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Book: Whole Body Intelligence
Author: Steve Sisgold
Website: http://wholebodyintelligence.com/

Steve Sisgold is an author, speaker, trainer and executive coach who has appeared on major radio and TV shows including PBS and Oprah, as well as writing for The Huffington Post, Mindbodygreen, and Psychology Today. With an M.A. in marketing, a B.S. in business and a certification in body-centered psychotherapy, Steve is also the breakthrough coach to many best-selling self-help authors, Grammy and Oscar winners, CEO’s, a Major League baseball President, as well as Wellness and Business leaders. His books, Whole Body Intelligence and What’s Your Body Telling You? launched at number 7 on the San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller List and # 1 on Amazon.com in several categories.

Steve’s latest book Whole Body Intelligence, is subtitled: “Get Out Of Your Head And Into Your Body To Achieve Greater Wisdom, Confidence, and Success.” Part of the focus is on overcoming unconscious limiting, self-sabotaging beliefs, which we’ve often been programmed with since childhood. Steve calls these “viral beliefs,” and by tuning into the innate wisdom of our body, we can begin to create new beliefs or “vital beliefs.” We are all familiar with IQ, or Intelligence Quotient, but we also have an EQ (Emotional Quotient), and a BQ (Body Quotient), which we can tune into to provide feedback about our life. One of the foundational tenets of the Whole Body Approach according to Steve is that: “Every moment is a choice point; choose body first.” In this book, the reader learns how to shift their attention from outer experiences and the thoughts they evoke to the physical response in the body.

One of the concepts of the Body First approach is based on the idea that your body readily alerts you when you fall into negative mental traps, and conditioned patterns such as assumptions, comparisons, and blame. Here you learn how to catch them and instinctively shift your focus, and expand your awareness for clarity. You become self-aware and alert to subtle body sensations – a tightness in your jaw when not speaking up, or a twisting feeling in your gut that says “No!” when you are about to make the wrong decision. It is also about becoming aware of non-verbal messages you communicate to others and feeling and noticing when your words and body language are incongruent so you can self-correct for better results and more authentic communication.

In Chapter 3, entitled “How Do You Move Through Life?” Steve provides a highly personal exploration of how and why you move the way you do, what your movements communicate to others, and how those subconscious patterns may undermine your greatest desires. An important topic covered in Chapter 5 is chronic stress, including the information overload brought about by the overuse of technology. While the book delves into a number of conceptual topics, it also, most importantly, offers practical advice and techniques to change the quality of one’s life. One of these methods introduced in Chapter 6 is what Steve calls The Rebooting Technique, which provides seven steps to shift stress instantly and redirect it before it steals your life force.

A topic I found of particular interest in Chapter 7 is how our self-sabotaging thoughts can, over time, form synaptic connections in our brain and become hard wired as part of our identity. This is based on neurological and physiological research that shows us how “issues live in your tissues,” and how limiting beliefs and past traumas can lie dormant, not only in the mind but also in the body, much like physical viruses. Over the next few chapters, we learn specific ways of dealing with this, including a WBI 30-Day Lifestyle Plan in which all the practices and insights from the book converge to retrain the subconscious mind to create lasting change.

Whole Body Intelligence provides an interesting contrast to other approaches that deal with these kinds of issues from a purely cognitive perspective. In the short time since reading this material and working with some of the techniques, I’ve definitely felt an increased awareness of the signals and messages my body is sending in various situations and have learned some valuable techniques for dealing with self-limiting beliefs. I appreciate that the book not only addresses a number of vital issues, but also offers down to earth practical ways of dealing with them. Steve Sisgold is a visionary thinker and an insightful writer, who has helped many people to lead happier and more productive lives, and I’m sure that his latest book Whole Body Intelligence will continue his evolutionary work.

Click here to read a sample and/or purchase the book on Amazon.