ORLD 4091: Somatic Leadership Development
Instructor: Dr. Carmela Bennett
Total Credit Hours: 3
This course presents a somatic, or whole body, approach to professional and personal leadership development. Somatics is a methodology and change theory that views the individual as an integrated mind, body, and spirit and utilizes the whole body, not just the mind, as an essential place of intelligence, learning, and change. Working with our interdependent system of thoughts, emotions, and neuromuscular physiology, somatics give us “a way in” to quickly and directly develop deep insight into our embodied and largely unconscious patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting that result in our actions, conversations, decisions, relationships, and the leader we show ourselves to be. Utilizing somatic processes enables leaders to consciously and mindfully move from awareness to alternative actions, counterbalancing the natural tendency to choose habits that are familiar and comfortable but not always effective in our personal and professional leadership practices.
Throughout this experiential course, students will participate in an interactive, creative learning experience designed to build whole-body awareness, reconnect with their leadership purpose, gain a repertoire of practices that can enhance their potential to develop a more powerful leadership presence, maintain balance in chaos and conflict, and build more effective relationships and teams in a diversity of contexts. Connections will be made to the ways somatics is supported by neuroscience, Western and Eastern philosophies, spirituality, psychology, adult learning, leadership, and organizational development theories. Students will be exposed to the way these practices are currently being utilized for leadership development and as a means of precipitating transformative change in individuals, corporations, and other organizations.
Instructor: Dr. Carmela Bennett
Total Credit Hours: 3
This course presents a somatic, or whole body, approach to professional and personal leadership development. Somatics is a methodology and change theory that views the individual as an integrated mind, body, and spirit and utilizes the whole body, not just the mind, as an essential place of intelligence, learning, and change. Working with our interdependent system of thoughts, emotions, and neuromuscular physiology, somatics give us “a way in” to quickly and directly develop deep insight into our embodied and largely unconscious patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting that result in our actions, conversations, decisions, relationships, and the leader we show ourselves to be. Utilizing somatic processes enables leaders to consciously and mindfully move from awareness to alternative actions, counterbalancing the natural tendency to choose habits that are familiar and comfortable but not always effective in our personal and professional leadership practices.
Throughout this experiential course, students will participate in an interactive, creative learning experience designed to build whole-body awareness, reconnect with their leadership purpose, gain a repertoire of practices that can enhance their potential to develop a more powerful leadership presence, maintain balance in chaos and conflict, and build more effective relationships and teams in a diversity of contexts. Connections will be made to the ways somatics is supported by neuroscience, Western and Eastern philosophies, spirituality, psychology, adult learning, leadership, and organizational development theories. Students will be exposed to the way these practices are currently being utilized for leadership development and as a means of precipitating transformative change in individuals, corporations, and other organizations.