Are you leading with your head?

In coaching the participants it became clear they were not using their full potential to assess the situations, gather necessary data, develop an action plan, and use the resources available to them to accomplish their goal.  

Mark Hyman, MD writes in his article Functional Wellness, “Your gut literally contains its own nervous system.  In fact, the "brain" in your gut contains more neurotransmitters than the brain in your head. The intestinal nervous system is wired back to your brain, and messages travel between the two." Dr. Hyman makes an excellent case for what we observe when working with people and horses:  you need to use your whole body and keep the two connected, and to remember that the soul is part of the whole package that makes us human. He also states, “When those messages are altered for any reason in any direction - from the brain to the gut or the gut to the brain - your health will suffer.”  

Leading and making decisions with only your mind or only your emotions does not provide enough accurate information to accomplish your goals or to make sound decisions. We have so much more available to us if we just take the time to be "in the moment", listen, and notice what is going on inside of us and to discern the information before taking action.  Using your whole being is not something new, but is something we need to remember and practice in order to make it part of our normal decision making process.

E. Stanley Jones wrote these insightful words back in 1922, "This age knows almost everything about life except how to live it."  We have dissected life and lost the beauty in the process.  "We have handed the body over to the doctor, the mind to the psychiatrist, and the soul to the minister, treating these three parts as separate entities. They are not separate. Life is a whole. You cannot affect one part without affecting all three." (Abundant Living)

How much richer and more rewarding would life be if we lived as "whole" humans rather than separating and compartmentalizing each part of our body? What decisions would be different if you listened to your mind, body, and emotions and connected them as one?