about looking at fashion through the lens of expression, healing and self love, all the while supporting your true essence to be seen.

Stand in front of your closet as if you’re the canvas. -Sophie Chiche

Three Things You’ll Learn In This Episode

-Forget form and think about feeling good

How do we let go of fashion rules we might have been living by since childhood?

-Express yourself, don’t overwhelm yourself

How do we strike the balance of having our clothing expression support us and our values rather than detracting from our message?

-Use your inner yes/no to get dressed

How do we make wardrobe choices based on what we’re authentically experiencing?

In the world of sports, many people think that the energy of competing is the most powerful thing we can tap into. But there’s actually a higher level to play the game at, and that’s coherence. Instead of being reactive, and playing like we’re in a pinball machine, we can tap into presence, flow and connection, and that’s when everything just clicks.

We get to locate ourselves, play at our highest level and contribute to the game in a big way.

A great example of this powerful coherence could be seen during the SuperBowl this year. There was this distinct and noticeable moment where one team went from reactive chaos into a beautiful co-creation - and they won.

Whether we’re playing pickleball, playing an instrument or working, when we tap into that flow everything gets easier.

How do we presence ourselves and find the flow? In this episode, we share another powerful insight inspired by pickleball - the power of shifting into coherence.

My ability to be present affects my ability to play in a huge way. -Sophie Chiche

Three Things You’ll Learn In This Episode

-When you’re in the flow, the flow supports you

How do we find that place where performing at our highest level feels effortless?

-Layers of coherence

How do we tap into our strongest instrument and then use that to contribute to the whole?

-Shift from critical brain to wonder brain

How do curiosity and coherence create a powerful symphony of solutions?

Seeking the approval of others, helping people without being asked, putting famous people on a pedestal. These behaviors might seem completely unrelated, but they are symptoms of the same thing - hero-ing. Anytime we’re not acting from our own inner value, we’re relinquishing our power to an external source, which is dangerous.

Hero-ing ourselves, or being heroed by others, could be a way to run away from our own genius. And it can actually be a sneaky manifestation of the upper limit problem. Hero-ing actually exacerbates that drama triangle even further, and makes it harder for us to stand in our own genius, resourcefulness, and worth.

What does self-hero-ing tell us about ourselves? How can we have opposing opinions and ideas without hurting one another, and without relinquishing our power to someone else? In this episode, we’re digging into the topic of hero-ing again and sharing why hero-ing ourselves is as dangerous as hero-ing others.

We are now so exposed, anyone can say anything, to anyone, at any time and that makes it harder to have boundaries. -Sophie Chiche

Three Things You’ll Learn In This Episode

-Why we become heroes

Are you being a hero because you’re unwilling to stand in your own light?

-A truth we have to face

It’s important for us to stand in our own essence and value, but social media makes it really hard. How do we stay in our presence when anyone can tell us what they think at any time?

-Tiptoeing around someone can be a hero move too

How can we share feedback instead of criticism?