Wellness
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Presence is a superpower
YOU CAN’ T THINK YOUR WAY TO FOCUS, YOU HAVE TO REGULATE YOUR WAY THERE, SAYS JOANNA RAJENDRAN, CO-FOUNDER OF BE: COLLECTIVE
I spent 26 years studying the body and the breath under a master teacher who held the Guinness World Record as the world’ s oldest yoga instructor. What she gave me was not a set of poses, it was a way of understanding the relationship between breath, body, and presence that I have spent the decades since bringing into boardrooms, onto stages, and into the lives of leaders who are hungry for something the conventional performance world cannot offer them.
In an increasingly distracted world, presence is a superpower. And the people who learn to cultivate it – deliberately, practically, through the body and the breath – have an edge that no strategy session, productivity app, or amount of caffeine can replicate.
Protect the golden minute The minute immediately upon waking, and the minute immediately before sleep are neurologically unlike any other part of your day. The brain moves through a hypnagogic state; a threshold between conscious and subconscious awareness, where it is uniquely open to suggestion and deep imprinting.
To create your day before reacting to it, begin each event morning by taking a deep inhale through the nose and exhaling twice as slowly through the mouth. Repeat 5x and then complete by exhaling with a noisy sigh. Let the shoulders go and the face soften.
At night, what you think about in that golden minute programmes what your subconscious works on while you sleep. It will problem-solve, synthesise, and create overnight. Before sleep at an event, set one clear intention: the insight you want, the decision you need
settled, the conversation you want fresh eyes on by morning. Learning to direct the subconscious deliberately is among the highest-leverage things an elite performer can do.
The reset that actually works Between sessions, resist the pull to reach for your phone. Instead, find a quiet corner and do a handwritten mental download. Research consistently shows that writing by hand encodes information more deeply than typing. The slower, more deliberate pace forces synthesis over transcription. You are
Above: Joanna Rajendran
not just capturing what you heard; you are already beginning to make it yours. And when you review it later, reading it in your own hand makes it immediately more resonant. Three questions worth asking: What landed? What surprised me? What do I want to act on? The ideas you write in those ten minutes are the ones you actually take home.
Presence is the real return on investment Regulated people do not just feel better, they lead better, listen more deeply, and connect in ways that genuinely move things forward. The breakthroughs at live events are hardly ever in the agenda. They are in the conversation between sessions, the idea that surfaces when you are quiet enough to hear it, the relationship that forms because you were actually present.
Use your breath to calm the body. Use the golden minute to activate the mind. Write your thoughts by hand to integrate both the mind and body. A regulated attendee leaves with elevated results. n
n Joanna Rajendran is a keynote speaker, mindset mentor, and co-founder of BE: COLLECTIVE, a wellness and high-performance brand. She is the co-host of the podcast REGULATE to ELEVATE. Visit: joannarajendran. com and becollectiveglobal. com.
18 / CONFERENCE & MEETINGS WORLD / ISSUE 143