SOMA Ignite
Human intelligence
for the AI era.
Bringing somatic intelligence into organisations.
SOMA Ignite is a leadership + human capacity consultancy.
We combine organisational experience with behavioural insight, somatic intelligence and experiential practice to develop more of the human intelligence modern work increasingly depends on.
Attention · Adaptability · Judgement · Communication · Presence · Learning · Relationship · Creative response
- 18 years across HR, L&D, talent + change
- Insights Discovery®
- Measurement beyond the happy sheet
The opportunity
The future of work is also a human development question.
AI and technology are rapidly expanding the capability available to organisations. At the same time, work increasingly depends on humans who can:
- Learn
- Adapt
- Exercise judgement
- Communicate
- Create
- Collaborate
- Navigate uncertainty
- Work across difference
- Remain present through complexity
The opportunity is not to make humans compete with machines. It is to develop human intelligence with the same intention we develop technology.
Technology creates possibility.
Human capacity turns possibility into progress.
The SOMA difference
Human intelligence doesn't live in the brain alone.
Work does not engage cognition in isolation. A difficult conversation is cognitive, embodied and relational. Leadership involves judgement, emotion, physiology, attention and response. Learning is affected by more than understanding. Change is experienced through the whole human system.
SOMA adds the embodied and experiential dimension to organisational development. Not instead of cognitive intelligence. Alongside it.
The body is already in the meeting.
Embodiment ends the mind's monopoly on intelligence — a point of view, not a scientific claim.
Capability + capacity
Skills matter. Access matters too.
Capability is what someone knows and can do. Capacity is how much of that capability remains available and usable under the conditions they are actually facing.
Capability
Knowledge. Skill. Experience. Behavioural repertoire.
Capacity
What influences access to and use of that capability in real conditions.
- Ambiguity
- Change
- Relationship
- Visibility
- Conflict
- Fatigue
- Cognitive load
- Role demands
- Organisational environment
Capability creates potential. Capacity helps turn it into performance.
Knowing what to do and being able to access it in the moment are not always the same thing. SOMA works with that distinction.
Human capacity is business capacity.
Where human capacity shows up
In the moments that matter.
Leadership
When what someone knows about leadership meets a real human interaction.
Learning
When understanding a model and being able to use it are different things.
Change
When adaptation requires more than intellectual agreement with the strategy.
Conflict
When difference becomes emotionally and relationally real.
Innovation
When curiosity, judgement and experimentation need to remain available through uncertainty.
Presence
When how someone enters, listens, speaks and responds changes the quality of the room.
Team effectiveness
When individual behaviour becomes a collective environment.
Sustainable performance
When organisational demand must be met without continually drawing down the human capacity it depends on.
Experiential development
Some things cannot be learned only by talking about them.
Practice, not just insight.
Insight matters. So does experience. SOMA creates opportunities for people to notice, experiment, rehearse and practise how they lead, communicate, respond and relate.
- Behavioural experimentation
- Somatic inquiry
- Attention practice
- Guided reflection
- Movement
- Voice
- Breath
- Mental rehearsal
- Live human rehearsal
- Facilitated conversation
Chosen in service of the organisational objective — never sold as separate services.
Rehearsal
Don't just discuss the difficult conversation. Rehearse it.
Some human capabilities develop through interaction with another human being. Drawing on more than two decades across acting, writing, producing and professional performance, SOMA co-founder Ben Murray-Watson brings the discipline of the rehearsal room into leadership development.
- 01Try
- 02Receive response
- 03Notice impact
- 04Adapt
- 05Try again
- Difficult conversations
- Feedback
- Executive presence
- Influence
- Conflict
- Communication under pressure
- Storytelling
- Voice
- Authority
Practice before the stakes are high.
The same human
The same human being sits underneath all of it.
Performance, learning, wellbeing, trust, belonging, engagement and inclusion are often managed as separate organisational agendas. But they are experienced by the same human system.
Individual
- Awareness
- Capacity
- Range
- Choice
Relational
- Communication
- Trust
- Challenge
- Response
- Repair
Systemic
- Leadership
- Role design
- Culture
- Work conditions
- Organisational demand
Build human capacity.
Build better conditions for it to thrive.
Individual agency, relational responsibility and systemic responsibility are held together — never a request that people simply regulate themselves through conditions that need to change.
Application
Work with SOMA.
- 01Understand your preferences. Expand your range.
Insights Discovery® + SOMA
Behavioural insight brought into embodied and experiential practice.
Explore Insights Discovery® + SOMA → - 02Create capacity for what comes next.
SOMA Practice
A flexible organisational practice layer using attention, meditation, breath, embodied awareness, mental rehearsal and recovery practices where they serve the objective.
Explore SOMA Practice → - 03Develop the human behind the role.
Somatic + whole-human coaching
One-to-one development integrating organisational experience, executive coaching, behavioural insight and somatic practice.
Explore Somatic + whole-human coaching → - 04Build human capacity. Build better conditions.
Leadership + organisational partnerships
Leadership development, teams, L&D, talent, change, culture, inclusion, neuroinclusion, talks, masterclasses, rehearsal and bespoke organisational consultancy.
Explore Leadership + organisational partnerships →
Inclusive by design
Design for difference.
Unlock more human intelligence.
People see, hear, move, process, communicate, learn and participate differently. SOMA is designed around human variation from the beginning — including neurodivergence, disability, sensory and physical access needs, communication differences and different routes into learning.
The aim is not to standardise people. It is to remove unnecessary barriers so more people can contribute more of what they bring.
Every person is whole, capable, creative and intelligent.
Human difference is not an edge case.
The standard doesn't have to change.
Access to the standard can.
More ways in. More intelligence available.
Human sustainability
High performance without human depletion.
Ambitious organisations need people capable of meeting ambitious demands. The question is not whether performance matters. It is how performance is built and sustained.
SOMA is interested in development that strengthens human capacity while also examining the conditions that consume it.
Not less ambition.
More capacity to sustain it.
Founding work + measurement
From experience to evidence.
SOMA Ignite is at the beginning of its company journey, but is built on a much longer body of organisational, leadership, coaching and professional performance experience.
We are working with organisations interested in applying the SOMA lens to real leadership, learning, talent, team and performance questions.
We don't just want to know whether people liked it. We want to know what changed.
- 01Experience
- 02Practice
- 03Transfer
Beyond the happy sheet.