I didn’t go looking for somatic work. I stumbled into it — bruised from a toxic relationship, skeptical, and more than a little arrogant about the primacy of the mind. As a Stanford-trained engineer and serial entrepreneur, my edge was cognition: break problems apart, think creatively, allocate resources.
A retreat that looked “like a yoga camp” wasn’t my plan for leadership growth — I went because my brother said it would be a distraction. What I found instead was a doorway I didn’t know I was missing.
From Skepticism to Evidence in My Own Body
At first, the claims sounded absurd: unexpressed emotions live in the body; the body carries memory; there’s wisdom in the body. My model was simple — the body was just an appendage for the mind’s agenda.
Then the outcomes started stacking up: calmer under pressure, better relationships (even with people who used to trigger me), clearer decisions, conflicts that de-escalated, lack of need to prove myself or be heard, energy that stopped spiking and crashing. How was this possible?
For me, the explanation had to be grounded in science — no “trust the universe and everything will be fine” was going to land. But the truth was undeniable: like antibiotics, somatic practices worked whether or not I believed in them. In my research, I found the science was both validating and practical — decades of studies showing that your nervous system is the foundation for every cognitive, relational, and strategic move you make.
The Science We Stand On
What we teach in ITL isn’t abstract philosophy, spiritual magic, or a leap of faith. It’s grounded in decades of reputable research — distilled into methods leaders can use in real time, under real pressure.
- Trauma and stress lives in the body. Harvard psychiatrist and New York Times bestselling author of The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., has shown that trauma leaves imprints not only in memory but in the body’s wiring: breath, muscle, posture and reflexes.
Regulation unlocks cognition. New York Times bestselling author, pioneer of interpersonal neurobiology, and clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, Daniel J. Siegel, M.D., has shown that integration between body, mind, and emotion restores the brain’s capacity for creativity, foresight, empathy, and moral reasoning. His work, including The Developing Mind and Mindsight, demonstrates how focused awareness can literally rewire neural connections toward health, resilience, and harmony.
- Chronic stress quietly rewires your life — and your leadership. Canadian physician and trauma expert Gabor Maté, M.D., author of When the Body Says No, maps how emotional suppression and self-sacrifice patterns erode health, focus, presence and leadership over time.
- Completion beats suppression. Peter A. Levine, Ph.D. — renowned author, therapist, and holder of PhD’s in Medical and Biological Physics and Psychology — shows that, unlike humans, animals instinctively let go of fear after life-threatening events (imagine a dog shaking after a tense encounter), preventing trauma from taking root. Without this release, fight–flight–freeze responses can stay “stuck,” quietly draining focus, health, and decision-making capacity.
Connection heals performance leaks. Harvard Medical School professor Judith Herman, M.D., author of Trauma and Recovery, shows that safety and trust in relationships, in your environment and in life are prerequisites for operating at full capacity.
You don’t need to adopt a new belief system to benefit from this work — as I found out, you don’t even need to believe in it. Working somatically with the body and mind in unison builds a clarity, resilience, and presence that no “mind-only” coaching or leadership training can match.
What ITL Really Is at Silent Tower
Integrated Transformational Leadership (ITL) turns this discovery into a repeatable path for leaders. It’s not therapy disguised as an offsite. It’s performance and relational mastery built on a nervous-system foundation.
The arc is simple:
- Now — Presence and State Control: Train the ability to notice, name, and shift your state in real time — before, during, and after high-stakes moments.
- Past — Unwinding Stuck Patterns: Complete unfinished survival responses so old tension stops steering today’s behavior.
- Future — Vision with Embodiment: Align strategy with somatic congruence so your body isn’t subtly resisting the direction your mind has declared.
We move between experiential work that touches raw edges, cognitive processing that makes sense of it, and softening the hardened parts that block connection. We create a safe space with clear consent and boundaries, where armor can drop and leaders can step out from behind performance masks.
Core Themes We Train
We work directly with the subconscious patterns that cause hesitation, overthinking, or self-sabotage — and rewire them into clarity and decisive action:
- Spot and shift state templates so you stop replaying old survival scripts in boardrooms and negotiations.
- Re-regulate before high-stakes situations so your best thinking is online when it matters most.
- End chronic stress patterns and restore energy sustainably — without losing ambition or edge.
- Use guided somatic drills to safely complete stored survival responses, freeing attention and energy.
- Collaborate in trust-rich groups where masks drop and efficiency rises.
Outcomes We Consistently See
Participants become noticeably calmer under pressure, catching subtle shifts in their state early enough to choose a measured response rather than falling into old reactions. Their decision-making sharpens — less rumination, more timely choices, higher follow-through. Conflict stops consuming unnecessary energy; repair happens faster, boundaries are clearer, and tensions carry fewer political costs. Energy steadies as the boom–bust cycles fade, replaced by a sustainable rhythm of focus and creative output. And perhaps most tangibly, presence shifts — people feel it before a word is spoken, and the trust that follows changes how everything else unfolds.
If you’ve dismissed somatic work as “weird hippie stuff” I’m with you — I did too. ITL tunes your most fundamental instrument — your nervous system — and hands you a score worth playing: strategy, relationships, and execution in harmony. If you’re curious, let’s talk — not to sell you anything, but to share my journey from skeptic to embodied leader.
