Your Body Knows First: Leading with Awareness with Jennifer Zach

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Welcome to Connect, Inspire, Create, a podcast where curiosity meets creativity and meaningful conversations unfold. I'm Carol Clegg, your host and accountability coach, and each week I sit down with thoughtful guests to explore the ideas, experiences, and turning points that inspire what we create in our lives and work. So let's dive in. My guest today, Jennifer Zuck. Did I pronounce that correctly, Jennifer?

I hope so. You did. You did a beautiful job, Carol.

Wonderful. Well, welcome and thank you for joining me. Well, thank you. I appreciate you having me as your guest today.

Let me tell my listeners a little bit about Jennifer. Jennifer helps leaders and professionals lead and live with more clarity and confidence, using the intelligence of the body to navigate everyday challenges. She is the author of Semantic Awareness, Leading with Body Intelligence, an executive coach, speaker, and thought leader in semantic leadership. So, Jennifer, before we dive into all the wonderful tools that you teach and use, I'd love to start just with the foundation and ask you what first drew you to the idea that our bodies hold important information about how we lead and make decisions.

Yeah, it was when I was introduced to Peter Levine's work. And I was like, wait a minute, this is a thing. It this is something that has I can never remember time that I wasn't applying it. And when I learned about Peter's work with somatic experiencing, I'm like, oh, this is a place in in leadership and in the business world. Peter's working with big T traumas, but we have plenty of smaller tea traumas in in life, our workplaces everywhere. And the more I learned about Peter's work, I'm more like I'm, you know, helping my clients with this. It just came so naturally to me that I didn't recognize it until being introduced to Peter's work, which then led to me creating the 3N model. The 3N stand for notice, name, and navigate. I observed that that was a model of framework that my clients were finding very helpful to integrating this work into their life and their leadership.

And I mean it's so impactful. And so we're gonna dig a little more into that three end model. I'd love to hear more about that. But being, you know, in tune with our bodies, it's so it's so easy to think that there's a separation, but the feelings and what we, you know, if we can acknowledge that, the difference that it can make. But perhaps for those, I'd love to just dig into a little bit about understanding somatic awareness and just asking you to explain to us, you know, briefly what exactly is it. And then, you know, we've already kind of we looked at why it matters to leaders, but even to expand that even more. But tell us a little bit about exactly what it is.

What Somatic Awareness Means

Yeah, I'd be happy to. So the soma is the Greek word for body. So somatic awareness is body awareness. And when I speak with groups, it's often the case where the language is unfamiliar to people. However, when I ask them if they've ever noticed having, for example, a gut feeling, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's somatic awareness. So the language may be unfamiliar, but they are familiar with the the experience. And we were culture teaches us to be more, you know, in our heads. Analytical, right? Yes, yes. And the more verbal we get, the more distant we get from the body and its signals. It doesn't disappear, but for many, it's lying dormant. And when they compare that, their somatic awareness with their cognitive abilities, you know, then it really changes how we make decisions, how we relate to to one another, our quality of life, our you name it. There is a quote that I've got 99 problems, and I have it in my book that I solve my nervous system and you know it basically solves everything, is what this this quote I know.

Signals Leaders Often Miss

Well, I mean, because you know, most of us we do, we spend so much of our day thinking, and you wake up thinking, if you wake up in the middle of the night, you're thinking, yeah, you know, rather than feeling, and to just quieten down, you know. So what are some of the signals that our body sends us that in our rush to get through and be efficient and everything else in our days as leaders and business owners, what are some signals that we often miss?

The signals that we often miss can include the maybe a tightening in the gut or a fast heart rate, shallow breath, tension, it can show up as heat. You've ever seen someone that maybe is begins to turn red from the from the neck up. What else can temperature, pressure, each individual is really different on what they experience. That is the first and and really the most important is noticing. The body knows before the brain does. And when we notice it, that opens us up to choice versus defaulting to our habitual patterns of survival.

Such an obvious question, but you know, what happens when we over time continue to ignore these signals and are not made aware that our body is trying to talk to us?

It can lead to health problems, it can lead to you know relationship problems, decisions that we we regret. There is, you know, the the book, The Body Keeps the Score, is a great book.

There are I've read that button, yeah.

Yeah, most people are familiar with that. And actually, I find that more people are familiar with the language of the vagus nerve versus somatic awareness. And the vagus nerve, that word is Latin for for wandering, and the vagus nerve gets its name from that because it wanders from the brain stem all the way, you know, down into the you know, lower part of the the body, hence that's why we get gut feelings or any other sensations. Right. It's just that super highway between brain and body that never sleeps because we're wired for survival.

Notice Name Navigate Framework

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I just you we you spoke about the three N model. And so is there you created this practical framework, and as you said, notice, name, and navigate. So I'd love for you to just walk us through these three steps and and perhaps share how they could work in in real life. So I guess we start with notice.

Okay, yeah, and I think a very relatable example is public speaking. I'll share a story of a client that I was working with, and she and I had been practicing doing this work long enough that she was able to notice and recognize what was happening to her when she stepped up to that podium. She noticed the internal discomfort, and she was able to name it appropriately. The brain feels safer when it has some context, when it knows what something is. So stage right, okay, and then navigating. Navigating, there's many, many different ways that we can navigate, and part of my work with clients is finding the tool that works best in whatever circumstance there is. So we fill the toolbox and then we build knowledge of which tool to pull out when. So for her, the navigation tool at the time was noticing the pit in her stomach and then asking herself, is this unsafe or just uncomfortable? That calmed her nervous system, helped her expand, helped her to deliver her message and made a much it it just it made all the difference for her and her audience because connection forms when there is a sense of safety.

So interestingly, yeah, that you share that word because that you know you sort of think if you talk to yourself, as you say, and this navigates, so you are, you know, you're noticing, you're naming, and then you're navigating, but just telling your brain that you are safe and that you're not in danger, and just allowing that to sort of to me, I sort of think of it as percolating and settling and allowing yourself just to be because yeah, public speaking, you know, for most people is is quite daunting, but if you can overcome that that hurdle, what a wonderful gift to be able to share your story.

Yeah, it truly is. And you know, that's my story too. I am giving, I I never saw myself giving as a public speaker. And and that's just it's fun. Yeah, thank you.

Regulate Stress For Better Decisions

That that's so interesting. It's such a great grounding, great training space to if you do have a local chapter of that, you know, you get to get you into that space. And then there's so many gifts along with you know learning public speaking, along with even on podcasting. And you know, if you think about how how popular, I mean it's quite incredible how your podcasts have grown and how much we learn from them. And I love just meeting the new people that I get to talk to because I just like, oh, I can learn something new, I can learn now about semantic awareness. And it often ties into the belief system that you know that one already has. And so it just gives you more depth of knowledge, which is wonderful. So I know that you know, when we've just been talking about this, but decision making, you know, you think of leaders and having to make decisions, and if they would stop for a moment to understand their body a little bit better and go, I'm under pressure. So I know many people would push through these stress signals because that's what they think strong leadership is is all about, that you know, it just requires you to press on through. But how would you help leaders that are going, okay, this is stress? And sometimes people talk about there's an element of stress that is good stress, but it's not all good stress. There's a a cutoff point, and we've got some decision making here, we've got some presence that we need to show in leadership. Yeah, how does this all tie in with our semantic awareness?

What you're describing is a big part of why I do the work that I do, because leaders are have a very, very important role, and people are depending upon them to do their best thinking, making decisions that are going to serve the greater good. So first is noticing, and you know, when a leader notices, gotta notice those sensations, making a conscious choice, not just a push. You're not gonna get your best thinking when you do that. That is the call to calm the nervous system using whatever technique works best for that leader. If it's recognizing this is unsafe, this is uncomfortable, seeing and sensing, looking at something pleasing, any number of things to get the body back into a regulated state so that they can think clearly, confidently, and with curiosity, so they stay connected to their pre-funct frontal cortex. That's where the good stuff is. If they end up being overcome by that that fear and end up in survival mode, that's where tunnel vision sets in. Not real great for decision making. It's where we only have the capacity to to think about ourselves because it's all about survival, not real good for the team or the you know, the greater good. And so it's really, really important to catch those moments and notice name navigate.

Fear Responses And The Hot Stove

It's interesting, just as you said that I hadn't thought about it from that aspect of that survival mode and then taking care of yourself, which is not necessarily what you even want to do, but you've just moved into that, and so it's not team and it's not leader. So you are not putting out what you would like to put out, and then I guess what swings around from that is imposter syndrome and oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, that is shows up in the freeze response quite a bit, and what happens to people and myself included, I didn't realize how frozen I was until I really started taking a closer look.

And then when fear had less of a role in my life, my life got bigger. So that's really what in a lot of my clients when they reach that that place, they describe it as feeling lighter when the fear in their life is reduced, and we don't want to get rid of fear, right, because it's healthy, but what we want to do is to be able to distinguish between when the situation is unsafe or just uncomfortable in our modern day age. Most of what we are encountering is uncomfortable. However, we've inherited the same nervous system from our ancestors who encountered a lot more unsafe situations and had to be ready to react in the moment. A relatable example that I often share with groups is have you ever touched a hot stove?

It's so interesting that you were gonna say that. I was gonna share that with you. Go ahead. Do tell us, yeah.

So if you touch a hot stove, did you have to think about oh, what's the best way to remove my finger from this? Should I touch, you know, all these no, you just and that's what you want in a dangerous situation, but in an uncomfortable situation, you want to take the time to explore the possibilities, talk with other people, find find the right answer, and the right answer is the one that's going to work. We don't want to be making needs or uh decisions that you know are gonna take.

But yeah, that analogy of the hot stove is it still is there, as we said, to bring your awareness to something, but you don't leave your hand on the hot stove. It's then by taking it off that you could explore. Okay, that's a that's a danger zone, but how dangerous? And then what are some alternatives? And of course, to me, also what's important is that pause that you need to just take a moment before you move into which tool you're gonna take out of the even the navigate box, but you know, to give yourself a moment to pause.

Definitely take that pause, and the last thing that people that you want to do is really fight those those sensations, and and a lot of people do. That's what we've been taught, power through it. But when we do that, it makes it grow stronger. Very powerful thing we can do is actually thank that part of us that is trying to protect us.

Psychological Safety And Book Insights

Yeah, sure. Gratitude, which is kind of a mixed bag of things to go up, you know, be grateful. But if we can look at it through the lens of gratitude and for the learning experience, and then the expansion that comes from that. Makes all the difference. Yeah. So Jennifer, I'd love to know a little bit more about your book. So do tell us. Yeah, I know that you've shared with me that we can find it obviously on your website, which I'll be making sure to put that website on the show notes so that people know. And then that they can look for your book in Amazon and all the various different places. But tell us a little bit more about the book.

Yeah, yeah. So, like you said, people can access the book from my website or from Amazon. It's also available in audio format for folks that prefer to listen. It's a short read by design, it's less than 100 pages. Okay. And that was my intent, really, to give people something that they could access, apply, and come back to as many times as they they needed to. And that's the feedback that I've gotten from people. It's something that you know, it's a book that you can read on a flight, on a train, and it's meant to give people just explaining it really for leaders, and really we all occupy aspects of leadership, you know, just you know, leading our lives too. And so I go through the the three ends in the book, I talk about psychological safety and how that fits into all of this because you're not gonna have that psychological safety until people feel safe enough. Emotions are contagious. So if the leader isn't feeling safe, then you're going to have more folks at the end of fear and judgment. I look at it like a continuum. Fear and judgment, we got safety and curiosity over here. And as we co-regulate, we want to get to the safety, curiosity. That's where we can problem solve best.

Yeah, yeah. And it's absolutely, as you say, you know, within the positive intelligence framework that I use for my coaching, is that we bring out the saboteurs that are ours, we recognize them in somebody else, and then when they escalate together, we have a fire going. And the need to recognize, you know, even our shortcomings in somebody else, or what perhaps annoys us is like, hmm, does that belong to me or does it belong to them?

Yeah, yeah. That's why I highly recommend the book, Self Compassion. Okay. That's uh that's a really good book. Because the more compassionate we can be to ourselves, the more compassionate we can be to others. Our relationships are really driven by the relationship we. Have with ourselves.

Right. Yeah. And so empathy, compassion for ourselves first, and then we are able to give that out to others. And then to me, always just remembering that everybody's got something going on in their lives.

Absolutely.

Yes. You know, everybody's facing a challenge that we don't necessarily know. So a good dose of kindness can go a long way.

Oh, yes, it really can. A good dose of kindness. And it can be as simple as a smile.

Mm-hmm.

Maybe maybe that's the only smile they've seen that it is a cue of safety.

One Small Practice To Start Today

That's yeah, that's wonderful. Well, before we leave our listeners, for those that are listening, is there one small practice that they could start today that would build more awareness and resilience into their leadership? Or as we said, we're all leading just your daily life. What would you recommend?

What I recommend is that people start with noticeable and integrating that just into their daily life with habits they already have, such as making your bed, brushing your teeth, you know, lights, you know, whatever it is. Just commit to anytime I do one of those things, I'm gonna notice what's happening inside. Am I feeling tense? Stressed, is my gut talking to me? You know, any of those sensations, or it's equally important to notice the good stuff too. I'm feeling joyful, expansive. That would be my recommendation. Start with noticing.

Closing And How To Connect

Yeah, noticing, just pausing and noticing, as we said. So thank you so much, Jennifer, for joining me. I will make sure to have links to find you that people can look for your book, learn more about what you're doing in leadership. And then on the social media side, I have LinkedIn as the best place to connect with you. So I'll pop that into the notes. And for all those that have been listening to us today, if something sparked something for you in this conversation that Jennifer and I have had, I invite you to share this episode with a friend, a colleague, another leader who might enjoy just learning a little bit more about semantic awareness and pausing for a moment to just be in touch with their body. And if you are a woman coach or a business owner craving some focus, connection, or just a bit of gentle accountability, there are a couple of ways that you can work with me. But first, I'd love to invite you to join my complimentary Mindset to Momentum Accountability Circle. We meet once a month and we have group check-ins, we have a gentle framework of accountability, and just help you make progress on a week to week basis on the next project that you'd like to complete. You'll find all the details on my website at CarolClegg.com and you'll find me too on LinkedIn. So until the next time, may your choices bring you ease and flow.