Your Body is Your Brain: Leverage Your Somatic Intelligence to Find Purpose, Build Resilience, Deepen Relationships and Lead More Powerfully

WINNER: Nautilus Books for a Better World - Social Science

Around the world, a swelling tide of people are discovering an astonishing, life-altering truth. This book tells their extraordinary stories:

• an anxious PhD student builds his confidence by changing his workout
• back exercises help one woman negotiate a fix to a botched home repair
• a Microsoft executive grows credibility by shifting her stance
• an executive team leads their company to a 30% increase in valuation by dancing together

In this timely and engaging book, Amanda Blake synthesizes research from over two dozen scientific fields to reveal how you, too, can come to embody vital qualities such as these:

• align your daily activities with a deeper sense of meaning and purpose
• become more relaxed, confident, and at ease in high-pressure situations
• shatter limitations that have been immune to "the power of positive thinking"
• create better relationships at work and at home
• turn conflict into opportunity

...and many more valuable skills that will enable you to contribute, succeed and enjoy life at the highest levels. Strengthen your social and emotional intelligence by cultivating your innate somatic intelligence. This is powerful applied mind-body science, in the workplace and beyond. Tap the intelligence hidden in posture, gesture, and sensation and you will open the door to more meaning, greater courage, deeper connection, and more powerful leadership than you imagined possible.

Your Body is Your Brain invites leaders of all stripes into a massive shift of their mental models, allowing them to access their highest and best selves. The book makes a compelling case for how and why we need to change on the inside in order to create powerful change in the world around us.

—Suzanne St. John-Crane, CEO, American Leadership Forum, Silicon Valley

 

Hippocrates promoted holistic treatment in his first medical school in Kos, Greece, in about 500 BC. Our subsequent approach to helping people learn took some bad turns in the quest for professionalism. Amanda Blake brings us back! Her lyric and easy-to-read style makes this more than an intellectual process; it is a journey of purpose and meaning. Superb.

—Richard Boyatzis, co-author with Daniel Goleman and Annie McKee of the international best seller, Primal Leadership

 

I was resistant to embodied learning at first, but it turns out it’s not just some random hippie read-the-stars kind of thing. It’s the real deal, and it’s completely changed my life. Now that I know how to soften my eyes when I’m in high-stress moments, or sit in a way that feels powerful, my effectiveness as a leader has easily doubled. It sounds crazy, but it’s true—and Your Body is Your Brain explains how and why. The business world could use a lot more of this kind of approach.

—Denise Rundle, General Manager, Microsoft

 

This book is an absolute gem. Grounded in the body, biology, and beautiful results, it’s your guide to embodying your best self, inspiring the same in others, and building a better world.

—Ginny Whitelaw, founder, Institute for Zen Leadership

 

For years I insisted that Mandy was writing a really important book—and indeed she has. A coherent and pragmatic synthesis of the new brain science and the field of human development, Your Body is Your Brain shows how learning happens at a biological level. The book is brilliant . . . accessible, grounded, personal, and eminently useful. Anyone involved in designing and facilitating learning needs to know what’s in these pages.

—Doug Silsbee, author, Presence-Based Leadership

 

Reading Your Body is Your Brain is a little bit like discovering that someone you’ve inattentively known your whole life is actually your life partner. It takes us on a journey deep into the wisdom of the body, which, it turns out, we enormously underappreciate as a source of self-awareness, purpose, and well-being. An easy-to-read, science-based book with simple but powerful practices that can improve your life in an instant.

—Chris Laszlo, PhD, Professor of Organizational Behavior, Case Western Reserve University

 

What if we could use non-athletic embodied practices to train for kinder conversations and smarter responses to stress? That’s exactly what Mandy offers us in this extraordinary, eye-opening book. And it has the potential to change each one of us—and the whole world—for the better.

—Chris Carver, 3-time Olympic Coach, USA Synchronized Swimming