Dear reader,
Have you ever been told to “use your head”? Or perhaps heard someone say “great minds think alike”?
Thinking – the activity that generates ideas and interconnections – has come to be marketed as an activity for the head. And the cognitive process is so valorised that it is the basis of existence itself, at least for some.
Over ten years of living, amid teaching, coaching, and lawyering, my intuition has been otherwise.
Creativity, rigour and quality are born of full-bodied thinking. The head is necessary but not sufficient by itself.
In the Thinking from the Body newsletter, I explore and articulate this intuition. Every other Friday, I’ll send over:
🌤️ A personal reflection on a strategy or tactic for thinking from the body
🧩 A related micro-curation, of an essay, video, quote, or podcast
❓A prompt to invite your reflections
If you’d like to join me and others who are intrigued by this idea, or wish to support my work in some way, please join the mailing list!
Thinking from the body is great, but thinking with you — from our bodies — is better.
Thank you for stopping by to read. 💌
If you’ve subscribed to Diffuse Attention for my essays, you won’t automatically receive notifications of the Thinking from the Body newsletter. You will continue to get only what you signed up for — unless of course you change your settings.❣️
🌤️ Chill : control : : 1 : 1, my backstory
“What was the project on?” “How did you go about it?” “What was your contribution to it?” “Did you present the findings yourself?” “What did you learn from that experience?”
A torrent of questions came at me from the committee of eight I was sitting in front of. They were considering my scholarship application to attend a masters program abroad.
As the questions rained on, my mind dissolved into a void. In its place, was a muddy puddle of confusion and embarrassment.
That was the day I began to wonder if I was wired wrong in some way.
I’d reviewed my materials and practised interview strategies. Yet, when it was showtime, my mind drew a blank. My body froze.
Whether it was FaceTime with family or virtual reunions with my girlfriends, meetings with colleagues or presentations to professors, I always felt put on the spot.
My heart would race in my mouth. My tongue would go bitter. From the moment I knew I'd have to speak next, it was like I didn’t hear or see anything going on around me. My body would burn up, and I’d forget everything I’d wanted to say.
The harder I tried and worked and practised, the more spectacularly I failed to get a hold on my body.
It was a vicious and merciless cycle. Zero chill, zero control.
It took a combination of movement, therapy and writing. The path to healing was non-linear.
Over hundreds of runs and yoga sessions, my body became the site of a revolution of feeling and sensing. One I can’t fully explain in my thinking or writing.
I learned that having a body didn’t guarantee living in one’s body.
I was play-acting being one with my body by excelling at living in my head.
I went from storing tension in my back and hips, to feeling supported by my back and hips. From slouching my shoulders and avoiding eye-contact, to standing tall, shoulders dropped, back straight, and chest high. From periodic breakouts on my face and wars in my stomach to immaculate skin and predictable digestion.
Wandering the landscapes of my inner-world through my body, I discovered a rainbow of sensory experiences I had never felt before. The ache in my chest when I hugged my toddler nephew goodbye. The light in my chest after a weekend in the wilderness. The sense of diffuse tingly joy when I was writing or creating.
The world itself began to feel different as I experienced it in my body.
Staying in my body showed me to think from my body.
Interactions in the non-verbal were rich with meaning.
I observed the emotion in every sigh, pause, or flinch. I saw fears, hesitations, and evasions that I did not notice when fixating on things consciously done.
I sensed the energy in what was unsaid. There were vibes I did not pick up on while focussing on things explicitly said.
Whether in sales, or meetings, or parenting crises or difficult conversations, I began to read the room non-verbally. On its own terms.
For its own sake.
Without projecting my baggage.
Outside the stories in my head.
On most days, I feel like I’ve found the ultimate life hack.
Full-bodied thinking is transformative. Of collaboration, relationships, and outcomes.
I have a working hypothesis I want to leave you with.
Cognitive thinking lacks the lenses to contemplate the wholeness of a room.
Full-bodied thinking holds the fullness needed to see the wholeness of human experience.
Full-bodied thinking is responsible for the synergy of a live jam. The aliveness of unrehearsed Flamenco. The insights that surprise you in a slow conversation with a friend.
Full-bodied thinking is the flip-switch for emergence — the synergistic qualities that a complex system unlocks that its parts could not on their own.
Could thinking from our bodies enable emergence in our ecosystems?
In the Thinking from the Body newsletter, I’ll be writing my way through this intuition. And I’ll be writing from my body.
🧩 Meet Kelly & Conni
Episode 7 of Wild on Purpose, a podcast by
in which she interviews Conni Biesalski, author, creator, surfer, the founder of Breathwork Alchemy.Conni dives into what it felt like discovering that she had been living in her head (at 16:25) - and the difference between “living in our bodies but not being embodied” (at 17:00).
I was particularly struck by the way in which Conni responds to Kelly’s opening question “how are you?”
🧩 Read Mafe Razetto’s explainer on embodiment
In her essay on
, lucidly explains staying in our bodies, and what might cause us to dissociate from our bodies. She draws on the ideas of Dr. Hillary McBride, as expressed in conversation with Glennan Doyle on her We Can Do Hard Things podcast.I enjoyed every word of this essay, for all the milestones it made me note in my own re-embodiment journey. The biggest being - connecting with my soul enough to stop looking for ‘answers outside of me.’
Aside from that, I enjoyed this line:
Positive embodiment is not about having positive feelings about our body. It’s simply about being in attunement with it, even if what’s coming up is unpleasant.
It made me wonder if my body-image issues were a sign of disembodiment - considering how I found it so easy to objectify my body and have bad feelings about it.
❓What does an ode-to-joy feel like?
This has been my all-time favourite video on Youtube for over a decade now.
What do you feel when you watch it? What sensations does it evoke in your body? What’s your head saying about it? What’s your body sensing and feeling about it?
Your descriptions are so vivid - "My heart would race in my mouth. My tongue would go bitter. From the moment I knew I'd have to speak next, it was like I didn’t hear or see anything going on around me, while my body would burn up. In this instant feverish panic, I’d forget everything I’d wanted to say."
I now so badly wanted to learn how to think from the body. Can't wait to read what you cook up next!
Malavika, you're really becoming one of the most prolific people I know! Super excited to see how this newsletter evolves. Your writing is so vivid and so clearly rooted in your body and I look forward to learning this skill from you!