Centered, grounded, present - why it matters more than you think

Increasingly these days I notice the focus on being present, being grounded, being centered.  I’m pleased. Sometimes with clients I’ll call it a process of ‘re-gathering’ or ‘re-collecting oneself’

It was a skill, a way of being never taught to me when I lived in corporate land.  I got taught how to shift my inner landscape to be more present when I stepped into coaching; offered as a foundational practice, that once experienced, I came to realise just how I was not fully present before.   

Not just confined to leaders, relevant to everyone, there’s a moment most will know.

The difficult conversation you didn’t see coming. The challenge that lands differently to what was intended.   The energy in the room that shifts in a way that can’t quite be explained.   And suddenly, without deciding to, you're somewhere else - your maybe contracted, reactive, performing rather than present.

Centering, or however it helps you to name it, is the practice of not going to those places.   Or more precisely of being able to return from there quickly, with choice, rather than being carried by it.

But centering isn't what most people imagine. It isn't a breathing exercise or a moment of calm before the storm. It's a physical orientation device from the inside.   A way of inhabiting your body that changes what's available to you, what you can perceive, how you respond, what kind of presence you bring into a room.

We can start with three dimensions

Length is the vertical axis — the lift through the crown of the head, the dignity of the spine, the quality of being neither collapsed downward nor rigidly held upward. When you're in length, you're upright in a way that's alive rather than effortful. You take up your full height, not more, not less.

Width is the horizontal axis — the sense of breadth across the chest and shoulders, hips, legs and feet, an openness that doesn't reach or grasp but simply makes room. Width is generosity and connection to what matters, what you and others care about.   It’s the body's version of being able to hold more than one thing at once, more than one person's experience, more than one possible response.

Depth is the dimension most people forget. Front to back or back to front.  The awareness that you have a back body, and a middle body as well as a front one.  Depth is a reminder that you extend backward into space.  Depth is the sense of your history, all that got you here, all that you can bring and offer as you face towards the future.  Depth is the place where the present moment of now is, the now that can give you pause for a moment.   Depth is what keeps you from being pulled entirely by what's in front of you.  Depth is what brings you gravitas, stops you rushing.   

When all three are present — when you are long, wide, and deep, something changes.

The fourth Dimension is in the belly, the pelvis, sometimes known as the Hara or the Tantien.    We place our attention below the navel, dropping the breath into the belly, letting it become soft, letting it move and expand with the in-breath. We let go of gripping and we relax.  Attention in this place brings a quiet stillness, one in which we can gather, and center whilst in the action we must take, the conversation we need to have.    It’s not a flip out, disconnect move, it’s a be here, now present movement.

When you can pull all of this together, it’s noticeable.  You can feel it. A settledness, not rigidity, an alertness, not vigilance.   A relaxation that isn’t collapse.   The world doesn't change, but your relationship to it does.

At first this might feel like a clumsy technique.  Then it might feel like a skill, a switch you need to flick.  But in time, it’ll become more natural, more habituated.   It’s rare that it will become permanent, there will always be something that throws you, but with enough practice it will be permanently accessible.

Practise in the ordinary moments;  before a meeting, at your desk, standing in line for a coffee, in the lift on the way to a difficult conversation.  The body learns what it practises. And over time, centering becomes less something you do and more something you are.

Where do you lose your centre? And what would it mean to be able to find it again — quickly, reliably, even in the moments that most want to take it from you?

Conflict - is it really generative?

"Can we go now?"

I asked this for the umpteenth time from the back seat while my Dad and Grandad argued.   Again. They'd do it until the cows came home, getting angry with each other.   Usually it was about politics.   Really they were on the same side politically, just in different places on the spectrum highlighting a gap between age and youth.   

What sticks with me most, isn’t really the arguing, but the leaving.  They taught me something about that.

When it was time to go, Dad would always say: Cheerio Pop. And Grandad would answer: See you next week, Son.    And that was it - done!       Dad never brought the argument to the car.     Whatever had just happened between them, it didn't damage anything.

I didn't have words for it then, but what I was sitting in  - bored, slightly exasperated, usually pestering to go home,  was conflict held inside a container of love and safety.     The arguing was real and so was the ‘Cheerio Pop’.

The first time I heard someone talk about conflict as generative my first thought was  “Generative? As in positively generative? Not just destructively generative?”  And then I remembered Dad and Grandad.  I doubt their heated political conversations were ever generative, but they were not destructive because of the bonds they shared.

I'll be honest -  I don't much care for conflict and I know I'm in good company.    The memory of that back seat, was evidence that it could, under certain conditions, be something other than damaging.

Here's what those conditions actually are.

Conflict becomes generative when both people feel, at some level, safe enough. Not comfortable — safe. There's a difference. Safe enough to say the difficult thing and still believe the relationship will hold. Safe enough to be wrong. Safe enough to disagree without it meaning something catastrophic about who you are or where you stand.

That safety isn't primarily a communication skill. It isn't about finding the right words or following the right framework. It starts in the body. In whether you can feel your own ground. In whether your nervous system is running a threat response or whether it has enough resource to stay present and regulated in the face of challenge.

When you're dysregulated - braced, contracted, flooded - you can't access generative conflict. You're in survival mode. The older brain is running things and it's not interested in nuance or relationship. It wants to win, or to flee, or to go very quiet and wait for it to be over.

But when you're grounded, something else becomes possible. You can hold your position without gripping it. You can hear a challenge without it landing as an attack and you can disagree and still stay in contact with the other person.

This is what Dad and Grandad had, without ever naming it.   A body-level knowing that the relationship was bigger than the argument.   A ground and a bond solid enough to fight from and still say Cheerio Pop at the end.

I know what I need to do and yet ...

I know what I need to do. I know what I should do. I even know how.  And yet. I don’t.

How many times have you heard yourself saying this?

If like me, you’ve ever sat with that gap, staring at the thing you've already decided to do, and not doing it, you’ll know how maddening it is. You're intelligent. You've built a career on knowing things and acting on them. So what is this?

It's not weakness. It's not resistance in the way that word usually gets used. And it's almost certainly not about strategy.

Here's what's actually going on.

Underneath the part of you that thinks, plans and decides, there's an older system. Much older. The part of your brain that evolved first wasn't built for spreadsheets or stakeholder conversations. It was built for one thing: survival. And it is still, right now, doing its job. Scanning. Assessing. Asking, at a level far below conscious thought, “Is this safe? Am I safe?  Are these people safe?”

When the answer is yes, the thinking brain gets to run things. You plan, decide, act and everything flows as you want it to.

When the answer is anything other than yes, when there's a faint signal of threat, even one you can't name, maybe that makes no rational sense, the older part of your brain takes over.   Not dramatically or obviously. It just quietly, persistently, applies the brakes.

This is why knowing isn't always enough. You can know exactly what needs to happen and still find yourself not doing it. Not because you lack commitment, but because some part of your nervous system hasn't yet received the signal that it's safe to move.

This is the gap most leadership development doesn't touch.

In a world which prioritises left brain over right, it focuses on the thinking brain with skills, frameworks, behavioural strategies. All are useful of course,  but none of this will reach the part that's actually running the show when things feel hard, exposed, or uncertain.

The work that does reach it isn't about thinking differently. It's about helping the body, the whole nervous system learn that it's safe to act.   Sometimes the assessment of threat is real.   The work teaches the body how to resource and respond in the face of that.  Sometimes the assessment of threat is unreal, based on some now past event which looks and feels similar but isn’t.   The work teaches realistic assessments and response.  It shows you how to move.   

When your response shifts, the gap closes. Not because you convinced yourself regardless  but because something underneath the decision finally said yes.

Is there a place in your leadership where you know, and yet you don't? Is there someplace in your leadership where you can feel the brakes on and yet, you’d like to release them?

The Uninvited Guest

Early in my career, in my first Line Management role in fact,  I felt like an uninvited guest.

Given the size and nature of the business, my role was necessary, but I am sure, not quite welcome.

The most senior leader of that business was a bully.  Not something we recognised back then in the way we do today.  There were the callouts, the disrespectful challenges in public and in private there were unbridled dressing downs reserved for some people.   Personnel Management as it was called then,  felt like it was there on sufferance, but perhaps because of my youth, maybe my gender, I was thankfully never on the wrong end of a verbal full on assault.  I did have however what we might call now the gift of youthful directness, inclined to speak the truth as I saw it, rather than as the bully would have it be.   Gratefully, a wiser, older mentor helped me temper my assertions and although he could be frustrating, he was a decent man, who abhorred such behaviour.  He was a useful protector.    

Inside, the experience of being in such tension daily, chipped away.  I began to second-guess my impact, my assertions.  I’d doubly prepare, I’d present the facts, withhold advice.   The notion of ‘chewing the cud’ over people matters arising in the business was not possible.  There was space for only one bombastic opinion.  It wasn’t mine.    Over 18 months, I did what many of us learn to do.

I girded myself. Pulled up on the inside, made myself stand taller and more upright than was natural, strained taut into a shape of confidence and authority, even when I felt neither.

I practiced that shape for a long time and eventually I paid a price - back surgery and twelve months away from work.

Here's what I've come to understand about what was happening.

When we don't feel safe, when belonging feels conditional, when our presence feels questioned, when we are fearful as I am sure at some deeper level I was, the body responds.  It braces; if finds ways to protect itself, to fool itself even, working overtime to project the shape of something it isn't yet feeling on the inside.   As I learnt, it can do this for quite a while  before the cost becomes impossible to ignore.

The trouble is that performed confidence and grounded confidence may look similar from the outside but are completely different to live in. One is held up by effort, vigilance, and a quiet terror of being found out. The other is built from the inside — from a settled relationship with your own worth that doesn't require the room to confirm it.

My body, it turned out, knew the difference. I wasn’t listening, I don’t think I knew how to then - so it made the decision for me.     In short, my back took over - it extricated me.  ‘If you won’t do this, then I will’.

Older and wiser, I've learned that dignity and confidence are bedfellows. Not the performed kind — the kind you strain into when you're afraid. But the kind that comes from deeply committing to being who you are, and learning, slowly, how to take a stand for that from the ground up.

We can be shaken, of course. Circumstances will always test this. But somewhere, when the work has been done a kernel remains. Something that can find the way back.

Have you ever girded yourself into a shape that wasn't yours? What did that cost you — and what eventually brought you back?

Window of Tolerance

My partner and I were talking recently about blood pressure, not because either of us have high blood pressure - fortunately.   But maybe we have reached that stage of life where health begins, slowly but steadily, to matter more. The conversation wandered towards stress, anxiety and the impact that sustained pressure has on the body.

Ironically, as we talked we were sitting in warm spring sunlight streaming through the windows. Calm. Relaxed. Unhurried.   Quite a contrast.

We now that stress we cannot escape from keeps the body in a prolonged state of alertness, hyper-arousal, what in its most primal form we might recognise as fight or flight. Stay there long enough without being able to return to equilibrium and eventually the consequences begin to make themselves known physically, emotionally and relationally.

What interests me is how many people become so adapted to this state that they mistake it for normal functioning.

An acquaintance tells a story of how he had to deliberately make himself angry each morning before stepping onto his trading floor. He believed that if he relaxed, even slightly, his performance would drop.

Sadly., for many people work functions exactly like this.  The high stakes keep them hyper-vigilant and constantly braced.  Waiting for the next pressure point.

When clients describe their working lives, I often picture someone standing, surrounded by a circle of stakeholders. Around each stakeholder sits a basket of balls of different shapes, sizes and weights. Requests, priorities, interruptions, demands, emotions.

The balls come constantly; some fast, some unexpected, some impossible to hold.

And there they are in the middle trying to catch, manage and respond to all of them at once.

Imagine this is you.   What happens to you when you live there for too long?

What do you catch?
What do you drop?  Accidentally or, because you just can’t catch it? 
What throws you off balance?
And how long can the nervous system sustain that level of activation before something begins to fray?

This is where I often think about the concept of the Window of Tolerance, developed by Dan Siegel and Pat Ogden.

The Window of Tolerance describes the zone in which we are able to function optimally under pressure. Present, calm, alert and connected.   Able to think clearly whilst remaining emotionally regulated.

What they see is success

I left then. Somehow I got separated from her and I've been chasing her since. There's something elusive. A kind of knowing I can't quite grasp.

This is the story of Anna.

At ten, her family sent her to boarding school where she stayed until she was eighteen.   Although it was hard and a bit of a shock (to say the least), Anna became really good at adapting.  When the time came she went to university, completed with a good degree, and landed a good job.  She was set.   

By any external measure, her story since then would be described as one of accomplishment.  She worked hard, earned the respect of her colleagues.  She bought a house, gathered a great group of friends and by the time she was approaching her 40’s it looked like she had a life, that from the outside, was exactly as she wanted it.

But Anna doesn't live on the outside.

On the inside, she is unsettled.  She knows she is always striving toward something - although she can’t name what.  She feels vaguely lonely in rooms full of people who admire her. Quietly afraid that it's all going to unravel — that some inner truth will out, and everyone will finally see what she has always suspected about herself.

She doesn't talk about this. Why would she? What they see is success.

Here's what's actually happening.

When we learn early that belonging requires performance, that love comes with conditions and that safety must be earned rather than assumed, the body learns this too. Not as a thought but as a shape. This shape is unique and individual.  In Anna’s case there was a low-level bracing in her body, places that were gripped, and then a vigilance that never fully switched off, along with a striving that can't find its floor.

Still, the mind is clever.   It finds ways to compensate.  Anna builds the career, produces the results. But some part of her body is still ten years old, still scanning for safety, still not quite sure it's allowed to stop.

This waiting for the other shoe to drop is not a willpower problem and it’s not really a confidence problem although it might look and feel like it.  It is not going to be solved with another qualification, another promotion, or another coaching programme focused on skills and strategy.  It’s not something that can be wrestled with in a ‘mind over matter way’.

The body has its own timeline. Its own pace. Its own knowing.

The thing Anna discovered, the thing that matters: the fear she had been bracing against wasn't as confronting as the bracing itself. When she turned toward it, gently, with support, with her body included in the room, it began, slowly, to move.

The body is wise. And, given the chance, it is kind.

We all have a village

This is not a post about leadership. Not on the face of it.

Earlier this year I handed over my late mother's dog to a new owner.   I'd cared for him for 14 weeks — whilst navigating all that comes with closing a life, the grief that comes with loss, the competing needs of him, cats, family, and my own heart and, a stubborn refusal to rush the decision.  I had to find the right solution for him, for us, and one that Mum would have been proud of.

On the day I let him go, I learned that the people in the village in which his new home was located, were waiting to meet him.   An entire community, poised to welcome one small dog.

I drove home and sat with that.

And I realised he wasn't the only one with a village.

I had one too. Groups of people who'd held me through a much bigger journey, and who'd quietly, consistently, rooted for this dog to land on his paws. People who put feelers out, talked to contacts, kept an ear open. Who didn't lose faith I'd find the right answer, even when I was wavering. Many of whom later commented on my determination to do the right thing, as though it were something unusual.

I found that quietly surprising. It didn't feel exceptional to me. I owed him that.  His exceptional loyalty was owed that.   I knew that moving too fast would have cost me and him, a price I wasn't willing to pay.

What struck me, sitting with all of this, was something I'd seen years earlier in Catalonia. The Castellers — teams of people who build human towers in the town squares at festival time. The base holds everything. Dozens of bodies, shoulder to shoulder, absorbing the weight so that others can rise. What makes it work isn't the person at the top. It's the foundation. The people who show up, plant their feet, and hold.

That's what my village did.  They held the base and because they held it, I had the steadiness to take the time the decision needed, and to get it right.

I said this wasn’t a post about leadership but there is in fact a parallel.   So often those leading are navigating genuinely hard calls. The pressure is to move fast, perform with certainty, and not let people see you working it out.  To get it right, often first time, and frequently the instinct is to carry it alone.

But some decisions need time.  Time requires support. And support, real support, is less about advice and more about people planting their feet and saying: we're not going anywhere. Take what you need, we will be here.

The quality of a leader's decisions is often shaped less by their intellect than by the quality of the ground they're standing on.   

Who's in your village?  Who and what keeps you steady?   Who helps you hold your ground?

Are you a commitment or just committed?

Are you a commitment - or just committed?

Try this. Say out loud: I am committed to my wellbeing.

Now say this: I am a commitment to my wellbeing.  (Put stress on the words AM A)

Feel the difference. Not in your head — below your neck. Which one asks more of you? Which one lands differently in your chest, your belly, your spine?

Most people notice something.   Not necessarily better or worse, maybe just odd, maybe that it doesn’t fit?   Try it again with I am a commitment to being a good friend - choose something that is true for you and see how that feels?  First in your body, as a sensation, a feeling, and then what’s the emotion?   Most of us who are committed to being a good friend will get some kind of settling or warming feeling.

Then try it with I am a commitment to ……..    Choose something or some way of being you might want to create for yourself that is new, and slightly out of reach at the moment.  Some people feel like they agree with it immediately. Others find it odd, even uncomfortable.  However it feels it might provoke some sort of emotion.

Why is I am a commitment to ….. provocative?

I am committed is a decision. A mental position. It lives in the part of you that plans and it’s a statement of intention.    However, when things get hard, there’s always the possibility of an exit - not today.  It’s not a commitment to an identity.  The self doesn’t change, the action or the doing might.  In time, with enough practice you might actually become the thing you are committed to, of course.  And you might not.

I am a commitment is different.  Right from the get go you are declaring that you will become this thing that you care about.  It invites a question the first version doesn't ask: who do I need to be to live this? What in my structure — my  habits, my posture, my way of entering a room, my relationship to difficulty — needs to change?   When it’s new to you, it can feel really uncomfortable.  A sense of ‘can I really become this?’  At first you might not really be it, but by committing to the practice of becoming, you will become it.

This is what embodied commitment means. It’s not about the strength of your intention;  it’s about a different relationship to who you are.

Leaders carry a lot of commitments. To their teams, to their own development, to success.  And most of those commitments are genuine and sincere.   But sometimes it’s not enough.   The structure that got you here — the patterns of response, the ways of holding yourself under pressure, the ways of being the body has learned, doesn’t automatically reorganise around a new intention. It stays as it is until something changes at a deeper level - which is what the second statement invites.   

The commitments we make are often a call to courage, making a declaration, saying to the world I am going to become this …..then building from the inside, through practice, through returning to the commitment in the body rather than just in the mind. Through noticing when the old structure is beginning to dissolve and a new structure is emerging.

An embodied commitment becomes an anchor. When the sea is rough and the stars are hidden, it gives you something to return to that isn't just a thought.