Physical Intelligence

Harness your body's untapped intelligence to achieve more, stress less and live more happily

Claire Dale, Patricia Peyton

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781471170904
• eBook ISBN: 9781471170911
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Self Improvement

Winner of the Business Book Award (Personal Development) 2020 "Using our Physical Intelligence we can strengthen our cognitive function and alter our mood, emotional responses, stress, confidence and happiness levels at will."HR magazine "This could be the next big thing."Talking Business with Aaron Heslehurst, BBC World News "This clever new neuroscience-backed wellness trend will help you take charge of your body, brain, schedule and life."GLAMOURMAGAZINE "'Physical intelligence' is the latest buzzword in wellbeing.' WOMAN & HOME The highly successful four-part strategy for raising your performance at work and home so that you can thrive in a busy, challenging world, from the experts who have worked with Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies across the globe. Do you wish you could be more focused and productive? Would you like to ensure your most confident performance when the stakes are high and your stress levels are even higher? The way your body reacts in any given situation determines your ability to think clearly and your capacity for managing your emotions. When you understand the way your body reacts and how to manage it, your physical intelligence, you can handle that stressful family situation, the make-or-break meeting and the important business presentation. Claire Dale and Patricia Peyton have spent the past thirty years helping business people achieve outstanding success and a deeper sense of fulfilment by applying techniques used by top performers in sport and the arts. This practical guide contains the effective techniques you need to develop your strength, flexibility, resilience and endurance, leaving you feeling confident and fully equipped to deal with whatever comes your way. Each step-by-step strategy can be easily integrated into a busy day and is combined with useful tips and inspiring stories of people who have turned their lives around through physical intelligence. "This book is an essential counterblast to a better, more integrated way of working and living."Edward Kemp, Director, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) "Scientific research paired with practical experience and easy life hacks makes Physical Intelligence an inspiring read that will literally change the way you walk through life."Dr Stefanie Teichmann, Director, Google EMEA "This book is totally brilliant."Wayne McGregor CBE, resident choreographer, Royal Ballet

1

THE WINNING COCKTAIL

How to recognise the chemicals that drive our behaviour

Right at this moment, can you feel the pace of your heartbeat? Can you feel the movement of your breath entering and leaving your body? Can you feel the shape of your spine? Can you capture the feeling of your current mood and what is creating that mood today? Take a second or two to focus on each of these questions. As you do, you will likely become more aware, more actively present in your body.

There are eight key chemicals that work in combination to explain helpful and unhelpful, constructive and unconstructive, responses to situations at home, at work and at play. When the balance is right, we call it the ‘Winning Cocktail’.

Ingredients in the cocktail

Acetylcholine

You’ve had a busy week, so you make it an early night and treat yourself to a long lie-in to start the weekend. On Saturday morning, as you go slowly about your day, you realise that you are breathing out in long sighs and having feelings of relief. This is your re-balancing and renewal system kicking in, driven by acetylcholine, the key chemical in the parasympathetic nervous system. Few people outside of the science or health fields know about acetylcholine, but it is responsible for hugely important areas like energy renewal, recovery from pressure, learning and memory. It brings the heart rate back to normal after intense activity and restores the balance of the organism as a whole in the process of homeostasis. This is true for all types of intense activity: emotional, mental, physical, or all three. The signature feeling of acetylcholine is balance.

LIFE HACK: To quickly relax and stimulate acetylcholine production after a hard day, take a hot bath with Epsom salts in it. Minerals such as magnesium and potassium (vital for renewal) will be absorbed through the skin and your energy will come flooding back – and you’ll sleep better.

Adrenalin

We’ve all experienced it: on a fairground ride, skiing, going on a first date or even something somewhat negative such as accidentally hitting ‘Reply All’ on a sensitive email response. The primary functions of adrenalin are to 1) increase heart rate and blood flow in survival situations and 2) to release energy quickly from stored resources of carbohydrate and fat to provide the muscles and brain with a burst of energy and strength to facilitate immediate action.

Adrenalin creates excitement, activation and speed. It gives us the energy to meet new challenges, but it can speed us up or leave us feeling overly excited or nervous in presentations or negotiations, making it difficult to communicate succinctly or think clearly. Adrenalin is one of the two key operative chemicals of the sympathetic nervous system, the system that produces the fast action needed to respond to threats. The signature feelings of adrenalin are fear or excitement.

LIFE HACK: If you feel nerves building up, don’t just sit there: move, shift position, walk, shake out your legs and arms to disperse adrenalin.

Cortisol

Do you ever worry or feel anxious about things? Do you sometimes react impatiently or angrily? Do you feel concerned about the future and whether you are up to it? Do you regularly believe that others are to blame for things? Or do you think things are always your fault?

These are all high cortisol speaking. Too many people are struggling to maintain their performance in today’s fast-paced and demanding environments, and cortisol is part of the problem. It is a critically important chemical and the positive effects of it keep us alive. It numbs pain so that we can fight even if injured; it is the major player in our nervous system function that takes us into all challenging or competitive situations (arousal), improving short-term memory as we compete.

In a sustained period of working under pressure, with a lot of responsibility on our shoulders or in a sustained ‘fight or flight’ environment, cortisol builds, making us over-aroused and anxious so that we ‘choke’ and underperform; we make poor decisions. This happens either because we are in overdrive, pushing too much and taking unmitigated risks (hyperarousal) or because we have caved in (hypoarousal). We make attempts to think straight in complex situations but then often push our own agenda or decide on the path of least resistance, rather than what is right to do. The signature feeling of cortisol is anxiety.

DHEA

Dehydroepiandrosterone is the high-performance chemical. Synthetic DHEA is a banned substance for Olympic athletes, yet we can make it ourselves every day using a specific paced breathing technique. It supports vitality, longevity, stamina, cognitive function, immune system function, heart–brain function, long-term memory, responsiveness and many more functions of a healthy, high-performing organism.

DHEA and cortisol are, then, two sides of a balancing scale. DHEA is a biomarker of age and naturally drops beyond the age of thirty. For women and men, stress and high cortisol accelerate this drop in DHEA, which leads to premature ageing. Unless we manage pressure well, when DHEA levels drop too quickly, the overall stability of our nervous and endocrine systems are compromised. If we improve our capacity to perform under pressure without undue stress, we will age more slowly. The signature feeling of DHEA is vitality.

LIFE HACK: Check your Fitbit, smart phone or Apple watch and find a breath-pacer app – then increase the amount of time per day you spend using a regular-paced breathing pattern. This boosts DHEA.

Dopamine

Have you ever felt disappointed on opening a birthday or Christmas present when it wasn’t what you wanted? Or when you didn’t get that promotion at work? Or when you finished a conversation feeling faintly put out by someone who took credit for something you played a big part in? These negative feelings are generated by a lack of expected reward, a lack of delivery of the pleasure chemical dopamine.

Dopamine is the great motivator. When we get it, we prioritise behaviour to make sure we keep getting it – for example, being annoyingly hooked on a rather poor but ‘unputdownable’ novel, or a box set where you just have to watch the next episode, or eating the entire bag of crisps. These are instances of the clever manipulation of our dopaminergic function – when our reward system is being played. It can feel so good yet be so bad for us.

Dopamine provides a powerful chemical drive for many things concerned with survival. It is no accident that we enjoy the taste of food, water alleviates thirst and sex feels good. Beyond that, what we are praised for when we are young sets up the mechanism for what we want to achieve and win later in life – at work or in a specialised area or skill, which is why it is so important to reinforce positive behaviours in children. Dopamine plays a huge part in goal orientation and engaging people in change. The signature feelings of dopamine are pleasure and need.

LIFE HACK: STOP! Find something to enjoy and appreciate in this very moment. You just created a ‘reward’ and, in doing so, have given yourself a natural dopamine boost.

Oxytocin

Over a meal with family or friends, have you ever had that sense of feeling right? That you like being there, you feel safe and included, and believe that these people are looking out for your welfare? Hopefully, you regularly do. That’s oxytocin being released. Oxytocin levels fluctuate in relation to our perception and processing of social information – whether we are in the ‘in group’ or ‘out group’, whether we feel safe or threatened. It is released when we trust someone; it enables us to feel responsibility to others and facilitates social bonding. Too much, and we may be overly dependent on relationships and lack the ability to make independent decisions; we may also want our group to be exclusive or elite. Too little, and we may feel isolated; we might not build professional relationships or know how to use our networks for support. We need to be able to boost our own levels of oxytocin, which we can do by empathising with others in order to create harmony or manage conflict.

Oxytocin is crucial to good teamwork because it is part of the emotions of liking, loving, pride and feeling included. It is a ‘feel-good’ chemical: with it, we feel stronger together, which also contributes to feelings of confidence – the confidence we derive from being part of a social group. The signature feeling of oxytocin is belonging.

LIFE HACK: Send a text right now to someone who is in your thoughts and with whom you haven’t spoken in a while. You may ask how they are doing, ask for their advice, or offer to help. You just boosted your oxytocin level. Notice how you feel happier – even better when they reply!

Serotonin

Serotonin influences levels of happiness, status and feelings of satisfaction and well-being. We believe that we are enough, have enough. We feel naturally balanced and empowered and can take responsibility for our role in society.

Serotonin is very important for the immune system and for deep-seated confidence. That killer chemical cortisol, if running too high, will drain serotonin levels until depression sets in. Smiling and laughing releases serotonin in ourselves and others when we smile at them. It is released when we eat bananas and good-quality dark chocolate. The signature feeling of serotonin is happiness.

LIFE HACK: Use any form of meditation – mindfulness, a yoga breathing practice, Transcendental Meditation – or just sit quietly and focus on your breathing every day for ten minutes. Notice how you start to sail through the year without those annoying sniffles and flu viruses. Meditation boosts serotonin.

Testosterone

Testosterone (along with dopamine) drives your desire to achieve and compete. When you feel the confidence of a ‘winner’ or you have thoughts like I did it! your testosterone levels go up further, rising over a period of minutes.

Testosterone enables risk tolerance and confidence and is vital for feeling empowered. However, a warning about too much testosterone: if we are overly confident about a win, we may become arrogant and not prepare well enough (e.g. for that important job interview). Too much testosterone also impedes teamwork. If we have too little testosterone, however, we become risk-averse and avoid competitive situations. We can adjust levels of testosterone through the use of posture and through resistance-based physical exercise. The signature feelings of testosterone are power and control.

LIFE HACK: To boost testosterone, the next time you achieve something good, put your arms in the air like a winner and say a big fat ‘YES!’ Don’t suppress your elation. Feel it, and get used to being successful!

These are our ‘Top 8’ ingredients. Now we’ll look at what happens when we start to put them together and influence their balance to create better outcomes.

Mixing the cocktail

Let’s review Alex’s success story from the Introduction through our chemical lens. Alex is well-rested when he wakes, indicating that cortisol (threat/stress/arousal) has been appropriately low during the night, allowing melatonin (sleep quality) to be appropriately high. Alex has used Physical Intelligence sleep techniques (more on these later) and knows how to achieve quality sleep, even before an important event.

Cortisol rises to wake Alex up in the morning, but as he reads the bad news on his phone he experiences a huge cortisol spike that manifests as tension in his shoulders and contraction in his stomach. He also experiences testosterone (confidence and risk tolerance) and dopamine (reward and goal orientation) levels dropping. He has been thwarted by circumstances and this manifests as a drop in motivation.

But then, recognising the signs, he uses posture to reboot testosterone levels, and shares the problem with his partner, boosting oxytocin (social bonding and trust). Oxytocin and testosterone both counteract high cortisol; he feels more balanced again.

Walking with expansive posture and stride further raises serotonin (happiness, status, self-esteem) and testosterone levels. Dopamine is released when we look at changing vistas, and this is associated with creative thinking. As he steps onto the train, the solution comes in a flash. Alex works on his breathing pattern on the train, balancing adrenalin (rising to the challenge) and acetylcholine (keeping a cool head) while boosting DHEA (increasing vitality/endurance).

As Alex walks into the office, he smiles at his team, which releases serotonin and oxytocin in himself and in the team members. He walks with expansion, pace, purpose, ease and confidence, which raises his and his team’s testosterone and serotonin levels. As he shares his idea and asks for theirs, his voice is level and resonant, and he is purposely de-escalating his and their threat response, helping to keep their cortisol and adrenalin at optimal levels, preparing them to rise to the challenge and be productive and astute.

Alex knows exactly what he is doing. It is his knowledge of how the key chemicals impact his and others’ behaviour that gives him the ability to achieve his own personal ‘flow’ state – influencing his internal cocktail. He is choosing behaviour that supports the combinations he needs.

We can instruct the body to achieve the balance we want by knowing more about our physiology, by practically creating new habits and by enacting the behaviour that shifts the levels of specific chemicals up or down.

Have you ever walked into an office and felt an air of tension, where people are charged with impatience, pushing or driving from a position of uncertainty, or where projects seem to regularly encounter problems and teams are often fire-fighting? Have you ever walked into a family environment where children and adults are self-assured, where creative ideas flow freely and people are able to question, discuss and collaborate without fear of conflict? Have you ever worked in a team and felt happy, making progress quickly in a dynamic, trusting and highly productive environment? Sports psychologists and athletes call this latter state ‘the zone’; dancers (and psychologist Csikszentmihalyi) call this state ‘flow’: the ability to be fully engaged and effortlessly performing at peak.

While adrenalin gets us going and acetylcholine enables us to recover, it is the relative levels of cortisol and DHEA that dictate how we get going and how we recover and whether we are in a state of flow. Too much cortisol drags down levels of the four ‘feel-good’ chemicals – dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and testosterone – whereas DHEA boosts them.

If you doubt yourself, worry, feel anxious, frustrated or overwhelmed, or often wake up on a Monday feeling low, yearning for more sleep and wishing it was Friday, then cortisol is running too high. If you are enthusiastic, motivated and passionate as you get going into your day and are content and receptive when you relax and recover, then DHEA levels are high and you are in great shape to take on new challenges. Physical Intelligence will be an important part of your own personal transformation to enable you to spend more time in the high DHEA state that will come by applying and habit stacking the Physical Intelli...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Introducing Physical Intelligence
• 1. The Winning Cocktail
• Part 1: Strength
• Part 2: Flexibility
• Part 3: Resilience
• Part 4: Endurance
• Acknowledgements
• About Claire Dale and Patricia Peyton
• Research and Resources
• List of Exercises
• Index
• Welcome to Physical Inteligence
• Copyright