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Our bodies might be the most powerful and important tool we have as human beings when it comes to the journey of remembering our deeper truth and living in alignment with our souls.
In modern culture, which is still largely dominated by the ego, we are often conditioned to create a really unhealthy relationship with our bodies. We see our bodies as limited, we criticize them and wish they were different. We experience their needs as inconvenient and contrary to what we need to get done or how we think we should be. We get confused between the genuine needs of our bodies, which can be met the vast majority of the time, and the insatiable needs of our egos.
It’s not our bodies that drive us into unhealthy behavior like overeating and addiction. Those are the ego’s doing — and then our bodies get stuck in habit and inertia as they attempt to adapt.
Learning to listen to and follow the genuine needs and deeper knowing of our bodies can be a long road when we’ve spent most or all of our lives ignoring or working against them. But it is so incredibly worth it.
Because a clear relationship with a healthy body is a dynamite connection to our intuition.
When we learn to listen and develop healthy relationship, our bodies become divine tuning forks that we can use to navigate everything from practical decisions in everyday life to the mysterious calling of our souls.
My guest on today’s episode is a master of this terrain.
is an executive and somatic leadership coach to high-performing founders, CEOs, investors and elite political operatives.She is recognized around the world as a leading voice on the intersection between somatics and leadership. Her story was recently highlighted in an article in Forbes, with the title “Healing The Emotional Crisis in Leadership Through Somatic Connection.”
Like just about anyone I know who has developed a strong connection to soul and a genuine capacity for somatically-attuned leadership, Franzi’s wisdom was initially earned the hard way.
In her particular case, it was the unexpected death of her father that interrupted her unrelenting young-professional achievement drive, forced her to face how burned out she really was, and ultimately gave her the opportunity to connect fully with her body and begin a deep healing journey.
In this episode, Franzi and I unpack what that experience was really like for her, and how it informs the powerful leader, coach and mentor she is today.
We explore Franzi’s beautifully simple definition of soul — “truth and clarity” — and how leaders who navigate from that place are actually much more likely to be successful and build healthy, thriving lives and organizations than those who get stuck in an outdated zero-sum game of power over others.
We talk about how this relates to the idea of impact, and Franzi offers the compelling reflection that Soulful Impact creates success on a wholistic level, while narrower versions of impact are likely to include negative side effects.
One of the most inspiring moments in this episode for me was the opportunity to talk to Franzi about the journey of parenting.
Her level of attunement to her kids — a natural outcome of her own somatic journey and awareness — is nothing short of remarkable, and she shares how that has allowed her family to navigate a journey of healing that defies much conventional thinking and goes beyond what is currently explainable by science.
Please enjoy!
Links & Resources
Soulful Impact: soulfulimpact.co
Franzi’s website: franziskagonder.com
Franzi’s Substack: Leadership That Heals The World
If you like this episode and want to hear more from these two, check out Franzi’s interview with Brooks on her podcast from last year
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