Embodying Authenticity: A Somatic Path to Transforming Self, Team & Organisation

By Eunice Aquilina

Transformative change begins with those who seek to lead it. Connecting the individual journey with the collective journey is what allows organisational transformation to unfold and sustainable change to become possible. Embodying Authenticity explores the theory and practice of an integrated somatic methodology and how this unique approach supports individual and collective transformation, which are interdependent and inseparable. In somatics the 'self' and the body are inextricably linked, when we connect with vast intelligence of the body powerful change is available.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Live It Ventures Ltd
• Release date: Sep 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781910565834

Eunice Aquilina

Eunice Aquilina is a business psychologist, consultant and coach, and the founder of eaconsult, a leadership and organisation development consultancy. In her work with women, she draws from three decades of working with global organisations. Her first book, Embodying Authenticity, was published in 2017.

Book preview

Somatics

Introduction

We cannot think our way to being different

Her instructions were simple: move as you breathe out; be still as you breathe in; and as you move let yourself occupy one of three states of lying, sitting or standing. The teacher invited us to let our attention drop to our body and to simply notice, without judgement, what might get revealed in the stillness and in the movement. This is something new, I thought. I looked around and I noticed how everyone else had lain down without hesitation. My sceptical inner voice was already questioning how could this possibly be relevant to leadership or change?

As I too lay down on the floor and closed my eyes, I could feel my level of self-consciousness rising. I felt anxious, my mind kicked into overdrive with questions: what should I be doing; what is the right move here; what is the wrong move? I felt the need to check if I was where everyone else was in the sequence, not recognising that there was nowhere to be but where I was. The moment the teacher asked us to make our last move I felt sheer panic, not knowing if I was going to end in the ‘right place’.

Our dance, as the teacher, Arawana Hayashi called it, was complete and in just twenty minutes I had met myself, and my habitual way of being in the world. My pretence was stripped away revealing how I really am in the world. Up until that moment, I had always prided myself on being able to rationalise my way through life. My capacity for reason was always in charge. Suddenly my sense of self, firmly anchored in the confidence of the stewardship of my mind, was challenged. Arawana had my attention.

The session invited us to explore our genuineness in the moment. Arawana asked us to quieten down, let ourselves be and pay attention to the body as the physical and psychological space we inhabit. In our first short but very rich session, I felt the experience of learning with the body. In the natural human moves of lying, sitting and standing, my awareness opened and I came face to face with who I am. There was no need for words; we were each experimenting with just being and tuning into what was happening moment to moment. When words did flow into our learning space, they were words of discovery, words that described how we were each getting in touch with a deeper part of ourselves, a genuine part of ourselves, a part of us that lives underneath the facade of role, title and any of the projections we may take on from others.

There was something more, something in Arawana’s way of being that stimulated my curiosity. I watched as this petite, quietly spoken woman exuded an authority that seemed to emanate from a place of deeper knowing. A knowing that went beyond cognitive knowing to an embodiment of all she is.

My experience of learning with Arawana was a huge wake-up call. I felt as if I had been shaken from a 100-year sleep where my ‘feeling self’ had been locked away. I had been living life through a two dimensional lens. Now I had a glimpse of something more which, despite the unsettling feeling this caused, was drawing me forward. I had re-discovered this innate wisdom that resides in the body and I was curious to learn more. There was no turning back.

Up until this point the blue chip companies I had worked for had defined my professional life. I had spent half my lifetime contributing to learning and change in organisations, developing skills in areas such as personal and leadership development, team development and organisational change. The final years of my corporate life had been spent at the BBC where I’d had the privilege of working on a range of transformational initiatives that challenged existing organisational paradigms and that broke new ground.

One such initiative was ‘Making it Happen’, which sought to capture and re-energise innovation at the BBC by redesigning the organisation’s culture, workplaces, audience relationships and people policies. It engaged 17,000 BBC employees in conversations that were vibrant, courageous, that mattered. I was struck by the power of conversation, the honouring of people in the system, the recognition of their humanity and the importance placed on everyone being given a voice in shifting the system. It was a programme that took us some way in the process of transformative change, but I felt something was missing both at the individual and the organisational level.

And so as I prepared to leave the full-time employment of the corporate world, I found myself feeling dissatisfied and unsettled. My work and my studies had helped me realise how the emphasis in leadership and organisation development activities tended to focus on the acquisition of more knowledge or obtaining more information. And yet, I saw how time and time again knowledge and information was not enough. We could not think our way to being different or simply articulate a new way to act and expect something different to occur. And so I left the BBC with more questions than answers.

Having had a taste of discovering a way of being that goes beyond the guardianship of my mind, I began this new chapter in my life disorientated and unsettled. I was searching for something, something far-reaching that would profoundly touch how people felt and reconnect them with who they are being in their work and in their life. I couldn’t articulate what that might look like, even less conceive what that meant for my own learning. All I knew was that this nebulous need had been stirred in me at a profound level.

I continued to learn with Arawana at the Presencing Institute while exploring the field of somatics more widely, eventually finding myself crossing the ‘pond’ to study in the United States. The rational me might have, at best, described my enrolment at the Strozzi Institute in California as a leap of faith, at worst a moment of madness. The emerging me described myself as a kind of limping caterpillar being given the chance to transform itself within a cocoon of self-discovery so I might truly step into my potential and locate my as yet unknown authentic self.

I arrived at the Dojo¹ to begin the next stage of my journey: the somatic coach training programme. I was sitting on a cushion, on the floor, in a circle with my fellow students. I watched as Dr Strozzi-Heckler, the founder of the Strozzi Institute, moved into our learning space. His presence was instantly felt and spontaneously we stopped our chatter. As we began to learn together, his mastery was evident. I could see how he had honed the quality of his presence through rigorous practice. He was able to move seamlessly between observing and listening to bringing in his authority as a teacher. As I experienced my own unfolding, I found myself increasingly drawn to the depth of his approach and the transformation that becomes possible by working with and through the body. I knew then I wanted to continue to learn and experience this somatic methodology of change and transformation. This was the learning I had been seeking.

In my work with Dr Strozzi-Heckler, we have integrated all that I have learnt and experienced with my deeper sense of self, cultivating a coherent way of being in my work and in my life, blending who I am with what I know and how I work. By its very nature, stepping onto a path of self-cultivation can feel challenging and I moved through this learning and transformation kicking and screaming, stubbornly holding onto what felt familiar even when I could see how it no longer served me. As I peeled away these layers of conditioning, I could open to who I was becoming. It is a journey that has lasted more than a decade and it is a journey I continue.

My whole life is different now. For me, this has truly been a journey of awakening; being on this somatic path is at the heart of my capacity to work powerfully with others. I am working on an entirely different plane with some of the world’s leading corporations and not only is my work more fulfilling since it feels like I am part of real change but I am personally happier, too. From that first experience of working with Arawana Hayashi to arriving at the Dojo, it has all come together and I have been an avid student and practitioner since.

The invitation of this book

I chose to start this introduction by sharing something of my own journey into this work; I felt it was important to create a personal connection with you, the reader, before writing about the offer of this book. Arawana woke me up, speaking into my felt sense of uncertainly and what was missing for me, opening the door to answers for questions I had not even properly articulated. As you engage with this book, this is my invitation to you: to wake up, pay attention and embark on a path of deeper inquiry and learning. As the title suggests, this book is about embodying our authentic selves and developing practices that enhance our capacity to hold a space for others to evolve and change.

I believe transformative change begins with those who seek to lead it and who are awake to who they are, their relationships and the wider organisation. As we lead and partner organisations, the most powerful instrument we have is the person we are. Simply put, who we are is how we lead. Connecting the individual leader’s journey with the collective journey is what allows organisational transformation to unfold and sustainable change to become possible.

I have come to realise that we need to learn how to respond to what the world may be asking for, even if the world doesn’t know how to ask for it yet. Trusting that what is needed is often revealed through what we see happening around us. This requires a paradigm shift in how we view organisations. Shifting from seeing them as machines to engaging with organisations as living systems, recognising our interdependence with each other. This places a greater emphasis on building relationships and working collectively. It fuels the need for wise and conscious leaders, and practitioners, who are able to tune into themselves and simultaneously tune into what is emerging in the field, taking action from a deeper sense of awareness. It is an environment into which leaders can bring their whole selves as fully rounded human beings, and invite others to do the same. For me, this is the offer of somatics. Through the power of this integrated methodology, it is possible for us to learn and transform; to re-connect to the fullness of our humanity and the being of leadership.

I have written this book for people who are leading and participating in transformative change in their work and in their lives; be that in the capacity of a leader, executive, business partner, consultant or coach. As the reader, you may have found yourself becoming increasingly curious about who you need to become to hold a bigger space for people to engage in individual and collective transformation. Or maybe you have enjoyed success in your work and in your life but feel something is missing if you are to move towards mastery. This book seeks to join you in your inquiry. It invites you into the question of what it means to transform ourselves, to deepen our consciousness, to have the courage to pause, to breathe, to ground and be present with the rhythm and patterns of our changing world. A world that is becoming increasingly complex and a world that is creating an uncertain future socially and environmentally.

For me, this book is an inquiry into human leadership, into who we are being, rather than what we are doing. It explores how through the cultivation of the self, we continually move towards our authentic way of being, creating meaning and purpose in our lives and the lives of those we work with. We discover how learning with and through the body supports individual and collective transformation, which are interdependent and inseparable.

As a reader, you may come to this book with a desire to know more about the science behind somatics and why we should include the body as a place of learning and change. Or maybe you are looking for a ‘how to’ book that provides a variety of tools and techniques. I don’t wish to disappoint you but my intention here is different. I have written the book as a continuous narrative, weaving together the philosophy and methodology of somatics, organisational theory and practice with people’s stories, my own and those I have worked with. These are stories of vulnerability, learning, of taking risks and courage, as the storytellers navigate this terrain of transformation for themselves and those they work with. I have chosen this approach as I hold a belief that you cannot really experience somatics through the written word alone, you have to experience it for real with someone as your coach or guide. That said, my hope is that by privileging the voice of leaders and practitioners in the field, their stories and their lived experiences will bring this work to life, enriching our inquiry.

As we know, supporting learning and change is a messy process, one that cannot be neatly tied up in a box with a bow on top. This book seeks to bear witness to that unpredictability. Through the different stories, we explore the relationship between the self and what is being created through the interactions and conversations. As Ralph Stacey² tells us, it is through the interplay of the different intentions that change happens. Everyone who has contributed is on a journey; their stories are representing a moment in time, a single frame that is part of a bigger story. These narratives do not offer a magic formula that one can apply to leading change and transformation – I question if that even exists – but rather they act as a stimulus to your own thinking and your own inquiry.

As you travel, be curious about your own practice as a leader, a consultant or a coach. Our inquiry seeks to evoke in you memories of your own leadership, it offers questions along the way for you to consider and to explore so you may evolve your own practice in your own context. Let yourself be in the dynamic experience of action and inquiry, perhaps periodically taking a pause to notice what is stirring for you and the questions you find yourself in. See what has your attention, what resonates and what doesn’t. Just in this moment, I invite you to put the book down, feel your back in the chair, your feet on the ground and let your breath drop so that your breathing becomes rhythmic and low in your body. What do you notice in yourself? What has been stimulated or evoked in you? What is your mood? And what physical sensations are you now aware of? What question emerges for you?

And as we come to the end of the book, my hope is that you have a felt sense of something, something you may wish to explore further and experience for yourself. It may be the beginning of a bigger inquiry for you into who you are being and what it means to be on a path of learning and transformation: the cultivation of the ‘self’, deepening our capacity to feel and perceive so that we might begin to move towards mastery.

Our inquiry

To shape our inquiry, I have organised the book into seven chapters, with each chapter offering questions for reflection. In each chapter I weave together the somatic methodology with other theoretical perspectives to create a rich tapestry for us to wander in and amongst. From time to time, we will pause to reflect on the material through the leader’s and practitioner’s own voices who share their lived experience of embodiment.

In our first chapter, Waking Up, we will explore the question of what it means to wake up from the unconsciousness of our habituated self. We will learn how we physically keep ourselves asleep and why this is a highly adaptive and intelligent human practice. We explore how individually and collectively we embody our history and how our history literally shapes what has become habitual in our way of being. Awareness marks the beginning of our journey from where we can choose to step into the unknown.

The second chapter, Stepping into the Void, is the first of our organisational stories. It is an account of what becomes possible when a leader wakes up and courageously steps into an uncertain space, coming face to face with his fear and anxiety. What did it take for Colin to speak his truth, to take a stand for what he believed in, mobilising others to support him in his endeavours? This leader created a cutting edge programme for senior leadership development at Microsoft, creating a space for leaders to explore the self as leader.

Chapter Three, Declaring and Becoming, invites us into the question, who is the leader or the practitioner I want to become? From awareness, we begin to tune into what feels real to us and what we care about. We will explore the power of a declaration and how it supports our becoming. Inside of the somatic arc of change and transformation, we see how we are the change, we are the learning, and the body and self are not separate. The journey from our old habituated shape to a new way of being in the world comes to life through personal stories.

In chapter four, Self as Instrument, we consider how the self is the most powerful and versatile tool we have and we ignore it at our peril. Through the quality of our presence, we create a strong container for others where we can cultivate trust and listen beyond the words, becoming the powerful instrument through which we act.

The second of our organisational stories appears as chapter five, Purpose, Presence and Practice. We explore how a senior leadership team at Swarovski had the courage to step into doing its own work, transforming themselves so that they could show up as a ‘real’ team. Through this work, they were able to engage in an inquiry with their wider leadership group of 100 leaders into how to transform their operations to meet the needs of the business. Through large group technologies, this senior leadership team created an atmosphere of powerful connection, and the wider leadership community was mobilised into action, delivering ahead of schedule.

Chapter Six, Cultivating a Leadership Culture, is our final organisational story. By leadership, I mean going beyond the role of a leader to a leadership culture that is generated by the collective interactions. This is the story of how leaders at the energy company E.ON have begun, both individually and collectively to embody new and different leadership practices, developing a felt sense of their interconnectedness. It is a journey that began with a single seed, changing