What is your body saying?
I’ve been thinking a lot about something Richard Strozzi-Heckler wrote in The Anatomy of Change:
“The body begins to have its say and it demands to be heard. If we refuse to listen, it speaks even louder, and we find ourselves sick, numb, or chronically injured. These points of discomfort are doorways that we can use to begin living in our body.”
When I read that, it felt uncannily familiar. For years, I had recurring back pain that I chalked up to bad luck, bad genetics, or bad posture—basically, a mechanical problem. I treated it like any other part of a machine that needed fixing. Medications, ER visits, chiropractic care, surgery—I tried it all. And yet, the pain kept coming back.
It wasn’t until I stepped into somatics—this practice of seeing the body as a living, integrated whole—that I began to wonder if there was more to the story. During my first somatic intensive, I introduced myself by mentioning my back pain, mostly to explain why I might need to stretch or move around a lot. But as the week went on, something shifted.
For the first time, I got curious about my pain. What if my body isn’t just malfunctioning? What if the pain is trying to tell me something? That question changed everything.
As I started listening to my body, I realized that my back pain wasn’t just about my back. It was tied to stress I hadn’t dealt with, values I wasn’t living, and ways I’d been ignoring what my body needed for years. I began to see that the discomfort wasn’t just a problem to fix—it was a message to hear.
I’m not saying this replaces medical care. Of course, if something hurts, see a doctor, get the scans, do the physical therapy. But alongside all of that, I’ve learned to ask a new set of questions: What else might this be about? What does my body know that I don't yet see?
These questions don’t just apply to personal health—they’re relevant in the workplace too. Leaders often deal with high levels of stress and relentless demands, and it’s easy to brush off the body’s signals in the name of “getting things done.” But those signals—tight shoulders, chronic headaches, that sense of exhaustion you just can’t shake—are worth paying attention to.
What if the tension in your body isn’t just stress but a signal that something needs to change? Maybe it’s about the way your team is operating, a decision you’re avoiding, or the fact that you haven’t paused to breathe all week. As leaders, our ability to listen to our own bodies impacts how we show up for others. When we ignore those signals, we risk burnout—not just for ourselves, but for the people we lead.
The body’s messages are always there, whether we’re at home or in the boardroom. The question is: Are we willing to listen?
