Your body at work.

Chapter 1

Less analysis, more presence.

Living from the neck up

Analysing, structuring, deciding, defending your decisions in the room: your head has probably worked for you in the best way. It helped you build your career, solve problems, and earn the trust of the people around you. Like anyone, you feel the benefit of a sharp, trained mind. It's a real asset.

And at the same time, most of us live from the neck up, and are not very aware of the rest of our body and its signals. We think, plan, analyse and narrate our way through the day, and you can't fully overthink and fully feel at the same time. Being disconnected from your body can show up like this, among other ways:

• Feeling drained. Less engaged or energised in life than you'd want.
• Needs arrive late. Hunger, thirst, the bathroom: you notice only once it's urgent.
• Tension you didn't choose. Shoulders at your ears, a clenched jaw, a held breath, held so long it stopped registering as effort.
• Emotions that arrive as eruptions. Anger or tears from nowhere, because you missed the slow build that would normally have warned you.
• Watching your own life from a slight distance. A full day lived competently, and felt faintly like a spectator.

It creeps in. Low energy starts to feel normal: a tight jaw becomes your personality, the Sunday evening dip just how it is. Your body keeps giving feedback on what drains you and where you come alive, but after years of pushing through, most of us stop reading it.

So your head is a great tool, and incomplete on its own.

Why body connection matters

The most crucial reason, and the most obvious one in everything in your life, is that you have the ability to feel. It's what lets you receive the goodness life has to offer, enjoy it, and take the fruits of what you're building. And a feeling is felt in the body.

If you're not in your body, you can't feel. If you can't feel, you can't fully enjoy what you're doing.

That is one of the core reasons body connection matters: it lets you feel deeper fulfilment, joy and pleasure in everything you do, and it lets your energy circulate. To complete the picture, here are five reasons why body connection is so crucial, in your work life and in life in general.

1. Fuel and lasting energy. Without a connected body you run on willpower, and willpower runs out. A body you can read tells you what gives you energy and what costs it, so you can refuel before the tank is empty.
2. Deeper fulfilment. Chasing gives short dopamine kicks. Lasting fulfilment is felt in the body. Achieve the same result from the neck up and it registers as a brief chemical event in your head, not something you get to keep.
3. Feeling good. This is what we're looking for in everything: your ambitions don't mean much to you personally if you don't end up feeling good about them. You can't think your way into feeling. Your capacity to feel good depends on a relationship with your body, and that relationship is something you cultivate.
4. Better decisions. Antonio Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis shows that bodily signals do real evaluative work before conscious reasoning kicks in. People with stronger interoception (the ability to read their own bodily signals) consistently make better decisions and have faster, more accurate intuition under pressure. Your body's excitement and gut feel can tell an aligned yes from a no.
5. A nervous system that resets. Left unaddressed, the tension of a normal working day accumulates in a body that was never taught to release it, until it comes out as burnout, a short fuse, or a system permanently braced for the next thing.

Chapter 2

Why do we disconnect?

We lose the connection with our body most of all through overthinking, and most of us are chronic overthinkers. Overthinking is underfeeling: while your attention runs the loop, you aren't in your body.

Overthinking is a stress response. We do it because, when something feels uncertain or threatening, our mind wants its control back: it makes sense of what's happening and fits it to the frame we already have. Research shows that this tendency to overthink and worry keeps the body's stress response switched on. Being very analytical can be a way of holding on to control, and a sign of a deeper wish for safety.

This is especially true if you're highly sensitive. You pick up more from your environment, so there is more to sort, and the need to make it all make sense is stronger. Being highly sensitive is a real strength: you notice the mood in a room, or the detail that doesn't add up. It helps to know your own tendency to retreat into your head and build boxes so that everything fits.

The stress cycle

So disconnecting from the body starts with stress. Like every animal, you have a built-in alarm for danger. When it goes off, your body gets ready to act and you fight or run, which uses the stress up and finishes the cycle. But your body can't tell a tiger from a tough email. A pressing deadline or an unanswered message sets off the same alarm, and it drains your energy. There is no tiger to run from, though, and no movement: you sit still and go back to work. The cycle can't finish. The tension stays in your body, the overthinking stays in your head, and in modern life the next trigger arrives before the last one has cleared. The sum is exhaustion.

Every unfinished cycle keeps you a little further from your body.

What sets off the alarm

Much of what modern work and modern life ask of us keeps that alarm switched on. Some triggers sit in your workday, and some make you more prone to the alarm in the first place.

Alarm triggers at work

• Sitting still. Cortisol and adrenaline are built for movement. At a desk they never get used up, and a hunched posture after three hours at a screen reads to your brain as bracing against something.
• Micro-interruptions. A ping, a message, a tap on the shoulder: your amygdala flickers before you've read a word.
• Abstract threats. Your nervous system evolved for concrete, temporary danger. An inbox that is never at zero gives the alarm nothing to switch off to.
• Deep work. Flow is good for you, and it also takes you out of your body for hours. Hunger, thirst and tension go unnoticed until you surface.

What makes you more prone to the alarm

• A performance and head-driven culture. Most of Western culture does not consciously invite or train body connection. From school onward we learn to override the body's signals when they're inconvenient: a painkiller for the headache, another coffee instead of listening to the fatigue, a swallowed emotion.
• Old wounds, past experiences and psychological conditions. A body that once learned it wasn't safe to feel can keep that habit long after the danger has gone. Conditions such as anorexia or depression can also change how you experience your body.
• A more sensitive or differently wired nervous system. Neurodiversity (such as autism or ADHD) and high sensitivity (HSP) can mean you pick up more, and tip over more easily.

What she describes is desensitisation. The more you override your body's signals, the less sensitive you become to them, until you only notice what your body needs when it's far too late, like with a burnout. The aim is the opposite: to make your awareness more sensitive to your body's signals, so you can take care of your body early.

Compassion for the challenge

Put together, a whole list of factors makes it challenging to stay connected to your body, and to avoid being triggered into a stress response that disconnects us from it, especially when you do office work. Staying connected takes conscious investment and intention, so be kind to yourself on the days it slips. It is totally worth it.

Chapter 3

From a draining meeting to choosing again.

So far we've seen how we get disconnected from the body. But how do you take back control, and influence what happens next for the better?

This is where it gets exciting. You can take back control instead of being a victim of modern-life circumstances. You can break the overthinking cycle, finish the stress response and get back to neutral. And you do it in three easy phases: spot, feel, lead.

The three steps at a glance

• Spot. Become aware, in the moment, that you're being triggered and your nervous system is switching on. Name what's happening.
• Feel. Start noticing how it shows up in your body: the sensations, the emotions coming up. Let them be, without suppressing them or trying to change them.
• Lead. Instead of sliding into victim mode and spiralling, see that you still have a choice and some sense of agency. You can lead in two ways:
  • A. With your body. Shift your state directly: breath, movement, attention.
  • B. With your mind. Reframe, set boundaries, speak up, choose your next step.

All of this serves one aim: finishing the stress cycle that a stressful situation started. With your body, movement helps it finish, as we saw in the previous chapter: your body needs it to get back to neutral. With your mind, by reframing and speaking up, you manage the stressor that set the cycle off. A combination of both is often the most effective.

In the box below you'll read a case example of how Daan went through each of the phases.

You've reached the end of Part One. In Part Two we dive deeper into this three-phase process of spot, feel and lead, to get your connection back when stress pulls you out. And the more you train your body awareness, the more you can use it to thrive: as a compass for your best decisions and for a life that truly resonates with you. That is what Part Three is about.

Chapter 4

Phase 1: spot the energy drain.

Some stress triggers are obvious: something almost falls on your toe, a bus nearly hits you while you're on your bike, someone tries to attack you. Those are clear threats, and your body reacts at once.

What is far less obvious is that a small sentence in an email can set you off a little. Or tension in a meeting room that nobody sees but everyone feels. Or feedback from a colleague, whether you understand it or not. Even a deadline that isn't close, but keeps coming back into your mind, is a stress factor.

We tend to underestimate what is stressful for us, and there can be many triggers at once in a single day. That doesn't have to be a problem. It just makes it important to know how to finish the stress cycle and reset back to neutral, and spotting, becoming aware that it's happening, is the first step to that.

How you recognise it

If it's hard to tell when your nervous system goes on, look for these signs:

• In your mind. Emotions come up, your thoughts increase, and you feel more drained than energised.
• In your body. Tension builds, and you feel restless or nervous.
• In your behaviour. Polyvagal theory (Stephen Porges) names three automatic states:
  • Mobilised, reactive. The snippy email you regret an hour later, talking over people, an edge in your voice.
  • Shut down, checked out (freeze). Postponing decisions, reading an email without answering it, feeling numb or far away.
  • Fawn. Over-agreeing with a colleague or client, saying yes because conflict feels more expensive than the extra work.

That's what spotting is about: becoming more aware. The more you train your awareness, the more easily you spot it, and the earlier. It simply takes practice.

Name it

Once you've spotted it, say it to yourself in your mind, in a word or two: "This is draining me. My stress system just switched on." That is an accurate label. Research backs it up: labelling an emotion measurably reduces activity in the amygdala, the brain's alarm centre (Lieberman et al.).

Chapter 5

Phase 2: feel what's happening in your body.

In the last phase you became aware that something is putting your nervous system on, even when it's subtle. Now that you've spotted it, the next step is to notice what it does to your body. How does it feel? Which sensations do you feel?

Notice something else too: your tendency to go further into your thoughts and emotions. That is the mind wanting to keep going. Instead, move your awareness back to your body.

Many of us actually suppress our body awareness when we get stressed, so we stay away from the body exactly when it matters. This phase is about not suppressing your body signals. Welcome them, give them more space, and be curious what else is there.

Feel it without editing it

When you notice a stress response, move your attention to the raw sensation itself: the knot in your stomach, the band across your chest, the breath that has gone shallow and high. Let it be exactly what it is, without arguing with it or rushing to make it mean something. Psychology calls this radical acceptance. When a sensation is allowed to be felt, it already helps your nervous system: it gets the signal that it's safe, and it starts to settle and land back in your body. In some cases that is enough to finish the stress cycle. In others you need Phase 3, Lead, to move your body more and to reframe with your mind.

Train your body awareness

A great way to train your body awareness is this two-minute practice, adapted from "Focusing," developed by philosopher and psychotherapist Eugene Gendlin. You can do it when you're not stressed, simply to train. Eventually it would be wonderful if you can do it in a trigger state too.

Chapter 6

Phase 3A: lead through your body.

So far you've learned to spot when you get triggered, and to notice what happens in your body. Now comes the most exciting phase: you can take control. Get your nervous system back to neutral, and from there into a stronger connection with your body. In this chapter you'll find different ways to use your body to do that.

Most of them are some form of physical movement, and some are more like physical practices, such as breathing. In essence they all do the same thing: they calm your nervous system and bring you back into the parasympathetic state, the rest state of your body. Take breathing: when you breathe out for longer than you breathe in, it's a signal to your body that it can move into that rest state. That makes the breath an easy way to calm your nervous system and come back into your body. Then there are exercises like shaking and stretching.

Below are a few examples of how you can use your body to neutralise and calm your nervous system. They are a great support to know exactly what to do.

Let your body lead

The more familiar you become with body awareness, the more your body naturally starts to show you what it wants to do. Eventually, and this is the most advanced part, you allow your body to take over. It will show you how it wants to stretch, or that it wants to shake. Your body is literally speaking to you, inspiring you to surrender into the movement it wants to make. That is the end goal.

For now, please practise the examples above, and slowly train your awareness towards these natural inclinations, this more intuitive way.

Chapter 7

Phase 3B: lead through your mind.

Next to using your body to lead yourself back to a calm nervous system and body awareness, there is another great way to take back control: leading through your mind.

Think of a meeting with a lot of tension, or something that annoys you because it keeps repeating. The stress response starts, and you often slide into a bit of a spiral. See, it's happening again. This meeting is so useless. I don't want this job. But I don't really have a choice, it's my main income. That can create a narrative so heavy that it makes the stress stick, or even grow.

The other way around is also true. If you consciously choose practical actions, and focus on the agency you do have, the things you can control and can do in practice, and use the chance to reframe the situation mentally, you can also get back to calm and restore your body connection.

The blocks below show ways to take this control, mentally or practically. Each comes with a short example, so you can see what it looks like in real life.

Take these examples as inspiration. The next time you feel the stress cycle starting, consciously choose your own practical steps, focusing on where you do have influence, and see what works for you, because every situation is different. You probably won't use all eight examples: in daily life it's usually one or two that really help, and they help you regain clarity and calm and connect to your body again.

The key: widen your focus

It's natural to have mind patterns that blow the stress up even further, because our brain is built to hyperfocus on the thing that stresses us.

Notice that tendency, and realise you can choose whether to go along with it. You can choose not to hyperfocus on what's wrong, on everything you can't influence and on feeling like a victim, and instead shift your focus to what you can control. "I can't quit, I need this job" may well be true. You can still choose how you stay in that seat, and still guard your own boundaries.

That is, in a nutshell, what leading through the mind is about: letting go of the hyperfocus on what stresses you, and shifting your focus to what you can control. Every time you catch that tendency and shift your focus, you take back a little more control, and you come back to calm and to your body.

Chapter 8

Better decisions: the wisdom of the gut.

Training comes first

Our first job is to train ourselves in body awareness, and that doesn't happen overnight: by training and experimenting every day, you grow your capacity to feel your body and strengthen the connection with it.

You don't have to wait until that training is done to use what comes next. You can start using your body's signals for decisions and direction right now, with whatever practice you have, and the more you train, the clearer and more reliable those signals become. The two grow together. Your body isn't only there to alert you when something hurts or drains you. You can also use it for pleasure and joy, and for finding the right path for yourself in life.

Your body as a compass

This is where your body can really work for you, because it can tell you what feels right for who you are. So far it mostly told you what state you're in. With a good body connection you can also use it as a compass: which path is aligned with you, what you should say yes or no to, which direction fits.

The clearest example is when someone proposes something to you. If you notice your head racing into doubt, and tension building, that may well be a no. If you feel energised and inspired, and something in you expands, that is your body literally saying yes: it suits you, and it sets your energy moving.

That is your gut feel: your body reading pattern, context and micro-signals faster than your conscious mind can narrate them. By the time your intellect catches up with a reason, your body already knew. With a trained body you get a clearer yes or no, and it's more stable. It holds when your colleagues disagree, or when something looks really good on paper and your gut says no.

Training your body awareness also teaches you to tell fear from intuition. Fear is a stress response. Intuition speaks from a calm nervous system.

Trust, and roots

The second part is learning to trust the feeling, because it can conflict with what you have in mind. That can feel scary, literally and figuratively.

Many of us stay in a situation until we finally understand, with our mind, why our body signalled what it did from the start. A common example: your body inclines towards no, but your mind has a happy picture of how it should go. So you say yes, and it doesn't give you the feeling you longed for. Over time you understand with your mind why your body said no, and that's when you have the guts to lean in.

What we want is to not always need the full explanation, and to simply trust that our body tells us the truth. Every time you follow your body and it pays off, you befriend it, and the trust grows. Yes, it's scary to lean into that trust when your mind doesn't understand. But it is so worth it, because that trust anchors you as a person. It's so much easier to navigate life when you aren't a feather in the wind, taken by every external force. This is where you grow roots, and with those roots you can express yourself more easily. In essence, I believe life is about getting to know ourselves better and fully expressing that understanding out into the world.

Your body doesn't have to be the only voice. What matters is that your body signals are strong enough to counterbalance your mind when it's for your benefit.

Chapter 9

Feeling good: joy, pleasure and fulfilment.

As you may have noticed in the previous chapter, your body works like a compass. Good feelings, excitement and a feeling of expansion in your body are usually a sign that something is aligned with who you are and who you want to be, and whatever the story in your mind says, your body is saying: yes, this is what I want. The opposite is also true: tension, or the feeling that you're not fully there in your body, more up in the clouds, is usually a sign that this is not a direction to say yes to.

Joy, pleasure and all the good feelings carry information about what is right for you, in a way your head can't. They are great guidance on where your energy starts moving, and on what lies within your true inner desire.

Step into your element

The exercise below is a great way to help you feel what good feelings feel like in your body when you're truly in your element, doing what is true to you and expressing who you are. Try it out to discover how your own good feelings feel in your body, and remember that as a compass. The moment it shows up in your body again, you know this is something you should say yes to.

Follow your good feelings

There is another way to explore what is truly meant for you: follow the good feelings in your daily life, and notice how they feel in your body. Each time you notice them, you learn more about your inner compass. Each time you let yourself receive them, and build your decisions and your actions on them, you build a life that feels more alive and more like yours. That is the final step, to pleasure, joy and authenticity. A simple way to start is to think of a warm bath.