It took me years to fully grasp that resilience is something that lives inside the body, not just the mind. I used to think resilience was about mental strength alone–pushing through difficult moments with sheer willpower. People in my life with mental fortitude were my heroes, and I watched them push through obstacles, ignoring the breakage that might happen along the way.
Understanding resilience beyond the mind
But the personal toll of this collateral damage was simply too great for me to bear. I would collapse or burn out–then create an unhelpful story about how I wasn’t strong or smart enough to find solutions to the many hurdles in front of me.
I’ve been working through the shame of being hypersensitive all my life. But I’ve come to realize it can be powerful force. When my sensitivity is fortified with physical strength, I become a person with more integrity and adaptability. Someone who doesn’t collapse as easily under external stressors, whether perceived or real. Through my own journey of stress, recovery and healing, I realized resilience needs a strong, supple and sensitive body to be able to spring back from unwanted pressure.
Learning from the body's responses
My body taught me this lesson in ways I hadn’t expected. Every time I felt anxious or overwhelmed, my heart raced, my muscles tensed up and I went into fight-or-flight mode. Then my mind would rationalize why my preferred cocktail of reactions–retreat or inaction–were legitimate. This was my nervous system responding not only to stress but to anything that felt out of character for me–a survival mechanism hardwired into my body to keep me safe, whole and protected.
I noticed this pattern even when things were steady and I knew it was time to seek a challenge. It wasn’t until I learned how to automate the mechanism to calm myself, how to regulate my breath, how to rely on my center rather than my identity, that I noticed my body recovering to a “ready state.”
Resilience isn’t struggling for long periods of time and trying to avoid an eventual collapse. I began to see that my resilience depended on how I could swiftly oscillate between these states–stress and release–with ease.
Pushing yourself beyond your limits might not look that dramatic. You could work a 70-hour work week, then binge Netflix on Sunday with Cheetos and Chardonnay. It sounds pretty great, but do a few weeks–or months–of this cycle and your system is toast.
Even as I progressed towards a better understanding of how to navigate this internal experience, I found that when I was in environments where “pushing” was part of the culture–sweat equity or the startup hustle and grind–I’d overcompensate and find myself with my feet alternating between the gas and the brakes. That’s when I became aware of my relationship to the cocktail of hormones that cause burnout.
When I was under pressure for too long, my body flooded with cortisol and adrenaline, leaving me feeling exhausted. But resilience isn’t about avoiding stress–it’s about dosing it in the right way to increase my capacity, managing these natural responses over time and letting my body return to baseline more quickly. I learned through breathing and movement practices that variability in my stress levels was key. Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is a key indicator of how well the body manages stress. Moving my body not only released the excess tension I was holding onto; it also helped me feel more grounded and aware.
I improved my ability to self-regulate by intentionally incorporating short bursts of intensity into my day, while spending the rest of the time predominantly in a parasympathetic state (also known as "rest and digest").
And it didn't stop there. My immune system, my emotions and even my ability to fix my gaze or steady my breath when chaos ensued, all served as indicators of my capacity to bounce back. I discovered that resilience wasn't just about enduring—it was about adapting in the moment both physically and mentally.
When my capacity is overloaded, self-regulating is very hard to do. So my practice needs to be about increasing my capacity, emptying my mind and releasing tension to get back to my baseline. This cannot be done through willpower alone. What enables me to adapt to momentary stressors is the practice of building my capacity.
In the past, when I had weeks where it felt impossible to catch up, all it took was a misunderstanding or sideline comment to throw me off and send me into fight-or-flight mode. Even if I repeatedly told myself I was “fine,” I’d inevitably carry this mental load for a day or two, compounding the stress.
Building resilience through physical practices
With the right combination of physical strength training, dynamic flexibility, mindfulness and breathwork practices, I was able to neutralize those old triggers. I’d still feel the comment land, but I could create more of a gap between the stimulus and my response. This allowed me to let it float off into space rather than carry it as a burden. Then, I acknowledged the tension in my system that needed to be released after pushing myself to my limit.
The hypersensitivity I had been so ashamed of became an asset as I realized the power of recognizing and cultivating coherence within my system.
Coherence is a state when my brain, heart and gut are not at odds with each other but working in tandem to produce an ecosystem of calm. An example of this is noticing your heart racing due to a deadline and feeling in your gut that you’re not prioritizing the right thing. But your mind is telling you that you need to push through to tick the task off your list.
By paying more attention to my body's signals, I learned to spot signs of stress early. This helped me navigate life's challenges more smoothly. This understanding rewired how I approached adversity, teaching me that resilience is something you embody. Resilience can grow through constant care and nurturing the connection between body and mind. You achieve results through ongoing practice and application. Here is a simple practice you can start today:
- Safely lift heavy weights three times a week while taking a somatic snapshot of what positive stress feels like in the body.
- Actively release the tension after each session with mindful stretching and breathing. Take another somatic snapshot and notice what positive release feels like.
A "somatic snapshot" involves practicing your interoceptive fluency by sensing your internal state as you widen the gap between tension and release. Then, when a non-physical stressor arises, you recall that sensation.
Aligning mind, body and gut
Resilience is truly a whole-body experience. By listening to what my body was telling me, I found a deeper, more sustainable strength than I ever thought possible. In elementary school, we learn the five senses, but not the many other internal senses (known as interoception). From feeling temperature to pressure to depth and spaces, there’s a lot more going on inside us besides the rumble that says “time for food!” Training helps us become more aware of these internal indicators, and we can learn to use these senses to better self-regulate in moments of stress. I’m in no way a master of this; I’m always in practice and I try to stay kind to myself when I fall off the wagon after thinking I had enough fuel in the tank.
Just like the tinkering you do in entrepreneurship when you receive external feedback, the signals within our bodies also indicate when your approach needs to change. Now my whole body knows the drill and will unapologetically remind me when I'm not listening.