Head: (4.5 of 5)
Heart: (4.5 of 5)
Leadership Applicability: (4.5 of 5)
The Intuitive Body draws on the principles of the non-aggressive Japanese martial art aikido, somatic awareness and meditation to present a comprehensive approach to cultivating awareness, attention, and self-acceptance. Palmer shows readers through basic movement, meditation and breathing exercises how to become more aware of the body and trust its innate wisdom. With this work, leaders can focus their energies and deepen their understanding of what specifically they can do to become more present, effective, and resilient. Especially pertinent to leaders are the following energetic leadership competencies:

(1) Inclusiveness. Seventy percent of communication is non-verbal, and if a leader's body language is out of sync with his or her words or actions, his people will feel uncomfortable without knowing why. They may feel excluded, angry, or resentful.

(2) Capacity to take feedback. Negative feedback can feel like getting punched in the gut. Being centered will allow you to take that hit and respond with dignity and grace.

(3) Ability to take action without aggression.

(4) Ability to sit with the unknown ("not-knowing").

(5) Ability to recover quickly from threat (resilience).

The practices Wendy proscribes in her book rest on hundreds of years of accumulated practical wisdom. By combining aikido, which focuses on becoming more open under stress, with mindfulness, which is the capacity to be with what IS. You need to be centered to face the unknown and deal with what comes, and somatic work is the key to building up the nervous center capacity to deal with it. The first step is to study your habitual energetic pattern-your body language, breath, qualities of tension, etc. when under a low-grade threat. Some people react to an attack with aggression, others, withdrawal. You don't need to know why your body does what it does, only to know that it is so.

To broaden our perspective and provide ourselves an alternative way to respond, we first need realize that the universe is ever-changing, its energy always pushing down on us. Being physically grounded helps us to sit with non-knowing and embrace the changes that come. If you practice the body work and are centered when that stress hits, you allow for the big picture to change.

Another distinction that is important to learn before beginning the exercises is the difference between personality and center, which together make up our humanity. Personality is about people, things, concepts; it wants control, approval, safety. Personality is counter-phobic; it tries to learn everything it can about what it is afraid of, trying to create security in an insecure world.  It is compartmentalized, both in brain structure and in culture. Center, on the other hand, is a zone, flow, or state.  It is skillful, based on deeper knowledge. It knows we are going to lose everything, failures and successes a like. It is flexible in the face of not-knowing and courageous in the face of fear.

No one stays at center, life pulses. As Palmer's sensei says, "It is not that I don't get off center. I correct so fast that no one can see me." The physical embodiment of center is deep, calming breath, stable stance, and openness. All of this takes work to achieve. We expect to be uncomfortable at the start of new exercise training, Palmer says, so expect that this work will not come easy: "Practice is the essential part of our spiritual growth," she says. "We must begin sometime. Today is the perfect day."  

A basic practice to begin to learn center is a simple combination of breath, balance, gravity, and quality.  Begin by bringing your attention to your breath. Exhale, spiraling downward, clockwise. Inhale, spiraling upwards, counterclockwise. Feel the sensations that arise. For balance, check to see that you have equal distance and weight from center to front, back, right, left, above and below. Again, feel the sensations that arrive.  For gravity, ask yourself, can I feel the weight of my body? And notice the sensations. For quality, ask yourself, if there were more (pick a quality you'd like to have) in my being, what would that feel like? Focus on the place between ask and response and feel the sensations that arrive. 

Other practices include the Spiral-Breath Meditation, "Yes...and Technique," being Positive/Receptive, Dropped Attention (focusing on our own energy field and bodily sensations), Open Attention (moving from dropped attention to one that includes others), and Metta Meditation (making requests for yourself and others). 

Palmer's book is dense with wisdom and deserves to be kept on your nightstand for weeks of inspirational reading. While the exercises build upon each other, insightful passages can be dipped into at any point in the book.