Teaching and Leading in Real Time: How Our Archetypes Shape Presence

Many of us grew up believing that improvisation is what happens when we are unprepared. But anyone who has taught a class, led a rehearsal, facilitated a meeting, or held space for a group knows something different.

It takes preparation and practice to show up with presence.

Presence is not performance. Presence is not charisma. Presence is the quiet steadiness that lets us meet the people in front of us as they are and respond to what the moment asks.

Improvisatory teaching and leadership grow out of that steadiness. And each of us carries patterns that make this easier or harder, depending on the room we are in and what that room evokes.

In the mBODYed Journey, these patterns show up as Somatic Archetypes. Not personality traits. Not diagnoses. Adaptive strategies that once kept us safe and now shape how we move through teaching rooms, rehearsal halls, classrooms, and leadership spaces.

And each archetype has a particular way it pulls us away from presence.

The Over Efforter

Many of us know this pattern well. This archetype seeks safety through doing, preparing, and proving.

Improvisatory presence asks for something different. It asks for a pause. A breath. A willingness to be guided by what is happening rather than what we feared might happen.

When this pattern activates in us, others can feel the push long before they hear the words. Presence feels risky because slowing down feels like failure.

The Burned Out

This pattern carries the fatigue of sustained output. When we reach this place, there is very little left for relational space.

Presence requires availability. Improvisation requires flexibility.

When we are exhausted, our attention narrows. The room becomes something to survive, not something to shape.

In leadership or teaching, we may collapse or go through the motions. Not because we do not care, but because we have nothing left to give.

The Impostor

This archetype fears being seen without a script. Improvisation asks us to trust that who we are is enough.

This pattern protects us by keeping us polished and prepared. Presence disrupts that. Presence reveals the intelligence that has been there all along.

When this archetype is active, we may over-structure or over-explain. Both are attempts to avoid imagined judgment.

The Disconnected

When the world feels overwhelming or unpredictable, many of us learn to pull away from sensation. To stay in the head. To intellectualize.

The challenge is that improvisatory presence is a sensory skill. It grows out of noticing the room, feeling relational shifts, and meeting people where they are.

When this archetype surfaces, presence asks us to return to the body. To feel. To guide from what we sense, not only from what we know.

The Seeker

This archetype believes safety comes from accumulating more. More training. More information. More certainty.

Improvisation asks us to trust what we have already integrated. To lead from lived experience rather than new content.

When this archetype is active, we may postpone presence by trying to prepare forever. We mistake learning for readiness.

The Integrator

This pattern wants to hold the whole map. Every idea. Every tool. Every possibility.

Improvisatory presence requires choosing. What matters right now? What does this moment need?

When this archetype leads, we may resist narrowing. We fear dropping something important. But presence is always particular. It is always now.

Why This Matters for Teaching and Leadership

Improvisatory presence is not about winging it. It is about developing the internal stability to respond in real time.

The rooms we lead are alive. The people in them bring stories, expectations, histories, and hopes. Improvisation honors that aliveness.

And our archetypes flare precisely when the moment is alive.

Each one says, in its own way:

“I need to protect you from uncertainty.”

But uncertainty is where teaching and leadership actually happen.

When we learn to meet these patterns with curiosity rather than judgment, something loosens.
Our breath settles.
Our attention widens.
Our presence stabilizes.

And we begin to trust ourselves in the room again.

Where This Work Leads

If you recognized yourself in any of these patterns, you are in good company. These archetypes are common among musicians, educators, clinicians, and leaders because we all learned to protect ourselves in the ways available to us.

The good news is that presence is trainable.

In 1:1 Coaching and Leadership Coaching, we explore:

• how these archetypes show up in our teaching, rehearsal, and leadership

• what protects us from presence

• the practices that help our bodies feel steady enough to improvise

• the skills that let us lead with clarity and grounded authority

• the ways we can meet a room without losing ourselves in it

Improvisatory presence is not a gift. It is a capacity we can build.

And it begins with learning the patterns that shaped our way of moving through the world.