Trusting the Wisdom Of Our Body: 6 Ways Somatic Intelligence Can Help Us Experience More Presence, Wellbeing, Purpose And Confidence
Have you ever felt torn between what your mind (or the outside world) was telling you to do, and how your body felt about it? Perhaps you were considering applying for a new job, saying yes to an invitation, or considering how to navigate an argument with a friend, a child or your partner?
Have you ever ignored an inner nudge or a deep knowing, followed what you thought you should do, and regretted it later (wishing you could have a do over)?
Most of us are very aware of our thoughts, but much less so of the language of our body.
We often forget that our body holds deep wisdom.
In this blog post, I explore the power of our somatic intelligence: the wisdom of our body, this innate guidance system within us that can lead us towards more of what we truly desire: aliveness, clarity, confidence, or ease.
The Intelligence We Have Learned To Ignore
There is always intelligence at play in our body, whether we notice it or not.
Every reaction, every impulse, every moment of hesitation or expansion are all part of a finely tuned system designed to keep us safe, resourced, and moving towards what we need.
That tightness in our chest before saying yes to something we don’t really want? That’s intelligence.
The sudden fatigue that washes over us when we push past our limits? That’s intelligence.
The deep, inexplicable knowing that something is right for us, even when it makes no logical sense? That’s also intelligence.
The body responds to our moment to moment experience, drawing on everything it has ever learned about safety, connection, and survival.
The problem is, many of us learn to override this intelligence.
To dismiss our body’s signals. To intellectualise and make sense of our emotions - needing to understand them and moving away from feeling. To trust external voices more than our own.
But when we start listening, attuning, and working with the body, new possibilities open up.
Decisions become that little bit easier.
Boundaries are felt, and they feel more human.
We trust our inner authority and we don’t have to cycle through so many endless thought loops to find answers.
Our body is always speaking to us.
The real question is: are we listening?
Somatic Intelligence as a Key Missing Piece For Women
Somatic intelligence is a vital piece that is often missing for women because, for generations, we have learned to be externally oriented, to trust and pay attention to what is outside of us more than within ourselves.
We trust that there is knowledge and wisdom in books, in experts, in systems outside of us.
We believe that clarity is something we find when we think hard enough, deep enough, for long enough: if we analyse, strategise, and create detailed plans, we will find the right path.
While this can be really helpful, it keeps us living in our heads, spinning in circles, listening to the voices around us telling us how it should be.
We are disconnected from our own inner voice and the deep intelligence our body has harvested from years of living.
Reconnecting with our somatic intelligence brings us back to our bodies, to our inner knowing, to making choices and decisions that reflect our needs, desires, values and what matters most to us:
It reconnects us with what we actually desire and need.
Our body doesn’t lie. If we are willing to listen and learn to recognise its subtle cues, it will tell us when something feels aligned or not, when we need to slow down, or when we are ready to step forward.
It allows us to expand without force.
Instead of pushing ourselves to feel more confident, to be more visible, to ‘step up’ before we are ready, it helps us to respect our nervous system’s pace and its natural unfolding, knowing that when we move at the pace of safety, expansion happens sustainably and with more ease.
It brings us back to sovereignty.
We spend much less time outsourcing our authority, abandoning our needs, or following paths that are misaligned with what we truly want. Instead, we learn to trust our embodied knowing, to reclaim our ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and to make decisions and choices that reflect what we do or don’t want.
We become sovereign. And this changes everything.
When a woman stops looking outside of herself for answers, when she learns to listen to her body’s innate intelligence, she moves through the world differently.
She makes different decisions.
She creates and expresses herself differently.
She leads differently.
Not from striving or proving energy but from coherence, alignment and authenticity. And it is felt.
How Can Somatic Intelligence Change Our Life?
There are so many ways in which attuning to the intelligence of our body, its innate wisdom, its subtle language and cues can shift our relationship with ourselves and help us live a richer, deeper, more meaningful life.
Here are a few:
1. We stop outsourcing our decisions to external sources of ‘authority’ and learn to trust our own
When we are disconnected from our body, we tend to second-guess, seek permission and reassurance, weigh pros and cons endlessly, and wonder if we are making the ‘right’ choices.
But when we reconnect with our somatic intelligence, we begin to trust our inner yes and no, we feel what is aligned and what doesn’t feel right. Decisions become easier, and instead of looking outside of ourselves for answers, validation or permission, we learn to trust our own authority.
2. We stop pushing through exhaustion and start honouring our rhythms
So many of us have learned to override our limits, push through pain and discomfort, use up every bit of capacity we have (and often more). We have unconsciously practised ignoring our bodies’ signals for years, only listening when these signals become symptoms.
Learning to listen to our body’s subtle cues means that we respect the rhythms of action and rest, mobilisation and stillness, doing and being that help us to thrive, instead of being in ‘go’ mode permanently.
3. We stop abandoning ourselves and reclaim our voice.
So many of us have spent our lives attuning to those around us - we are experts at reading rooms, anticipating everyone’s needs, appeasing conflict. But in calibrating to this outward attunement, we lose our inner attunement. Our needs become secondary to everyone else’s, and we might feel as though we are disappearing inside our own life.
Somatic intelligence helps us to reclaim our boundaries and our voice. We become better able at recognising, expressing and meeting our needs and desires.
4. We start leading from a place of deep presence.
True leadership isn’t about control but about resonance, coherence and embodiment.
When we lead from a place of presence and inner stability, we help those around us feel more grounded. When what we say is coherent with how we truly feel, it is felt as authenticity and fosters trust.
When we are in resonance, people naturally respond to the quality of our presence. Our way of being becomes somewhat magnetic - and we influence not through control but through our own embodiment.
5. We abandon the quest to ‘fix’ ourselves and learn to accept ourselves as we are
The self-help industry has convinced so many of us that we need to be fixed, to be improved, to be more than we already are: more confident, more successful, more productive.
Working with our somatic intelligence means shifting from fixing to listening, from striving towards more to witnessing what is already here.
All is allowed, nothing is broken, everything is welcome.
6. We become more alive, more creative, more… us.
We experience every moment of our life through our body: like an instrument upon which life plays its music through our senses, sensations, emotions. When we are disconnected from it, it’s as if life was muted.
The more we attune to our body’s language: sensations, feelings, emotions, … the more pleasure, joy and sense of possibility we begin to feel.
We are no longer just managing our way through life, we are more fully inhabiting it.
Our somatic intelligence, the wisdom of our body, isn’t loud.
It is like a soft voice beneath our conditioning, which means it is best heard in quiet and stillness.
When we make space to hear it, it will bring us back to the truth of our experience and offer a guiding compass that orients us towards what we truly want, need and desire.
Bridging the gap between intellectual insight and embodied change
For coaches or aspiring coaches working with women, this work is transformational because it bridges the gap between intellectual insight and embodied change.
So much of the coaching industry focuses on mindset, on reframing and shifting our perspectives, and on setting mind-based goals. These tools are helpful, but they don’t encompass the whole of our experience and don’t always lead to embodied change.
For many women, the struggle isn’t as much about changing our thoughts, as it is about feeling safe enough in our bodies to live those changes.
We might repeat affirmations, but if our nervous system still associates certain ways of being with risk, we will likely self-sabotage and struggle to take that next step.
We can know, logically, that we deserve rest, but if our body sees rest as a threat, we will continue to override our need for replenishment.
We can journal about the vision we hold for our life, but if we have learned from past experiences that expanding feels unsafe, our nervous system will pull us back to safety and keep us playing small.
Working with the intelligence that is always at play within our body changes the entire coaching process.
It becomes less about tools and techniques and more about holding space for organic, sustainable transformation to unfold.
It allows women to feel more truly seen, more deeply met, and guided back to their own wisdom, a gift that will last far beyond the coaching container.
We help women return to themselves.
Learn to Work With The Wisdom Within™
The Wisdom Within™ is a somatic facilitation and embodied feminine leadership coach training for women who support women - practitioners, coaches, spaceholders, women leaders - who want to bring the body back into the heart of their work for more depth, nuance and sustainable transformation.
More than a certification, it is a deeply embodied path that supports you in stepping into your own expression of leadership and in facilitating sustainable transformation.
You will learn how to:
Work with the nervous system to create sustainable change
Guide clients back to their own body’s wisdom (without pushing or bypassing)
Integrate somatic approaches into your unique work with clarity and integrity
Lead from a place of inner coherence, authenticity, and resonance
If you long for an approach to coaching and transformation that blends women empowerment, nature’s wisdom and the power of somatics, I invite you to explore The Wisdom Within™ Somatic Practitioner & Embodied Feminine Leadership Coach Training.
Whether you are a new or existing practitioner, this might be the missing piece you have been looking for, to guide the women you support towards deep and sustainable transformation with more ease and self-trust.
