Why the Body Leads

The Case for a Physiology-Informed Approach to Mind, Brain and Performance

We often understand stress through thoughts, emotions and behaviour. We ask what someone is thinking, how they are interpreting a situation and what they might do differently. These questions can leave out something important: the body is already participating in the response.

Physiology leads in one particular sense: timing. Many of the processes that prepare us to respond happen automatically, before conscious interpretation is available. Breathing, circulation, muscle readiness, energy use and attention can begin to change before we have put what is happening into words.

This does not mean the body determines what happens next. The brain uses bodily information alongside context, prediction and prior learning. Our conscious interpretations and choices can then influence whether a response continues, changes or begins to settle. Stress involves communication in both directions.

If a response has become familiar and inflexible, understanding that communication gives us more to work with. We can pay attention to physiological state as well as the meanings and behaviours that follow, rather than assuming that changing our thoughts alone will always change the pattern.

What embodied cognition adds to the picture

Embodied cognition is a broad field of research and theory concerned with how thinking emerges through our relationship with our bodies and the world around us. Its central insight is that bodily processes do more than reflect thoughts or emotions after they have occurred. They help shape what we notice, how we experience a situation and which responses become available.

Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch made an influential case for this view in The Embodied Mind. Later work has explored its implications for perception, emotion, movement and decision-making. Researchers differ on how far the argument should be taken, but we do not need to settle every theoretical question to recognise its practical importance: the condition of the body can influence the conditions under which we think.

Antonio Damasio’s work on emotion and decision-making offers one example. His somatic marker hypothesis proposes that bodily and emotional signals help guide decisions, particularly when situations are complex or uncertain. Studies of people with damage to brain regions involved in integrating these signals found difficulties with real-life decision-making even when some reasoning abilities remained intact. The point is not that the body makes decisions for us. Bodily information contributes to the process through which we reach them.

Philosopher Mark Johnson extends the argument to meaning itself. Our understanding of ideas such as balance, pressure, direction and limits draws in part on what it is like to move and act in a body. His work invites us to think of meaning as something shaped through lived experience, rather than produced by thought in isolation.

Neuroscience also shows close connections between systems involved in bodily action and wider brain functions. In a 2023 Nature paper, Gordon and colleagues identified regions within the motor cortex that connect with a broader network involved in action and bodily regulation. The finding does not tell us that movement is a treatment for every cognitive difficulty. It does provide a striking example of why movement, bodily state and brain function are difficult to separate into neat compartments.

Predictive processing offers another useful perspective. The brain doesn’t wait passively for information and then decide what it means. It continually uses past experience and incoming signals, including signals from the body, to anticipate what may happen and prepare a response. Our physical condition can therefore influence what draws our attention and how a situation appears to us, sometimes before we have consciously thought it through.

Taken together, these ideas challenge a simple picture in which the mind decides and the body merely follows. They point towards an ongoing relationship between bodily condition, brain activity, experience and action.

What this means for stress, recovery and performance

The practical point is that bodily state can influence attention, emotion and interpretation before we have consciously made sense of what is happening. This helps explain why insight alone may not always change a familiar stress response, particularly when demand is sustained and recovery is falling behind.

It also works in the other direction. The meanings we give to events, the choices we make and the conditions in which we live and work can influence whether activation continues or begins to settle. Physiology and psychology are in continuous conversation.

A physiology-informed approach therefore starts by noticing the whole pattern: what demands are present, how the body and brain are responding, what we are making of the experience, and whether there is enough opportunity to regulate and recover. From there, we can choose changes that fit the person and their circumstances rather than assuming one route will work for everyone.

The body is an active participant in how we think, feel and respond. Understanding that gives us more ways to support flexibility under pressure and recovery afterwards.

References

Clark, A. (2016). Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind. Oxford University Press.

Damasio, A. (1994). Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. Putnam.

Gordon, E.M., Chauvin, R.J., Van, A.N., et al. (2023). A somato-cognitive action network alternates with effector regions in motor cortex. Nature, 617, 351–359.

Johnson, M. (2017). Embodied Mind, Meaning, and Reason: How Our Bodies Give Rise to Understanding. University of Chicago Press.

Varela, F.J., Thompson, E. & Rosch, E. (1991). The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. MIT Press.

Hi, I’m Nicola Turner, MSc. I bring 17 years of psychological practice, 10 years in HR, an MSc in CBT and specialist training in physiological recovery, nervous system regulation and body-based approaches.

My approach to nervous system training brings together an understanding of how body, mind, brain and environment interact under stress, and how you can work with those patterns to navigate life’s pressures with greater ease.

I work with individuals carrying ongoing responsibilities at work and at home who want to feel less caught up in stress, less exhausted and more able to switch off. If you’d like to explore how this approach could support you personally, see how I work with individuals.

I also work with organisations to deliver workplace talks and training for managers, HR professionals and coaching teams who want to understand how stress affects people at work and what can help.