Picture a time when someone physically grabbed you. Not necessarily in a threatening way, though these types of grabs happen too. Maybe a friend pulled you back from walking into a busy street or a colleague was trying get your attention as you walked by at a conference.
Do you remember what happened? How your body responded before you had a chance to think? You were probably activated in some habitual way—muscles tense, cortisol released, a little bit of a recoil as you automatically assessed the threat level.
Even if the person who grabbed you did it in a “friendly” way, it demanded your attention, your nervous system shifting into protective mode. You probably weren’t aware of anything else in that moment, and afterwards it might have taken you some time to return to equilibrium.
Daily Grabs
Now imagine being grabbed a hundred times a day, because that’s what happens! Not physically, but mentally and emotionally. Work place conflicts, news cycles, inner critics, societal expectations, uncertainty—there are so many ways we can be grabbed. And the nervous system doesn’t care what the source is, so it will respond in the same way it does to a physical grab.
Let’s say you have an interaction with your boss that feels off. You have the thought that your boss doesn’t like you (which feels really threatening), and your body reacts—you tense up, constrict your breathing, pull away, and try and control your reaction. Which usually creates a negative feedback loop of increasing intensity—nervous system is activated, the physical sensations of discomfort become stronger, and the worry thoughts amp up.
What happens when this negative feedback loop continues for days, weeks, or even months? Where each day at work you are constantly on the lookout for signals of how your boss feels about you, picking apart the smallest details of a comment or obsessively comparing how your boss reacts to others in order to figure out where you stand. In this increased state of vigilance, the smallest thing can knock you over.
If you take this same approach in martial arts, your attacker will easily win. Your reactive state keeps you off balance and up in your head, responding from instinct while trying to “figure out” what to do.
Centering
The antidote to this is centering. In the physical body, center is about two or three fingers below the belly button, and back a bit, closer to the spine. Try moving your attention there now, from your head to your physical center. Bring your breath all the way down, as if you were breathing from this place in your body. Feel what shifts.
You might notice some tension is released in the neck and shoulders. Or you might feel more of your legs. Maybe your peripheral vision widens, or you feel a little more connected to yourself, more present.
Centering doesn’t keep the grabs from happening, but it helps us see them coming. And when we can see them, we have choice in how we respond. We can choose not to engage, we can blend with the energy and move it another direction, we can block and counter attack—from a centered place the options are plenty.
This applies equally in the boardroom as it does on the mat. Centering helps us be more rooted, open, and responsive. And the more familiar we are with center, the easier it is to come back to it when something pulls us away.
Centering keeps us balanced under pressure. Think of a recent meeting you’ve been in, one that was challenging in some way or another. Your awareness was probably concentrated in your upper body from the shoulders on up. You might have noticed some tension, and that your thoughts were focused on the exchange of words, or on crafting your own verbal response. As the meeting progressed, it might have felt more and more adversarial.
We aren’t balanced when we center in the head. Centering from the body reminds us that interactions don’t just happen with words, but between bodies. When we shift attention to our belly center, physical tension is released, breathing deepens, and the nervous system settles. This changes how we speak, listen, and act, leading to new outcomes.
Try It Out
Place your hands, one on top of the other, about three fingers below your belly button. Take three slow breaths, imagining each inhale traveling all the way down to fill the space under your lower hand. As you exhale, let your shoulders drop and soften.
Notice what shifts—perhaps your jaw unclenches, your vision widens, or you simply feel more present in your body.
This same practice works beautifully in meetings. When you feel that familiar “grab”—an unexpected question, pushback on your idea, or tension in the room—take a moment to breathe into your center. You don’t need to close your eyes or make it obvious.
Simply shift your attention from your racing thoughts down to that steady place in your belly.
From there, you might find yourself listening more deeply, speaking with more clarity, or discovering a response you couldn’t access when you were centered in your head.
Keep practicing this during the week, especially in calm moments. The more you experience center, the easier it is to come back to it when something tries to grab you.
