Have you ever noticed that the same conflict keeps playing out in your team, no matter how many times you try to resolve it? Matthew Cooke is a nervous system expert and founder of Body-Based Breakthrough (B3), a somatic coaching programme that teaches leaders to work with their physiology rather than against it.

In this second conversation with Matthew, we go deeper into what is actually happening in our bodies during conflict — and what we can do about it. Matthew breaks down what fight, flight, and freeze really look like inside leadership teams and family enterprises, from the compulsive need to be right in a meeting, to over-intellectualising as a form of avoidance, to someone's brain simply going offline mid-conversation.

We explore the concept of state over story — the idea that shifting the nervous system state before trying to solve a problem is the only way to actually solve the problem — and why 98% of our thoughts today are the same thoughts we had yesterday. Matthew also makes the case for nervous system literacy as a strategic leadership tool, not a soft one.

You will leave this conversation with a practical litmus test for knowing when your prefrontal cortex has gone offline, micro-regulation tools you can use in under a minute, and a script to name dysregulation when it is happening in real time.

Find out more about Sarah and Matthew's Nervous System Summit here: https://www.thorpe-scott.com/nervoussystem

You can connect with Matthew at: https://www.bodybasedbreakthrough.com

You can connect with Sarah on:

• her website: https://www.thorpe-scott.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-thorpe-scott-93a78a12
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thorpe__scott/
• by subscribing to Sarah's Field Notes newsletter: https://sarahthorpescott.myflodesk.com/podcast-join

If you'd like to revisit this conversation, you can check out the transcript: https://www.thorpe-scott.com/matthew-cooke-part-2-transcript

Production support from Rethink Audio & Alice Giuditta.