Embodied Leadership: A Practice for Presence, Confidence, and Compassion

with Wendy Palmer

Many of us aspire to be more centered, mindful, and compassionate as leaders, but return again and again to unskillful reactions and habits, especially when stressed or when faced with organizational conflict. We are unable to embody the changes that we know we want. Conscious Embodiment draws on the traditions of Aikido and mindfulness practice to offer simple yet deep techniques that help you recognize how your mind and body habitually react to pressure, and to access more skillful and unified responses. Drawing on over 25 years of experience developing Conscious Embodiment, Wendy leads you through exercises that provide a vivid sense of what it feels like to align conceptual, emotional and embodied aspects of yourself, and of what it feels like to be out of alignment. You will learn to notice the beginnings of your patterns of reactivity, and to quickly find center in the midst of the turmoil of leadership.

Through simple physical forms, work in pairs, and group discussions, you will gain

• insights into your personal reactive patterns and limiting assumptions
• tools and practices that help you increase your presence, confidence, compassion and sense of humor as you deal with organizational change
• a way to recover balance and clarity when faced with moral, business, and political dilemmas.
• the ability to unify the body's message with what is being said
• increased capacity to live with paradox and the tension between opposites.

Printable (PDF) module description

Wendy Palmer has been teaching classes in Conscious Embodiment and Intuition Training for 25 years and has practiced Aikido and meditation for 33 years. She is a sixth-degree Black Belt in Aikido and is co-founder and teacher at Aikido of Tamalpais in Mill Valley, California. Wendy is author of The Intuitive Body: Aikido as a Clairsentient Practice (North Atlantic Press, 1994) and The Practice of Freedom: Aikido Principles as a Spiritual Guide (Rodmell Press, 2002). She co-led, with Grady McGonagill, the workshop "Leading from your Center: Aligning Mind, Body, and Action" at the 2005 Authentic Leadership Summer Program and co-led "Cultivating Wise and Compassionate Action Under Pressure" with Geoff Crinean in 2006 and again in 2007. See www.consciousembodiment.com

Summer Institute Modules

Action Inquiry with Bill Torbert
The Art of Hosting and Harvesting with Chris Corrigan, Toke Møller & Monica Nissén
Creating Dynamic Network Organizations with Tom Hurley
Embodied Leadership with Wendy Palmer
Integral Development with Sarita Chawla & James Flaherty
Leader as Artist with Barbara Bash, Lanny Harrison, & Arawana Hayashi
Organizational Trust with Ruben Perczek & Susan Skjei
Practicing Fearlessness in Times of Fear with Jerry Granelli, Chris Grant, & Margaret Wheatley
Shifting the Money Paradigm with Victoria Castle & Bernard Lietaer
Solving Tough Problems in Practice with LeAnne Grillo, Adam Kahane & Bob Wing