The Aesthetics of Power

I ran a workshop yesterday on power, leadership and the nervous-system capacity required to hold both.

These are big words. And big words can become almost meaningless unless we ground them in specific definitions, and in actual somatic markers.

So what is power? A Google search shows me many fists and some strange anime-inspired devils. Is this power?

Our inherited images of power

Art history and visual culture studies argue that images do not simply reflect power. They actively participate in constructing it. Images can make certain forms of authority visible, desirable and natural, while making other forms harder to see. They shape collective ideas about who looks powerful, what authority looks like and which bodies are expected to carry it.

As a result, many of us inherit a theatrical, caricature-like image of what power is supposed to look like in the body: the forceful person taking up space, making themselves bigger and projecting certainty. Loud, tall, rigid.

If these are the images we swim in, it makes sense that when we think of embodying power ourselves, our bodies reach for the same gestures. We sit up taller. We tighten the voice. This can disconnect us from our actual experience of power in the body.

Grounding abstract concepts in somatic inquiry

One of the things I care about in my work is reclaiming loaded words by making them tangible, so we can find definitions that are clear, resonant and actionable for us. Definitions we can actually use to guide our choices.

So instead of asking, "What should power look like?" as an abstract question, we can ask more concrete, somatic questions:

• What happens in my body when I imagine being powerful?
• What is the quality of my breath?
• What happens to my attention?
• What happens to the position of my body?
• Where do I notice muscular tension?

These questions draw on several overlapping strands of somatic and embodied practice: interoception, our capacity to notice and interpret internal bodily signals, mindfulness-based approaches and body-centred approaches. Research suggests that interoceptive awareness is related to how we experience and regulate emotion. This matters for power because our bodily state affects how we use authority. When we can notice bracing, speeding up, narrowing attention or losing contact, we may have more choice about whether to push, withdraw, listen or respond differently.

A practical somatic map

In workshops, I often use a simplified model that I created by combining several aligned approaches into a practical map: somatic awareness and interoception, nervous-system and autonomic-state language, mindfulness, and relational or embodied leadership practices.

I call it the BEAR model: Body, Energy, Attention, Relationship. It is a memorable way of bringing different strands of somatic inquiry into something people can actually feel, use and remember.

You can play with this in very small ways. For example, the next time you notice yourself "performing" power in a meeting, sitting up taller, tightening your voice or pushing through, you can check:

• Body: What is my posture actually doing?
• Energy: Am I speeding up, bracing, collapsing or grounding?
• Attention: Am I seeing the whole picture or only defending my own line?
• Relationship: Is this move bringing me into more real contact, or away from it?

The point is not to judge the answers against an imagined ideal state. The point is to notice that there are answers. Connecting to your felt experience can give you more information about how you are relating to the situation in that moment.

It can also create a small pause between sensation and action. That pause does not guarantee the right response. But it can make a wider range of responses available.

If you would like to try this for yourself, I recorded a short audio practice using the model. It will guide you through a few minutes of noticing what happens in your body, energy, attention and relationships when you imagine taking up power.

Expanding our range of power

Once we begin to see our inherited archetype of power, hard, vertical and commanding, we can start to experiment with alternatives.

This does not mean always replacing force with softness, or suggesting that every leader should look calm, warm or spacious. Nor does it mean treating power as solely an internal experience.

Power is also relational and structural. It includes access, authority, resources, role, status and the ability to affect what happens to other people. A person's bodily experience of power is shaped by the context they are in and by how other people respond to their body, identity, role and authority.

Somatic inquiry cannot resolve those inequalities through self-awareness alone. But it can help us examine how we inhabit power within those conditions. And maybe, it can help us explore different possibilities.

A grounded stance that is not huge but is stable. A voice that is warm and precise instead of loud.

The aesthetics of power then become less about how you look from the outside, and more about how connected you are to your inner experience, your context and the people affected by your actions.

• Can you act from a place of connection to yourself?
• Can you remain responsive to the reality around you?
• Are your inner experience, your outward behaviour and your impact aligned?

Expanding our range of what power and leadership can look like is not just a personal project. It is part of building organisations, relationships and futures that are more desirable, futures in which authority does not have to depend on domination and leadership can hold complexity without reproducing the same narrow images of power.

If you want to take this further, this is the kind of practice and work I do through Paradox Praxis.

I spent nine years at Google building leadership and social-impact programs before training in Internal Family Systems and neurosomatic work. It changed how I understand what leadership development is actually for, developing genuine choice in how we meet complexity, authority, discomfort and relationship.

I am opening my calendar for a small number of new 1:1 clients. Reach out via DM and we will find a time to talk.

References

1. Burri, Regula Valérie. "Visual Rationalities: Towards a Sociology of Images." Current Sociology 60, no. 1 (2012): 45–60. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392111426647
2. Smarthistory. "Power: Comparisons and Connections." This resource discusses how art and architecture have historically been designed to communicate the power of rulers and institutions.
3. Price, Cynthia J., and Carole Hooven. "Interoceptive Awareness Skills for Emotion Regulation: Theory and Approach of Mindful Awareness in Body-Oriented Therapy (MABT)." Frontiers in Psychology 9 (2018): 798. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00798