In the previous article, The Intelligence of Connection: Staying With What Is Felt Before It Is Defined, I described Somatic Intelligence as a form of knowing that operates beneath cognition. A capacity of the body to register, organise, and respond to reality before meaning, narrative, or explanation appear.
This article grounds that concept in lived experience.
Recently, I joined an Ancient Sound Healing session. I did not approach it as a treatment or a solution, and I was not seeking a particular outcome. My intention was precise but minimal: to remain open to whatever emerged. At the same time in my life, I had been participating in Cacao Manifestation Ceremonies — not to manifest specific goals, but to practice openness itself. These contexts shared a common feature: they reduced cognitive dominance and invited the body to take the lead.
What followed was not new. In fact, it was deeply familiar — not intellectually, but somatically.
PLEASE NOTE: This article is not part of my research with over 100 CEOs on Decision-Making, Daily Execution, and Recovery & Rest. It stands outside that body of work. What you will read here is a personal exploration — a subjective reflection shaped by my own experiences, patterns, assumptions, and interpretations. It is not intended to represent universal truth, clinical accuracy, or objective reality. The ideas expressed reflect my current understanding. As my experience evolves, my perspective may shift, and I may change, rewrite, or replace any part of this article — or the entire piece — at any time. If you disagree with anything shared here, I genuinely welcome your thoughts and perspectives in the comments below. Dialogue is part of the value.
Willingness Without Control
In both experiences described below, there was conscious willingness, but no attempt to direct what would follow.
Seven years ago, I had no understanding of healing, trauma, or somatic processes. I did not know that the body could release anything on its own. I only knew that I could no longer live as I had been living. I was exhausted, disconnected, and physically unwell. I followed whatever made life marginally more bearable, without knowing why it helped.
The recent experience was more intentional. I chose environments that invited surrender — sound, rhythm, music, cacao — but again without expectations. I did not seek a breakthrough or a release. I was practising availability.
In both cases, the mind made one decision and then stepped aside.
The First Experience: When the Body Took Over
Seven years ago, I woke at four in the morning, as I did every day. From the moment I opened my eyes, it was obvious that something was off. My body felt unnaturally heavy, as if gravity had intensified overnight. Breathing was shallow and strained, and even sitting up required an effort that felt disproportionate and alarming.
I assumed I was unwell. I moved through part of my usual routine, but everything felt slowed and resistant. Each action required deliberate effort, as though I were moving through a dense, unseen medium. Before long, it became clear that continuing the day was not possible, and I left work.
Walking toward my car, there was a sudden internal shift. Without deliberation or reasoning, I felt a strong pull to walk instead, toward a nearby park. It was not an idea or a preference. It registered as a directive, and I followed it without question.
The walk itself was physically taxing. My legs felt burdened, as if weight were being dragged behind me with every step. When I reached the park, I lay down beneath a large tree immediately, without considering alternatives. At some point, consciousness gave way to a deep, dreamless sleep.
I woke abruptly into a powerful physical state. There was a strong downward pressure, as if the ground were holding me with intent. My arms and feet pressed firmly into the earth, while the centre of my torso lifted slightly, creating a pronounced internal tension — an arch sustained without effort. Voluntary movement was no longer available, not because it was restricted, but because it was no longer required.
What followed was a precise, contained sequence of movement. The body shifted from one side, passed deliberately through the centre, and moved to the other side, repeating this pattern with steady insistence. The range was narrow, the rhythm consistent, the force unmistakable. It did not feel reactive or chaotic. It felt organised, as though alignment were being established through repetition. Throughout the process, there was no fear and no distress. What was present instead was a deep, unfamiliar calm — the clear sense that something essential, long unresolved, was finally being addressed.
Another sensation emerged, distinctly physical and impossible to mistake. It felt like a swarm of bees entering through one hand — thousands of tiny wings vibrating at once, creating a dense internal hum. The sensation travelled through my chest, moved down through my abdomen, into my legs, and exited through my feet, following a coherent internal path.
After a brief pause, the sensation returned through the opposite hand, tracing the same route before leaving again. As this was happening, perception sharpened dramatically. I could hear the wind moving through the leaves above me with extraordinary clarity. Every rustle, every subtle shift in the branches felt immediate and precise, as though the boundary between my body and the environment had softened.
Crying followed — not quietly, and not with restraint. It arose from deep within, accompanied by waves of shaking that moved through me without interruption. It felt less like emotion being expressed and more like pressure being released. The crying continued until it ended on its own.
When I eventually stood up, more than four hours had passed. Physically, I was exhausted. Internally, I was different. There was a clear absence — as though something heavy, something that had been part of my internal structure for decades, was no longer there. I did not know what had happened. I only knew that whatever had left had taken pain with it, and that pain never returned.
In the days that followed, I felt depleted yet unexpectedly light. There was space where tension had once lived. Breathing felt unfamiliar, as though I were learning it again in a body with more room. Understanding came later. At the time, there was no interpretation, no framework, no language.
Only the experience.
Years Later: The Same Intelligence, Different Context
In the years that followed my experience in the park, my relationship with my body underwent a fundamental change. I developed structured practices that supported regulation and integration. Somatic work became familiar rather than foreign. Release was no longer a rare event, but something that occurred gradually and predictably over time. There was a growing sense of cooperation — less resistance, more dialogue.
Yet despite this steady progress, nothing ever approached the intensity or completeness of that first experience. It remained singular in both depth and effect.
Until the sound healing session.
As the session began, my state of awareness started to fluctuate. At times, consciousness dropped abruptly into something resembling very deep sleep — not a gentle drifting, but a sudden absence, as if awareness itself had been momentarily switched off. Then, without effort, I would return to full presence, alert and oriented. This cycle repeated many times, each transition shaped by shifts in sound, tone, and frequency.
In the moments just before awareness returned, internal material appeared. These were not memories or thoughts in the usual sense. They arrived as fragmented images and impressions — unfamiliar, disjointed, and strangely impersonal. Each time I surfaced, there was a brief recognition that something had passed through me, followed by the clear sense that it had not belonged to my ordinary mental landscape.
As the session progressed, this pattern repeated. Each time a powerful, sustained sound emerged, the same internal shift followed.
Fragments of thought and internal imagery would appear briefly, unfamiliar and unanchored. Then the sound would cut through them. It did not engage or resolve them; it simply broke them apart. Whatever had been present seemed to collapse into nothing, as if reduced to dust and dispersed.
When the sound softened, there was nothing left to retrieve. No image. No thought. No residue. I remember noticing that something had been there, and then noticing that it was gone — without being able to recall what it had been.
At the same time, a strong physical sensation appeared, as though something closely attached to me was being pulled away. It felt like a layer I had been wearing for a long time — not consciously chosen, but familiar enough to feel part of me.
The separation was not clean. There was resistance, as if this layer had been glued on over the years of use. As it was forced away, parts of it still clung, stretching before finally releasing. The experience was entirely physical, not symbolic or emotional. When it was gone, there was no sense of loss — only relief, as though a constraint I had stopped noticing had finally been removed.
Recognition Without Learning
At the end of the session, the facilitator invited us to turn onto our sides and draw our knees toward our chests, describing this as the position we occupy in the womb.
The moment I moved into that posture, the response was immediate. The body recognised it before thought could intervene.
This was the same position my body had moved into spontaneously seven years earlier, beneath the tree in the park, just before the most intense phase of that earlier release began. At that time, I had no understanding of trauma physiology, somatic patterning, or developmental responses. I had no conceptual framework that could have informed that movement.
There is no plausible explanation for how I could have known its significance.
And yet, my body had chosen it then, and recognised it again now.
Seven years apart. Entirely different circumstances. Different levels of awareness, knowledge, and intention.
The same sequence.
What Somatic Intelligence Actually Looks Like
These experiences are not presented as spiritual phenomena, nor as proof of any belief system. They demonstrate something more fundamental: the body’s capacity to recognise, organise, and resolve internal states without conscious instruction.
Science can describe aspects of this process. But description is not the same as understanding. Somatic Intelligence is not an idea to be adopted. It is a capacity to be noticed.
For high-performing individuals, this matters. Many operate almost entirely through cognition — analysis, control, optimisation. Over time, this narrows access to other forms of intelligence that are equally real and often more precise.
Somatic Intelligence does not compete with rational thought. It precedes it. When allowed, it informs decision-making, execution, recovery, and relationships in ways that thinking alone cannot.
Tomasz Drybala – Author, Researcher, Coach, and Director of the Neuro-Based Leadership Centre
My work is grounded in lived experience, research, and ongoing studies with more than 100 CEOs and senior executives — examining how dopamine–cortisol dynamics influence decision-making, execution, and recovery under pressure.
My academic development now includes targeted programs at Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, and the University of California, Berkeley. I am pursuing a Master’s and — fingers crossed — a PhD in Applied Neuroscience, specialising in decision-making.
I’m also the author of three forthcoming books exploring the neurochemistry of leadership, including Breaking Patterns (September 2026), Neuroscience of CEO Decision-Making (January 2027), and Choosing the Right People (March 2027).