Getting Unstuck:
Omar’s Story of Getting in Touch with Embodied Intelligence to Find His Next Steps

The story of Omar is but one example of the way that attending to embodied intelligence can lead to clarity in the midst of the confusion that can accompany a potential career change. Additionally, embodied intelligence is one of many skills to be cultivated as we learn to navigate transitions.

In late 2005, I counseled a newly-minted European MBA, Omar (this is a pseudonym).  Before attending business school, Omar had earned a PhD at a prestigious American university in a scientific pursuit and joined a large West Coast energy company upon graduation.  Of the seven years he had been with the company, he had earnestly been trying for two years to get out.  He sought me out to help him get unstuck.

Omar told me how he would repeatedly “send a resume, send a cover letter, go on an interview,” and was not being invited back for follow up interviews, his tone sounded flat and monotone to me.  He kept saying how “stuck” he was.  I asked him, instead of talking about being stuck, to feel, in his body, to allow himself to get in touch with how it felt to be stuck.  I invited him to take a posture, gesture, or movement that embodied the stuckness.  He allowed himself to feel into his body and became aware of the sensations that told him he felt stuck. He then adopted a posture and told me that he felt as though he was standing in cement, feet glued in place.  I encouraged him to really feel that stuck feeling and tolerate it.  Then, I asked him to use his body, not his mind, to let him discover how he would like to get unstuck.  I was very clear in telling him not to try to “figure it out,” but just to allow himself to feel his sensations and impulses and follow them.  At the same time, I was also following my own impulses about how to listen to him, how to guide him, and how to transition from moment to moment.  I did experience moments of not knowing what to do.  In those moments, I would just come back to my breath, or to asking him to notice what was happening in his body, as I was noticing my own body.

Within a few minutes, Omar told me he was moving his legs very slowly up and down, as though he was moving in molasses.  Another few minutes passed, and he began to sway his hips.  Then, he started to turn very slowly.  At first, he moved only in the same area where he had started.  Over the next minute or so, he began circling around the room where he was, then moving up and down as he circled.  He stopped for a moment and said, “I wish my wife could see me now.  I haven’t danced in years.”  Until that moment, I had no idea he was doing anything that resembled dancing.  I echoed back, “Let yourself keep dancing.  Keep paying attention inside.”

Omar danced around, silently, with focused attention.  Then, he suddenly stopped and cried out to me.  “Susan, I’ve got it!”  I could sense his excitement, and felt a few beats behind it, not really keeping up with this sudden rush of energy.  “I used to think my security was in this one place, where I started all this movement,” he said, referring to the area of the room where he had started.  “You know, that represents my company.  But now I know it’s in me,” he said, and told me he was gesturing to his upper thighs, and he told me he was slowly stroking them to recognize and acknowledge that they were informing him.  He said, “What I gather, what I learn, is that my safety is within me.  My security is in my heart, in my body, not out there in the company.  I’ve been looking in the wrong place all this time, outside myself. I don’t need to do that anymore.  Huh.”

This proved to be a big breakthrough for Omar.  Omar confronted a previously unconscious issue regarding where his security resided.  He came to recognize that his safety and security was actualized through his talents.  In other words, his security emanated within him, not in his company.  This realization arose as he stayed present to his embodied experience, rather than by coming to a purely logic-based conclusion, where he would have attempted to figure out why he had been blocked about finding a new job.

In our time together, Omar cultivated his inner experience of security, which helped him to move on from the job he did not like.  In fact, he has stayed with the same company, but has taken a job that was well beyond the skills he had been using in his prior work.  His new job is centered around negotiating multi-million dollar deals in Asia, an activity he had deeply desired to do.  Before our work together, Omar had only dreamed of such jobs, but saw obstacle after obstacle in the way.  Although we had multiple coaching sessions, during this first session described herein, Omar opened up to the possibility of moving beyond his current environment.  From my vantage point, by focusing inward, Omar had the space to begin to following his desires.