In an age obsessed with systems, models, and the measurable, it takes courage to dwell in the spaces where things are not so easily named. Where the body knows more than the mind admits. Where the heart is not a metaphor, but an organ of perception.

Reading The Heart Beyond Mechanics, I felt a deep recognition. Not just of the physiological mystery of the heart, but of something more intimate: the way we treat ourselves and one another as though we are puzzles to be solved rather than mysteries to be encountered.

In my work with leaders and designers, I often notice the same pattern. We reach for frameworks to find some clarity. We long to master the mess. And yet the real transformation doesn’t happen through mastery. It happens through contact.

And we make contact with our heart.

The heart—literal or symbolic—is not just the object of inquiry, but the source of it. I wonder where it’s where true curiosity lives.

We live in a time where the mechanistic and materialistic worldview still shapes much of how we think. We talk about “human capital” and “resources” and “performance metrics” as if people are engines to be tuned. Even our science is biased toward what can be sensed and measured. But we are not machines. And there are things we can’t sense or measure yet still experience. We are living, breathing, feeling systems in constant flux.

To lead in such a world—responsibly, regeneratively, and relationally—requires a different kind of knowing. One that is not separate from the body. One that understands that ambiguity is not a problem to solve but a terrain to traverse.

The article speaks of the heart as more than a pump. In the same way, I see leadership as more than a function. It is a relationship.

What if we began to see leadership not as a mechanical function but as a physiological one? A way of sensing, regulating and responding in a way that brings coherence to a field.

In somatic therapy, we often speak of coherence—not just in terms of nervous system regulation, but as a kind of deep inner harmony. A felt sense of alignment between what we know, what we feel, and what we do. The heart, it turns out, plays a central role in this. Literally. It entrains the brain. It synchronises the breath.

So perhaps the invitation for us, as leaders, practitioners, and humans, is not to become better at managing complexity—but to become more attuned to it. To feel into it. To recognise that the intelligence we seek is not out there in the systems diagrams or strategy decks, but in here—beneath the ribs, behind the breastbone, pulsing its quiet rhythms beneath all our cleverness.

We cannot lead what we are disconnected from. And we cannot connect unless we slow down enough to feel.

Who is Melis Senova?

I am a coach and advisor to design leaders, C-level executives and leaders in government. My work in This Human is dedicated to the next generation of designers and leaders.

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