Restoring Balance: Why Resilience Begins in the Body.
- David Yates
- Jun 11
- 5 min read
How stress shapes physiology and what it takes to return to calm.
Stress is not the enemy, mismanagement is.
We often speak of resilience as a mindset, a way of thinking, adapting, or persevering under pressure, but long before thought, before choice or strategy, the body is already in motion.
Stress is not just something we think, it is something we live.
In the two previous articles, we explored anxiety as a misalignment between prediction and reality. Then we examined how internal narratives, especially under pressure, can distort our perception.
That’s not the whole picture though, as resilience cannot live in the mind alone. Not if the nervous system is flooded and not if the body never has a chance to return to baseline.
This is where recovery begins, not with heroic endurance, but with a return to a best routine, with restoration of balance.
The Physiology of Stress.
The stress response is not pathological or self indulgent, it is protective and is the very basis of the development of all life on the planet.
When the brain detects a threat, whether real or imagined, it activates the sympathetic nervous system.
This is the familiar fight, flight or freeze response.
Heart rate rises, breathing becomes shallow, muscles tighten and blood flow is redirected to areas needed for immediate survival.
In the short term, this response is useful. It primes the body to act.
The problem is not stress itself, the problem is chronic activation without respite, without the space for recovery and renewal.
In environments where the threat is ambiguous, an email that arrives late, a manager’s tone shift, a team dynamic that feels unsafe, the body still reacts.
When there is no resolution, no physical discharge of energy or clear return to safety, the system stays aroused.
That chronic arousal becomes the new normal and it comes with a very personal price. This is called allostatic load and its impact is felt at the physical, psychological and emotional level.
People stop noticing how tightly they’re clenching, how short their breath has become, how rarely they sleep through the night or eat without rushing.
Their body is not malfunctioning, it is adapting to an environment it perceives as consistently unsafe and this change is almost invisible to the individual in question.
This silent signal can be very hard to read internally and quite often, those with the most chronic levels of stress are the very last to realise it.
The Four Domains of Resilience.
Dr Daniel Amen’s work offers a way of understanding this through four interconnected domains of resilience: Biological, Psychological, Social and Spiritual.
Each domain provides both a source of vulnerability and a path to recovery. What follows is a closer look at each, with practical reflections that apply across both personal and professional life.
1. Biological Resilience
This is the foundation, the body as a system of rhythms, nutrients, rest and repair.
Poor sleep, blood sugar instability, inflammation, or lack of movement all amplify the stress response.
In practical terms:
Are you sleeping enough?
Do you have breaks that actually allow recovery?
Is your physical environment adding to overload (e.g. poor lighting, noise, or no access to daylight)?
Is caffeine used to survive the day, or support it?
Resilience training must begin here, because no mindset can outperform a chronically exhausted body.
2. Psychological Resilience
This includes the inner world, thought patterns, emotional regulation and self-awareness.
It’s the domain where ANTs (automatic negative thoughts) take root, and where tools like the ABC-DE model of CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) begin to help loosen their grip.
However, psychological resilience is not just about reframing. It’s about the brain’s ability to return to balance once the stressor has passed.
That means supporting cognitive clarity through reasonable workload, clear expectations and allowing the nervous system time to down-regulate.
If the demand is constant, the brain cannot reflect. It only reacts.
3. Social Resilience
No one regulates alone. Humans co-regulate, community is core. In teams where trust is high, nervous systems settle more easily.
In environments marked by mistrust, competition or silence, the body remains alert.
Ask:
Are people seen, heard and included?
Do managers know what baseline behaviour looks like for their team members and when it changes?
Is there space for connection that isn’t transactional?
Social resilience isn’t about forced bonding, It’s about building the kind of relationships that restore a person’s sense of safety through presence and respect.
4. Spiritual Resilience
This doesn’t require religion, it requires meaning.
People need to believe that what they are doing matters and that they matter in the doing of it.
Without this, even manageable stress becomes wearisome.
Spiritual resilience might come from values alignment, a sense of purpose, or belief in service, but it must be allowed room.
When every task is urgent and every metric monitored, people lose sight of why they started.
Meaning erodes.
This erosion isn’t always dramatic, it often shows up as quiet disconnection, that feeling of:
“I’m here, but I don’t feel like I’m part of this anymore and.. how many hours is it until I get to go home.”
A Human Reflection.
Consider James, a senior analyst in a consultancy firm. Twelve months ago, he loved his job.
He loved the complexity, the pace and the challenge, but lately, everything feels harder.
He wakes with his jaw clenched, he forgets names in meetings, rereads emails three times before hitting send.
He used to run every morning, now he hits snooze and scrolls until the last possible minute.
There’s no single crisis to explain it, just the slow accumulation of small things.
A changed team dynamic, a promotion with less clarity than expected. A missed feedback moments that left him guessing, or a few nights of poor sleep that turned into weeks, months.
James isn’t burned out, not yet, but his system is out of balance. A new mindset won’t fix that, being told to be positive won’t resolve it.
What he needs is a chance to reset, to breathe without rushing, to be in spaces where his body doesn’t feel under silent threat.
That’s where recovery begins.
Why this Matters at Work.
Organisations often want resilient employees who are focused, calm and adaptable, but few ask whether the system they’ve designed supports biological and psychological recovery.
We cannot expect people to perform sustainably in a state of physiological depletion.
Resilience isn’t built by teaching people to tolerate more. It is built by helping them come back to balance, over and over.
That means:
Protecting recovery windows, not filling every calendar slot.
Normalising emotional fluctuation, not pathologising it.
Valuing predictability where possible, to reduce cognitive load.
Making space for meaning, not just output.
Resilience by design begins with understanding that the body is not separate from the work. It is the first site where stress lands and the only place from which recovery can begin.
A Closing Thought.
In complex systems and uncertain times, resilience is not found in heroics.
It is found in rhythm.
In the gentle return to balance, in the small habits that restore clarity, the spaces where people can breathe again. Not just because the pressure lifts, but because the system makes space for it.
This is where resilience lives.
Not as a trait or a mindset alone, but as a biological and cognitive ability we must protect.
Especially, if we expect people to lead, perform and endure under constantly changing conditions.
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