As Above So Below

The Art of Systemic Alignment

I remember having a problem with the direction that management was taking. I realised that management was acting out of what they did not know. When I processed how I felt about the situation, what happened in this situations around me changed, allowing me to work with what I needed. As above, so below is an exploration of how processing internal awareness, can support external change.

What does As Above, So Below Mean?

As Above, So Below is a Hermetic principle says that the inner world and the outer world mirror each other (Hall, 1928), and while that might sound esoteric on the surface, in practice it describes something every seasoned leader eventually learns the hard way: your inner state doesn’t stay inside you.

Your state radiates outward through tone, posture, micro-expressions, decision-making rhythms, and the stories you unconsciously project into the field, and the organisation, for better or worse, begins to resonate with the emotional frequency you carry. Psychology backs it up. Our internal wiring shapes our perception long before we consciously “think” about anything (Siegel, 2012).

Neurobiology backs it up too, the nervous system of a leader can either regulate or dysregulate the nervous system of a team through mirror neuron activation (Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia, 2010) and polyvagal signalling that communicates safety or threat within milliseconds (Porges, 2011). You don’t have to speak for the system to feel you. And once the system feels you, it begins to reorganise around what you broadcast.

Leadership Runs on More Than On What You Think.

Most leaders think they operate from rational thought, strategic intention, and cognitive clarity, the conscious mind. Hence they focus on control as they believe this will get them what they want. However many times control brings exactly what you have been avoiding in the first place.

The truth is that the conscious choice is only a tiny slice of the real machinery. Beneath it lies the subconscious mind, which stores our emotional triggers, identity stories, survival strategies, unfinished experiences, and deeply conditioned beliefs (LeDoux, 2015). And beneath that lies something even more powerful: the unconscious field of the organisation itself, the collective emotional atmosphere, the inherited narratives, the unspoken rules, and the archetypal roles people fall into without realising it (Hellinger, 1998).

When these three layers don’t align, it shows. The conscious mind may say, “I want a culture of innovation,” while the subconscious mind quietly says, “I’m afraid of losing control,” and the organisational unconscious responds with, “We’d better play it safe.” This is where leaders often get confused: they think they are communicating through what they say but in reality they are communicating through their state.

Seeing the Patterns That Don’t Speak Out Loud

One of the most powerful ways to understand this dynamic is through systemic constellations, a method that brings the hidden architecture of a team or organisation into physical form. I have used this technique to move the energies of teams and organisations. However this requires following a set of principles called the Order of Love, which are laws governing this method.

In a constellation, people or objects are placed in the room to represent roles, functions, conflicts, or intentions, and almost instantly something revealing appears: a loyal employee positioned far from leadership, a team member unconsciously carrying the emotional weight of a previous leader, or an entire department turned away from the organisational goal as if something implicit, unspoken, or unresolved is pulling attention elsewhere (Hellinger, 1998).

You can literally see the system expressing what individuals can’t articulate. Constellations show the deepest truth of As Above, So Below:the inner pattern, conscious or not, becomes the outer pattern. The unseen becomes the enacted. The emotional field becomes the behaviour of the group. And once you witness it, it's impossible to unsee how much leadership is not about telling people what to do but about tending to the underlying currents that shape what is even possible for them to do together.

How Alignment Actually Moves Through a System

When leaders bring their thoughts, emotions, and actions into alignment, the body enters a state known as coherence, which is a kind of physiological harmony where the heart rhythm, breath, and neural patterns move in sync (McCraty & Childre, 2010). From the outside, coherence looks like calm confidence; from the inside, it feels like clarity without force.

And here’s the truly beautiful part: coherence is contagious.

Other nervous systems tune to it through mirror neurons (Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia, 2010). The group registers it as safety through polyvagal pathways (Porges, 2011). Dialogue becomes more grounded. Decision-making becomes less reactive. People stop fighting ghosts and start addressing reality. When a leader is aligned on the inside, the system realigns on the outside. This can be achieved through:

1. Align Your Inner Intention Before You Act: Before you speak, decide, or direct others, ask yourself what your real intention is — and check whether your emotional state actually supports it. If it doesn’t, pause until it does.

2. Use Micro Constellations: Place objects on a table to represent elements of a challenge, and let your body register the relational dynamics. You’ll notice things before you can explain them.

3. Reprogram Your Subconscious Patterns: Identify the emotional loops you repeat. Name the belief behind them. Replace it with something more aligned. Reinforce it daily through small behaviours. The subconscious learns through repetition, not logic.

4. Stillness Before Action: Stillness is underrated. Two minutes of quiet presence before a meeting can completely shift the field you’re about to enter.

5. Coherence Breathing: Five seconds in, five seconds out.This resets the heart–brain connection and stabilises the nervous system (McCraty et al., 2009).It’s simple, but leaders who use it swear it’s a superpower.

The Leader as the Bridge Between Inner and Outer Worlds

By the time a leader reaches this level of presence, something fundamental changes. Leadership stops being a performance and becomes a form of stewardship — a way of holding the system through inner alignment rather than pressure. Such a leader becomes a bridge between the psychological and the systemic, the visible and the invisible, the measurable and the mysterious.

They shift from “managing people” to “tuning the field,” and the organisation naturally reorganises around the stability, coherence, and clarity they bring. When leaders change their inner world, the outer world doesn’t just react — it recalibrates. If there’s one idea to take from this principle, it’s this:t he organisation breathes through the emotional lungs of its leaders.

When a leader’s inner world is chaotic, the system becomes jumpy. When a leader’s inner world is calm, the system finds its rhythm. When leaders align their conscious intention with their subconscious beliefs and their somatic presence, systems reorganise around that alignment, almost automatically. As Above, So Below isn’t just a phrase from an old mystical text. It’s the most practical leadership principle you’ll ever use.

References

• Hall, M. P. (1928). The Secret Teachings of All Ages. Philosophical Research Society.

• Hellinger, B. (1998). Acknowledging What Is: Conversations with Bert Hellinger. Zeig, Tucker & Theisen.

• LeDoux, J. (2015). Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety. Viking.

• McCraty, R., & Childre, D. (2010). Coherence: Bridging personal, social, and global health. Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, 16(4), 10–24.

• McCraty, R., Atkinson, M., & Bradley, R. T. (2009). Electrophysiological evidence of intuition: Part 2. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 15(2), 143–157.

• Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory. Norton.Rizzolatti, G., & Sinigaglia, C. (2010). The mirror mechanism: A basic principle of brain function. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(4), 264–274.

• Siegel, D. J. (2012). Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology. Norton.