Book Now!Mental health has finally made it to the mainstream. We talk about anxiety like we used to talk about the weather, normalize therapy, and celebrate self-care Sundays. And that’s progress.
But there’s one piece still hiding in plain sight, the body.
While we’re busy analyzing thoughts, diagnosing patterns, and labeling emotions, the body is quietly running the show. It’s the backstage crew of your wellbeing, the part that keeps the lights on while your mind takes the applause.
This is where somatic health steps in.
“Somatic” simply means “of the body.” Somatic health is about how your physical state — your posture, breath, muscle tension, and nervous system — affects your mental and emotional wellbeing. It’s the missing link between mind and body, the part we often ignore until it screams for attention.
You can talk about your stress all you want, but if your shoulders are up near your ears, your breath is shallow, and your gut’s in knots, your body is still living it. The mind might move on, but as that book says, the body keeps score.
Research from Stanford and Harvard has shown that chronic stress reshapes the nervous system, keeping us in a constant state of hyperarousal that affects everything from digestion to decision-making. Somatic awareness, things like slow breathing, body scans, and mindful movement, has been proven to reduce cortisol levels and improve vagal tone.
That last part matters. Vagal tone is your body’s ability to move between “fight-or-flight” (the sympathetic system) and “rest-and-digest” (the parasympathetic system). The better your vagal tone, the more resilient your nervous system, and the faster you can return to calm after chaos.
Mental health helps us understand our patterns. Somatic health helps us shift them.
.jpg)
Here’s a simple way to build somatic literacy, your ability to notice what your body is saying.
That’s interoception, the science-y term for sensing your internal world.
The more you practice, the more fluent you become in your body’s language. Eventually, you’ll notice tension before it turns into pain, and overwhelm before it turns into burnout.
You might tell yourself you’re calm before a meeting, but your body knows better. Your breath shortens. Your palms sweat. Your gut churns. The mind rationalizes, but the body communicates.
That gap between what you think and what you feel is where somatic awareness changes everything. The nervous system doesn’t lie, it speaks in the language of sensation. A tight chest might mean your sympathetic system (your internal accelerator) has kicked in. A heavy stillness might mean your dorsal system has taken over, trying to protect you by shutting things down.
Most of us have been trained to override these messages: to smile, power through, and label discomfort as weakness. But your body isn’t betraying you, it’s briefing you. It’s giving real-time data on your state of safety. The key isn’t to fix what you feel, it’s to feel it, and let that awareness guide you back to regulation.
When leaders learn this language, meetings stop being minefields and start becoming moments of attunement, where presence replaces performance.
In the workplace, leaders who understand their somatic cues lead differently. They respond instead of react. They create psychological safety not through slogans, but through nervous-system literacy, the ability to sense when they’re grounded and when they’re not, and to regulate in real time.
Because leadership isn’t only about communication or strategy, it’s about state. A dysregulated nervous system can’t listen deeply, stay curious, or think creatively. But a regulated one can. When leaders know how to steady themselves, they steady the room.
This is where limbic resonance comes in, the science of emotional attunement. It’s the process by which our nervous systems unconsciously sync with the people around us. When you walk into a tense room and feel it instantly, that’s limbic resonance. When you exhale and someone else’s shoulders drop, that’s it too. Our bodies are wired to sense the state of others and adjust accordingly.
Calm begets calm. Safety invites honesty. A single regulated presence can shift the emotional climate of a team, sometimes without a word being spoken.
Regulation is contagious. The tone of a meeting, the energy of a team, the trust in a conversation, all of it starts in the body.
This isn’t just wellness.
It’s performance science.
It’s emotional intelligence training and leadership capacity building, disguised as wellness.
We’ve spent years destigmatizing mental health. Now it’s time to embody it.
Because you can’t think your way out of a dysregulated nervous system. You have to feel your way through it.
The next evolution of wellbeing isn’t just mental health awareness — it’s somatic literacy.
It’s learning to listen to your body like it’s your oldest, wisest friend.
What if instead of asking people, “How are you feeling?” we started asking —
“How’s your nervous system today?”
Samantha Shakira Clarke is an established keynote speaker, psycho-somatic coach, and founder of SSC Corporate Wellness—an organization dedicated to bringing mindfulness, nervous system education, and trauma-informed leadership practices into workplaces across North America and beyond.
Her approach bridges neuroscience, somatic psychology, and real-world application—offering sessions that are practical, engaging, and rooted in lived experience. She's worked with Fortune 500 companies, global tech firms, safety organizations, and youth advocacy centres, and is known for creating spaces that feel both human and impactful.
