You're at the Coaching Inn, 3D Coaching's virtual pub where we enjoy conversations with people who engage in the world of coaching. Welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn. I'm Claire Pedrick, your host. And before I introduce today's guests, let me just remind you that if you love The Coaching In, do follow, subscribe or like on whatever platform you're listening on. And then you will be able to download every new episode as soon as it goes live.
Which I hope you think is a good thing. So today I'm in conversation with somebody. who I was introduced to by one of our listeners, Mark Mercer, who emailed me and said, you have to talk to the physical intelligence people. So I went, yes, Mark. So I contacted the physical intelligence people and Claire Dale. Welcome to the Coaching Inn. Thank you very much, Claire.
Somebody who spells the name Claire in the right way with the I and the E. It's a pleasure to be here to be talking about the body and embodiment for us coaches. Well, absolutely delightful to have you here. So before we start talking about any of those things, I have in my notes. She used to be a choreographer. Underline, underline, because as everybody knows, I'm a bit obsessed about the dance of coaching, as well as the sound of coaching.
So I'd be really interested to ask you, Claire, about your journey through choreography to coaching. Give us the five minute version of the whole thing. Not the five hour version. We'll have, we'll come back for rerun for the five hour version. Well, I was born dancing and that has always been a strong passion of mine. And I turned that into a degree in dance theatre and a choreographic career running my own contemporary dance company for 15 years, actually.
And what happened during that time was, well, firstly, Of course, we were practicing everyday embodiment techniques in order to create together. My company was called an ensemble. So coming together as a group collaboratively to create. So we needed to be in a state where we were able to listen and combine ideas, not hold on tight to our own stance, but be able to truly be creative together. And of course that showed up in the way we prepared our bodies. to work together.
So that's one thing, the role of the body in how flexible and creative we are. And then the second area really that is very important and became very interesting to leaders, not only how do we prepare ourselves for what is a fast paced, risky environment, choreography or the business world today. but how we trust each other in that.
And so I became very interested in the fact that emotional intelligence was encapsulating issues of trust, motivation, confidence, and that these were all physiological states as far as I, you know, I always knew that they were physiological states. Being a dancer, everything was translated through the body for me. And so when I, in 2004, when I was transitioning and I knew that I actually wanted to move out of contemporary dance, mainly because I'd worked really hard at it for 15 years.
And I reckon that the world needed more embodiment on a bigger scale. I wanted to be part of a bigger church and a bigger culture and make a bigger culture change. So I went along to a conference called Creating the World We Want. I was taken there by a consultant I'd started to experiment with. He was working at Reuters at the time. And he took me along to this conference and it was, were people like us, experienced leadership coaches. There were leadership development professionals.
And the afternoon of the conference was Open Space Technology. And I decided to lead a session. I'd been hearing about emotional intelligence that day and I couldn't really find much about the body being spoken about. And so I was cajoled into leading a session. And that afternoon was a real life changer because I showed a bunch of people how to be prepared to go on stage and how we prepared the body to create. I also helped them understand what trust felt like in the body.
And honestly, other sessions closed down this embodiment theme. was 2004, 20 years ago. And it became a big theme and I could have created three different partnerships that day. I had a cluster of people around me at the end and I thought, well, there's something here. And the funny thing was when I was asked to, when I was asked to write up the title of the session, hadn't called anything physical intelligence at that point, but I was given an old fashioned flip chart. Remember those days.
And I put my pen to the flip chart, not knowing what would come out. What came out was physical intelligence, all welcome and literally came out of my body. And intuitively I knew that this was an area I was going to really major on for the rest of my life, really. Wow. Wow. So just backtracking a little bit. So what was your journey into coaching or was that your journey into coaching? My journey into coaching came shortly, you know, around the 2004 moment.
I realized that people like the National Theatre, RADA, even the Laban Center were creating and now the Guildhall is creating programs for business people. So I started my own company, Companies in Motion, and I also joined the team of business trainers, facilitators at RADA Business. And they quickly took what I had to offer in terms of the embodiment work. And of course, the actors pedagogy is a very, very embodied thing. It all comes from the body.
So I was really well placed there, such a great time to experiment with what a leadership model might look like, an embodied leadership model might look like and how we could connect the voice and the body with situational leadership, with different leadership styles that were being spoken about because I reckoned that those styles needed to be embodied. So I was facilitating, but I was always given a stream of one-to-one coaching clients.
And that's where I learned my coaching skills with a performance background, coming to work with very high level leaders actually coming to RADA, as you could imagine, for a high level, exciting experience of being in the body and in the voice. And then later on, I would add the science to it. And that was what I was busy doing with Companies in Motion because that is very important to me as well that we... that we understand how embodiment work is not kind of out there on the edges.
And my business partner always says, you know, not woo woo, but wow, wow. You know, when you get in the body, we will want to bring the body and the science of the body and the practice of the body to the center of culture, the center of coaching, because the world of coaching is changing now as well. Yeah, we're all thinking a bit less and doing a bit more, I notice. That's a great way of saying it, Claire, thinking a bit less, doing a bit more. Love it.
One of our delegates on a program in Russia a few years ago said, if the coach is doing more thinking than the thinker, it's not coaching. And I think often coaches will go to the head because that's a place where we feel we've got control. Yeah, I think that's right. and not notice the other things so much. So you were talking there about an embodied of model of leadership. So what might that look like? Can you give us an example?
Yes. Well, in this framework, which is quite an open weave, a model framework, whatever you want to call it. We're really referencing many of the models that are based on Jungian archetypes and we're familiar with many of them. And what we did was took the dynamic elements of those. What do the behaviors that named styles might look like? What are those behaviors? What's the breath of a particular behavior? What's the body? What's the relationship with the ground?
What's the quality of the eye focus and eye contact? What's the gestural language? How much space do people take up? how much, what's the rhythm that they will execute their leadership with. we chose, well, just to say alongside the strand of Jungian archetypes, I'm also trained in something called Laban movement analysis. And this was the training that was part of my undergraduate degree.
And we learned to sort of pull apart movement, human action into the component parts of time, space, weight and flow. So long preamble, but that's important because that's the underpinning. And then we start to look at many words that begin with auth, A-U-T-H, authority as maybe the first stylistic area. that we would look at. Authority, authenticity, being the author of our words, being the author of our leadership in a sense.
And so the nature of our authority comes when we're really well grounded and we know how to find the ground. And actually quite happy being groundless for a while in a high risk situation and able to reground and and ground others through our presence, through the tone and quality of our voice, how we put weight in our words and in our gestures, so therefore settle and focus others and ourselves.
Authority would be one field to play in and you can imagine you can choose texts of highly authoritative leaders and play with the voice and for each person to find what for them is very personal. Where are they in authority? Then the second stylistic area is around inspiration and the word for the in-breath is inspire, inspire in French and many other languages. So the root of that word inspiration. in what really is the breath of life.
And we've all been around people that we find inspiring and they've probably got good authority at the base in their feet, in their lower gut area. And then they're able to use their body and use their voice and ignite a sense of adrenaline. as well as serotonin, a sense of, you know, engagement and passion and the dopamines in there as well. They're able to tell stories and bring situations to life, paint pictures of the future.
so the in and I'm not talking about, let's just be clear, I'm not talking about teaching people to wave their arms around a lot or be, you know, be anything other than they're not. But what is the the nudge? that enables them to move from authority and that kind of clarity to generating energy in others in themselves from the breath. Is that making sense? So we would put that in the gut. We would put that in the gut.
So you've got feet, gut, and there's a whole story around serotonin because what we've done is we've put the chemistry, we've identified what we call the chemical cocktail that you want to head for. If you want to dial up or down any of those styles. And sometimes people, leaders have hidden, hidden sort of stylistic strengths. Well, ways that they can be, it's not even style, which sounds like we're putting it on from the outside, but the being of the leader.
You know, we have more flexibility than we think. Third area would be the heart, compassion. The ability to think in other's shoes, so vital and, you know, gosh, how many amazing coaches have I witnessed? And hopefully I do it myself sometimes, but building oxytocin in the room to create that sense of trust, that sense of openness, sense of humility, vulnerability, and all of that is there and neuroscientifically, neurophysiologically.
The heart itself has independent neurons in it, as does the gut. So is releasing oxytocin when we do certain things, when we resonate our voice with long vowels that have a sense of care in them. So the voice holds them. I'm going on, I? But there's a lot here. But the final place that we might explore with leaders and we have done in groups and one-to-one is the the clarity and ability to analyze and think really coherently and plan and stage and step through a process with people.
So we call it analytical leadership. And, you know, we need that. need structure. we need a sort of persistence as well. So that's in the head. Probably if I was going to ask a yogi, which I'm not, it would be somewhere in the third eye for those people that think in that framework.
For us, for me, it's in the prefrontal cortex and the ability to bring things forward in the brain, having experienced and given the opportunity to create many connections in the brain, but how can they become conscious and clear and then expressed clearly? thought through.
So that's the work that we've done over many years in leadership and behavioral flexibility is what we are aiming for with the knowledge that most human beings have habits and patterns that they've been praised for or they've got a good result from. So then tending to rely on those and leaders that have got to a certain level have been successful with those. but will tend to, once they start to get 360 feedback, want a bit more range.
But the last thing they want to do is to be, to feel fake as they have to shift style. And so we help them to get that behavioral flexibility and to feel, to feel good in themselves about that and feel that they have that agency. Wow. So to grow a bit while still being themselves and just being a better version. Yeah, better, more versatile, more agile, all these things that are so vital.
In fact, I'm doing my doctorate at the moment, which is all about the connection between personal behavioral flexibility and corporate agility and flexibility in this complex world. it's a line that I'm trying to draw. Maybe a wiggly line. It's a line I'm trying to draw. And it's making a lot of sense to people actually and very connected with our serotonin function.
It turns out that serotonin is a really important part of our neurochemistry, not only for the classic aspects of mental health and resilience that we know it's vital for, for behavioral flexibility, for cognitive flexibility, for physical flow and flexibility. So back to your comment about people tend to seem to be moving more. And I'm so happy that we are contributors to that moving more together, you know, or it's all moving more. Yeah. We need that flexibility.
Yeah, I came to your, you did a one hour lunchtime thing a few weeks ago. I came to that with that guy who was on the TV. What was his name? Fry. That was fascinating. And it really, was, It's interesting, isn't it? When you do things intuitively, and then you suddenly hear somebody go actually moving and breathing are really important, which are two of the things that we talk about a lot in coaching. You know, people stay far too still or move too much.
But using movement as part of coaching is really important. Can I just pick up something you said? Cause I just love to hear more about it. You talked about the late, late laban. Larbin, Larbin analysis, yeah. And you talked about time and space and weight and flow and breathing. Say a bit more about flow because for me, flow is one of the things that we just don't talk about enough.
Yes. So there's the flow, the flow state that is kind of commonly known as being in the, that sweet spot where you're very immersed in something. And, you know, there are, there's a certain chemistry to that, the dopamine, the endorphins, that sort of sense of this is a satisfying, deeply satisfying activity. My definition of flow is a bit bigger. It's about being able to understand where there's contraction, movement away, and find a greater personal flexibility.
So I would add, and finding your way back into flow and being able to find a flexibility, way of handling difficult things, uncertainty. So with Larbin, that would be what he, his name is Rudolf von Larbin, and he was a Hungarian architect and then moved throughout Europe during the Weimar Republic years before the Second World War and then was hired by Hitler and Goebbels to create the opening ceremony for the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, but then was fired because he believed in diversity.
He believed in movement choirs where people could move with the same, with a described kind of flow. he might bound flow, might be slow, contained and continuous, whereas free flow would have more weight. and momentum. So these are just two aspects of flow from the physical perspective that we would talk about. And so obviously the use of weight is very different when you're in bound flow, you're controlling your weight.
When you're in free flow, you're allowing the weight to fall and rise and there's a momentum generated. He was fired and then came to London to Dartington College, sorry, came to England to Dartington College in Devon. And we benefited a lot from that happenstance in that very difficult time. I understand it that Hitler and Goebbels quickly or Goebbels re-choreographed to something much more regimented. So yes, time, space, weight, flow.
He was interested in the principles of movement and how different people would apply the same principles and be able to move together. without, you know, without looking. So there's a kind of unison to the movement. There's a real connection between people, but they're not trying to be regimented. I've got my question. A lot of what you've described feels as though it's about individuals. And I'm just really curious to expand that.
into what we might describe as the flow of the dialogue or the dance of the dialogue. Because if I don't talk to you about the dance of the dialogue, I'm going to get emails. Well, yes, I was reading your beautiful chapter in your book on that very topic. It's so beautifully written, Claire. Thank you. It's an improvised moment, isn't it, where it requires the best possible levels of listening.
and checking and seeking nonverbal, often we're seeking nonverbal consent and then sometimes making it verbal to sense a movement into the next part of the conversation. Do want to ask me a whole question? You described that so much better than we did. I can read you. can read you the very chapter. Seeking nonverbal consent or verbal.
Yeah. And I guess my question is as a choreographer, when you notice a conversation that's really in flow and, where you might describe it with that awful phrase, dancing in the moment, what do you as the choreographer actually notice? I notice increases and decreases in speed of interaction. So flow will tend to find a momentum and a pace. And then there will be, it's like a crescendo really, or a gathering of thoughts and ideas and movement together, moving into new conceptual areas.
And then, and the breath will change and everything about the body will change. And then there's a transition moment. And that requires, of course, I'm saying this is obvious, but the ability to be quiet and wait for whatever will come next whilst keeping one's own process of alertness to the moment going. You might be having three thoughts, but then you're holding them and you're not in that state where, the best thought has to come out quickly. You're able to hold the moment.
And I would liken that to, a choreographic sequence, you might have some quite risky lifts, catches, throws, and then at some point the dynamic changes and everyone regrounds. And maybe the next, because if you're, if, the choreography is good, you'll be working with change as a key component of what makes the journey alive for the audience. So if a choreographer tries to create high impact moments all the time, the audience will suddenly not feel that they are high impact.
So it's about the change, the contrasts and the rate of change. How many times do we change? So every dancer. all of us and as a choreographer watching the dynamic of a piece that we're creating. It's about what is the natural sense of natural ebb and flow of pace and flow and weight, space, time. Because the audience need, you know, like we need to refresh ourselves and the feeling of when something is done, it's done.
And unless we reground, the next thing that is not yet done or the next thing can be inhibited. So every conversation is different. That's where your word improvisation comes up. yeah, improvisation, physical improvisation could and probably should, and in some of our work is, we, know, we... in our training course for coaches, coaches come to us to be trained in working with physical intelligence.
There are certain techniques that are inviting movement that increases a greater divergence of thinking. So research tells us that if we're very structured in our movements and very structured and with a similar kind of rhythm and pace in our voices, certain way of putting emphasis in the words, structured, then we'll be more likely to want to think convergently to make something that was wide concrete, to make it stable, to make it known to others as the thing.
Whereas if you are more free flowing in your movement and your breath, this is research from Dr. Peter Lovett at Hertfordshire University, if anyone wants to look it up, then we're more likely to think divergently if we're able to let go of physical tension and make it up as we go along. So we have a technique. that we encourage coaches to have a go at and we do it on one of our live events and it's great fun and it sounds probably horrible.
If you're an introvert and you maybe even don't really enjoy too much even the arms coming away from the body, some people just don't like that and it's okay. And we need to respect self-consciousness and also respect the fact that we are As human beings, we're always weighing up activity with, we need to do that? Or should we be conserving energy? You know, we've always got that fundamental, how am going to use my energy?
So sometimes when we go into movement, the hurdle that people need to get over when they do want to move, but they find they don't, they don't, they don't actually get up and move is very often that energy monitor that says, don't really need to do that. I would conserve the energy, stay on the sofa or stay at your desk. Interesting. So it's an interesting one. How fascinating. As we speak, I think I found the online improv teacher that we've been looking for for about three years.
And I'm hoping that by the time this episode comes out, we will have news about online improv training for coaches because just struck it. What you said about expanding is so important, isn't it? I was talking today to somebody, we were watching a recording together. This person is very still. I said, you need to expand your range. And I said, it's not going to look all flippy flappy or happy downy. because that's not you, but it does need to be more than completely still and on one tone.
That's right. And yeah, I mean, it's just interesting, isn't it? The connections between what you're describing and what I describe in what we describe in what's it called? The Human Behind the Coach. Your amazing book. Thank you. Which is about really leaning in, really working with the movement and the sound. whatever that looks like.
And that was what I loved about that thing you did with Benjamin Fry, because at the end of it, I texted one of my colleagues and went, see, they said moving and breathing are really important. Yeah, yeah. Because they are.
Yes. And you know, I was just talking about, you know, a technique which is more about free movement, which is right at the most extroverted scale of what we do, but really the bread and butter of working with physical intelligence in our coaching is working with breath, noticing breath, noticing changes, knowing how to help others deal with the immense amount of information that's out there at the moment to do with breath. There is so much that there can be a lot of confusion. What is it?
Box breathing? Is it, you know, is it... Is it sort of nose, nostril breathing? What is it? There's all kinds of breathing and movement and micro movements for people exploring where they might be stuck, why they want, know, where they want to move to can be accelerated and made more profound if we're able to bridge that very simple, using that very simple coaching question. that we use all the time in physical intelligence coaching is, so where are you experiencing that in your body?
What's going on in your body as you talk about that? that's happening. Let's investigate that sensation a little bit more. Is it going down? Is it going in? it fizzing? Is does it feel cold? Does it, or is it emanating something? What is it emanating? And then exploring the range around that and where the physicality needs to, where they want their physical body to be, what state, emotional, mental, physical state is housed in the body?
What's the breadth of where they want to be more in a state where they, know, we can sometimes call it state B. So state A might be the automatic state. State B might be the the better state, the state that's going to equip them more with some of the challenges that they're up against. So yeah, and always giving the science. You don't always need it, right?
But in my experience, I mean, the people that are coming to us now, very experienced coaches, some have the instinct, or they've heard, you know, that we need to pay attention to movement and breath, and this accelerates profoundly. the change that's possible. But don't have the confidence to do it and don't necessarily. You know, we want to give them the confidence to be able to say, you know, and this is how it's working. And here's the chemistry.
Here's the shift physiologically that you're creating when you do that. How does that feel? You don't dwell on it. You don't give a whole science lesson, but you drop it in for those that need it. And we need to know it to be confident in. working with it ourselves. Yeah. And it starts with encouraging people to breathe when they're not, doesn't it? Noticing what stops them breathing. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, thank you for opening up the conversation, Claire, about physical intelligence today.
How do people find out more? You can find out more by putting into your Google search, physical intelligence Institute. And if you're interested in the coach training that I've been talking about, then you, if you put forward slash coach training, you'll go right to the website page that shows you this toolkit for coaches who want to work with embodiment. And if you would like to.
work through a program for yourself, or you've got somebody in your life that you think would benefit from this, they're not coaches, or you are listening to this and you're a leader, or you have a team, or you're head of an organization even, you can then go and have a look at same start to the URL, physicalintelligenceinstitute.com, physicalintelligenceinstitute.com forward slash body smart. Body Smart, and that is our course for everyone. And these are both online courses.
So that's where you can find us. and Claire, we created a special code for your listeners to get a on the coaching course, right? Because I know your community is of course coaches. So if you were to go to physicalintelligenceinstitute.com, I think I might have left that out the first time, forward slash training and you, you, you really like the look of it and you'll, know, you want to sign up then at the, at the checkout use coupon code 3d special. that's very easy. 3d specialty.
Yeah. You'll get 400 pounds discount. And I'll put all that in the show notes everyone so that you can see it in writing in case you're walking your dog and you can't write. Right. Thank you, Claire, for coming to the Coaching In today. Thank you, Claire. It's been an absolute pleasure. And thank you everyone for listening. I'll put all of those details in the show notes and remember to like or follow or subscribe if you want to get every episode as it drops. Thank you, Claire.
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