When we artists apply for grants to support our creative projects, what we are actually asking for, is time and space. These aren’t just logistical requirements—they’re the essential conditions for the work we do.
In our Embodied leadership MC we aim to give participants time and space to explore and experiment with their connection to their own resources: their bodily signals and feelings, the sensing of time and effort, their relationship to space, and their dynamic with others. We invite them to notice the qualities they bring—and the qualities others bring—into any moment.
Sustaining in the Unknown
One of the core capacities we cultivate as artists, is the ability to sustain in the unknown. Rather than rushing toward solutions or forcing direction, we practice staying present long enough to let things show themselves—to let the path reveal itself through connection rather than control. Trust the process even when outcomes aren’t immediately clear
This means slowing down. It means trusting that the choice we make ‘now’ is good enough, and that if something needs to change, we can change it without collapsing. It means building a foundation of decision-making rooted not in external pressure, but in an inner sense of alignment and regulation.
A Three-Dimensional Awareness
The artistic lens we bring invites a different kind of attention. We look not only at what’s visible—the words on the page—but also at the spaces between them. We consider not just the choices we’ve made, but the choices we haven’t. What are we missing? What have we not included?
We work on building a three-dimensional awareness from presence, through length, depth and width in the space. How we are perceived by others non-verbally and how that affects our voice, our impressions, our perception. This three-dimensional awareness expands how we experience both space and time. Growth isn’t a straight line from A to B. It spirals. It moves through what’s here now, what’s been, and what’s yet to come—all collaborating in a multi-layered kind of figure-eight motion, an endlessness.
From Inner Regulation to Leadership
Before we can lead others, we need to feel safe and regulated within ourselves. We begin with the body: How do I feel right now? What does a full-body “yes” feel like? When we’re grounded in that sensation, we’re available—for ourselves and for others.
From this place, leadership becomes something different. It’s less about directing and more about integrating. Less about pushing and more about holding and allowing. We tap into sensations, emotions, the information others bring through their presence, their tone of voice, their physical alignment in the space. We make room for creativity, for connection, for what we might otherwise have stepped over in the rush to deliver.
This integration, this regulation, allows us to be at choice with our attention, and intention. When do I need to protect, direct, control? And with whom? And when, or where, do I need to open, connect and create?
Trusting the Process
We know this isn’t easy. Trusting a process when outcomes aren’t immediately clear, a process that doesn’t promise certainty, that asks you to sit in not-knowing, goes against so much of what we’ve been trained, or rewarded to do as leaders.
But when we say yes to that, things open. When we doubt, our system closes, and so does our capacity to widening ‘the field’ of possibility.
The artistic approach to embodiment reminds us: we can move in and out of process. We can hold different timelines. We can allow ourselves to not know and let other forces play a role beyond the purely cognitive.
Some of our exercises are about assimilating information into a presentation on the spot, or creating a symphony from impulses around a word. Improvisation: making choices in the now, when we may not know where we are going, but trusting our bodies, the process and the moment, to provide the next best step, and then the next best step, and then the next best step…..in multi dimensional awareness.
When we think on our feet we are more present, more alive to the moment, more creative and interactive with what is available and what is possible.
This is what we mean by embodied leadership: an artistic approach. And this is where we begin.