← Back
1. The decision the body made first
Washington's unease, and the chapter's claim that the body is part of the apparatus of judgement. · individual
2. Sensing the body from within
Interoception, the insula, why accuracy varies, and why the signal is a prediction. · individual
3. Gut feelings and somatic markers
What the somatic marker hypothesis proposed, what survives, and the literal gut. · individual
4. State sets the range of thought
Narrowing and widening, cortisol, and why clear thinking is an embodied achievement. · individual
5. The autonomic system and leadership state
Sympathetic and parasympathetic balance, vagal tone, and how a leader's state spreads. · team
6. Heart rate variability and polyvagal theory
One measure with real promise and limits, and one popular theory whose core is disputed. · individual
7. Posture, breathing and the body's two-way traffic
Embodied cognition, the power posing story, and the one bodily lever with a firm basis. · individual
8. Reading others, and presence
Empathy as partly physiological, the face and voice as state displays, and presence as an embodied condition. · dyad
9. Stress, recovery and the head-only error
Allostatic load, sleep, recovery as infrastructure, and how head-only leadership misdiagnoses itself. · individual
10. Movement and the long arc
Exercise as cognitive infrastructure, the accumulated cost over a career, and the body as ally. · individual
11. Building capacity, then using it under pressure
Attention training, breathing, recovery by design, and the lens applied to decisions, hard conversations and crises. · dyad
12. Emotion constructed, and when the body misleads
Reappraisal and its limits, signals that do not fit, and the discipline of calibration. · individual
13. Bodies in groups: synchrony, safety and trust
Coupled physiology, collective dysregulation, and the bodily roots of psychological safety. · team
14. Meridian: dysregulation and collapse
Chen, Washington and the frontline staff read as bodies as well as minds. · system
15. Integration and practices
The chapter's load-bearing claims, its evidence ledger, and eight practices. · individual