Preparing for the Moment of…

One quiet June morning I was riding bikes with my family. I listened to the birds chirping their songs, and enjoyed the warmth of the sun on my arms. As I was coasting downhill, I felt so free - I revelled in the moment enveloped by a full-body grin. 

Within seconds, everything changed.

While I took a turn, my tires slipped out from under me and the world went sideways. Splat. My right leg and arm collided with the road. I had a heavy feeling in my chest and a buzzing sensation in my gut. 

I slowly sat up from the wreckage, and took a quick inventory, am I okay? A few steadying breaths and once over later, I took solace. Nothing catastrophic happened. I was just bruised, bleeding, and shaky. 

So, I got back on my bike and gingerly continued on my way. I was ok, but the full-body grin remained at the scene of my accident. 

What stayed with me wasn’t the fall, it was the speed of the shift. One second I felt immense joy, the next second I felt sobered and worried.

Conversations do this too. 

We can be trading stories, coffee warm in our hands, and then, snap, our field of vision narrows, our jaw locks, that hot surge climbs our chest. What was pleasant mere seconds earlier suddenly feels like a battle ground. 

Recently, I felt such an extreme shift. I was having a good time, when in an instant everything changed. I felt like someone tossed a match into dry brush. I had the sensation of boiling rage in my gut. My vision tunneled. The urge to fight swelled up instantly within. 

For a few breaths, I stepped into the fire. 

Then I noticed and named the shift of sensations in my body. The way I suddenly felt like a shaken up soda bottle about to explode. I took a deep breath and chose to interrupt my fight reaction by asking for what I needed - a moment of silence. 

Not to control the other person, but to give my nervous system enough space to find its footing. I was clearly in the midst of a strong threat reaction. I could feel hurtful words burning on my tongue. Words I knew I didn’t want to say, but to stay engaged in the fight was to let go of control and forgo my values.

That pause changed everything. Not because the situation magically improved, but because I did. Giving myself time and space to regulate my nervous system enabled me to meet the moment in alignment with my values instead of stoking its heat.

Do the work before the moment

When anticipating such a challenging exchange, we love to believe we’ll rise to the occasion. In truth, we fall into the habits most deeply ingrained within. The work isn’t about gritting our teeth in the hard conversation; it’s about what we practice when we’re not in one.

Investing time and energy in cultivating our awareness of the signals our bodies are giving us helps us reclaim our power when we feel like we’re losing control. 

To do this work, I use a simple framework, Notice, Name, Navigate:

• Notice - you can train your brain to notice the shift as it starts, not after it’s run you over. This starts by getting aware of micro-clues that are physical: breath getting shallow, shoulders climbing toward ears, a sudden cold in your hands or, like me, heat that rockets up the chest.

• Name - acknowledge what’s happening with generous, sensory language. Saying aloud when working with a coach or to yourself in the moment - “I feel a vacuum in my solar plexus.” “Clamp in my jaw.” “Static in my fingertips.” Words are handles; they let you hold what would otherwise grab hold of you.

• Navigate - make intentional choices. Start with one regulating action that meets your needs in real time. Ask for a pause. Take ten slow exhales. Push your hands into your thighs. Practice go-to phrases to assert your needs rather than replay old limiting patterns - “I need a few minutes to gather my thoughts.”

  
  

That day I chose silence. Not punishment. Not withdrawal. Just enough room to calm the internal storm so I could return with a steadier voice and an open heart. This is leadership in practice. Not the absence of reaction, but the ability to recognize, organize, and redirect it.

Name what the body already knows

Bodies are fluent long before our mouths catch up. My version of “uh-oh” feels like a vacuum forming right before an explosion: heat rising, jaw cinching, fire in the belly. A client’s version is quieter, tension in his fingers and toes that, if ignored, swells into shutdown. Another notices sound receding, as if the room has moved underwater.

There is no universal map. That’s the point. The work is to build an understanding of your own sensations. To learn to tap into your body wisdom. To train your brain to notice the instantaneous shifts within so you can regain control in the moments where you slip into unconscious reactions of fight, flight, freeze or fawn.

When you can describe your embodied experience, you gain choices. 

“I’m angry” often keeps us stuck, partly because we identify with our feelings as though we are them. So asserting, “I’m angry,” can quickly turn into justifying reactive behaviors. This is quintessential to cycles of abuse where someone causing harm legitimizes their maltreatment of others as the result of someone else doing or saying something that upset them. 

That’s not to say developing emotional fluency is bad, it’s also a necessary skill. Yes, we gain valuable information from noticing and naming our emotions. And, we are not our emotions.  

When we can learn to listen to our body’s signals, we’re accessing information closer to the source of the trigger. That’s because our physiological sensations happen before we have conscious thoughts. 

Body awareness enables us to choose intentional, conscious responses. It enables us to catch the automatic reaction to the trigger before we become attached to the story we are telling ourselves. 

And it starts with observing a shift. “There’s a hot rope up my sternum and my shoulders are in my ears” points to a pattern we can interrupt and ultimately, rewrite. It opens up new pathways of curiosity instead of entrenchment in the story and behavior that keep us perpetuating a threat reaction. That automatic reaction is what leads to getting stuck on the nauseating merry-go-round of the Trigger Reaction Loop.

Train for game time (so you can lead when it counts)

Luckily, this is a skill you can start developing (and deepening) today. You might experiment with a guided somatic practice like the one below.

Think of this as doing balance drills before you ride the hill. Here’s a short practice that builds the pause you’ll need when the ground tilts:

• Settle: Find a comfortable seated position. Feel your seat and your feet. Close your eyes or soften your gaze. Breathe a little slower and deeper three or more times while you bring your attention inward. Notice and name the sensations you’re experiencing in your body (without judgment, like gathering field notes for your life).

• Touch in: Continue breathing a little slower and deeper than usual. Bring to mind a mild difficult exchange. Track what shifts in your body and where. i.e. Constriction in your throat. Buzzing sensation in your solar plexus. Tension in your hands. Again, naming what you’re noticing without judgment.

• Touch out: Shift to a memory that feels safe or easeful. Perhaps recalling a time, a place or a person. Continue breathing slower and deeper. Notice what shifts in your body as you recall a memory of safety or ease. i.e. Softness in your belly. Openness in your heart. Lightness rising up. 

  
  

You can repeat this process a few times, end by touching in and out. Allowing yourself to notice what shifts.  

You may want to make note of the sensations you named in your journal or notebook. 

• What sensations did you notice when you first brought your attention inward?

• What shifted in your body when you brought to mind a mild difficult exchange?

• How did recollecting a safe or easeful memory shift your body sensations?

  
  

As you sit with what you learned, allow yourself to reflect on this question: 

• What do I need in moments like this, where things get difficult? 

You could even invite your attention inward again to answer that question and see what rises from within you.

Then choose one Navigate move you’ll use next time. You could express your needs to others by saying, “I need a minute to gather my thoughts.” Or perhaps a physical gesture to ground would help like pressing your palms into your thighs or lifting your eyes to the horizon. 

You might script a phrase you can say aloud somewhere you can see it. Or put a post-it-note on your work station as a visual reminder of what will help you interrupt the reactive pattern so you’re responsive.

The more you can practice noticing your body sensations when you’re calm, the more accessible these skills are when triggered. That’s because your conscious effort tells the Reticular Activating System (RAS), notice this! The information was always there, you just needed to ask your RAS to stop filtering it out of your conscious awareness. 

As you embark on this work, remember - a leader’s pause is contagious. Teams watch what your body broadcasts when pressure spikes. A leader who can notice, name, and navigate their state protects trust, keeps complexity from becoming chaos, and models courage without theatrics.

Free Resource

Somatic Exercise

Sensing Words

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