(A quick note to the reader: this particular topic pulls together a few multidisciplinary topics of great complexity and depth, and I am forced to simplify and sketch no more than a basic framework of what is available. Even then, we end up with a very comprehensive article. If you are involved in conflict practice of some kind, or just want to improve this aspect of your interpersonal conflict skills, I unconditionally recommend that you spend more time on the foundational subjects, a few recommendations of which can be found in the suggested reading list at the end of the article. Maybe, like me, you realize that this is a lifelong project of continued learning.)
Serious negotiation is a physical act.
Michael Wheeler
Neuroscience shows that in certain instances, the brain interprets the impact of being devalued, ignored, shamed, yelled at, rejected, or bullied at work in ways that are similar to the experience of physical pain.
Amy Gallo
I now routinely experience conflicts not merely as physical, emotional, and intellectual, but as profoundly spiritual and heartfelt encounters, both with others and with myself.
Kenneth Cloke
Introduction
Part of our collective humanity strives for harmony, compassion, peace, and works for increasingly better ways to live together. In reaching for these moral and ethical solutions our developing world urgently requires, we often lose sight of the fact that our minds, thoughts and highest ideals are based in a physical foundation, our bodies.
It is here that our physical realities play a tremendously important, and often overlooked or undervalued role in our decisions and, ultimately, in how we participate in our conflicts, especially the interpersonal ones. Often, when we think of it at all, our conflicts – the experiences, strategies, replays, conversations – happen in our heads, so to speak. We easily lose sight of the very physical foundations of our emotions and thoughts. This physical foundation is capable of the most beautiful creation and sacrifice, and it is also designed to keep us safe, with fear-based and dominance patterns part of the package.
In this article we will seek to expand our conflict skill levels, particularly the interpersonal aspects thereof, by walking a thin and complex line. We will briefly look at that physical substratum that our bodies impose on our conflicts, and then we will weave those realities into our conflict strategies in such a way that we do not submit to possible despondency born of these physical realities, but also ground our conflict work in this modern understanding and improved strategies.
Acknowledging, studying and integrating the latest available multi-disciplinary information on our physical bodies and how that affects our conflicts also ties in with conflict studies’ and practice’s modern approach to conflict, where we distinguish between conflict causes and symptoms, and then seek to integrate those erstwhile divisions.
Our physical foundation – understanding the mechanism at work
Our physical bodies play such an important but natural role in our decisions and the processes we use to arrive at conclusions that we hardly notice it. But we know that if we are very hungry we may be irritable, or if we feel physically well we are more positive and inclined to agree to difficult proposals. Your physical status as you read these words may be affecting how you receive them. Listening to music may be distracting your attention, your comfortable, or uncomfortable, posture may be affecting your receptivity to new ideas, you needing sleep may affect your willingness to read more, and so on. Our concept and mental images of the self normally include the body, “I” includes the physical “me”.
Subtle but powerful influences on our neuropsychological selves are studied like never before, largely due to technological breakthroughs, and yet, we still often prepare and train for our interpersonal conflicts as if they are all purely abstract ideas and strategies, to be thought about and applied. It is in this process of inadvertently isolating the body and the mind, the interests and the physical, the lofty ideals and the physical limitations, that we bring about significant, and unnecessary, negative conflict outcomes into our lives. Interested readers can spend many hours studying the influence of the amygdala on our responses, the different responses we have to various chemicals in our bloodstreams…and how that can be changed, the so-called reptile brain and other fascinating neurobiological facts relevant to our study here.
The simple explanation, by conflict practitioner Tim Hicks, that “Psychology is biology shaped by genetics and experience” sets us on the right track. We do not experience ourselves physiologically as receiving dopamine hits, or any of the complex chemical reactions happening in our bodies, we experience our selves and our world as fear, joy, attraction and so on.
Science shows us, as one very important example, that our predispositions towards conservative or liberal views can be genetically guided, based on our understanding, tolerance and management of risk, safety and change. This means that our physical selves are largely determinative in how we reason and decide on so-called conservative or liberal issues. When we debate or argue these specifics, however, we hardly ever acknowledge or recognize them as being at any level of physical origin.
Because of the value of survival in our physical construction, we are always seeking meaning in the things and people around us. We are mostly uncomfortable with uncertainty, or unanswered questions, as in the context of our physical makeup these questions can pose dangers to the self. Familiar people or experiences are “safe”, and we can practically speaking ignore them as threats.
Our brains’ neural encoding functions explain much of the processes of how we form opinions, how they are maintained and activated, how we are persuaded, and we can, with this information, be better equipped to try and read, in order to enable us to predict, particular human interactions. We will, for example, have a brief look at identity (or value) conflicts and how they counterintuitively do not always run primarily on rationality or evidence-based conflict strategies.
Researcher and conflict author Mari Fitzduff reminds us of the practical effects of this biological background from which we come:
In every person and, by extension, every group, our “emotional” and “reasoning” minds coexist uneasily. Our human existence throughout history was often dependent not on rationality but on instincts and emotions. An oncoming tiger or a warring neighbor with bow and arrow does not give much time for reflection. Our survival depended on our emotional instinct as to how to respond, and such instincts usually kick in before the more rational part of our mind has time to draw breath. Despite such frequent reminders as temper losses, road rage, overeating, or falling in love, we often find it hard to accept this. However, being instinctual is often unconscious, and our default particularly when we are together as part of a group—at football matches, social and political rallies, riots, wars, etc. Most of us fail to understand how precarious the conscious/rational side of our brains is, until we find ourselves in a context that unleashes the forces of our amygdala.
(Fitzduff 26)
This passage shows us both the limitations of our so-called calm, reflective minds under certain circumstances, and how we have other influences and results to contend with. Some of us are rather uncomfortable in admitting this emotional, irrational component of our systems. For our purposes, and for most complex conflict work, we need not see these processes as distinctly and neatly separate.
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt mentions the wonderful image of a cautious, rational rider trying to steer his more rambunctious and instinctive elephant into the right direction. So it is with us: our purely physical makeup (with its own distinctions and gradations between people, and from time to time), our past experiences and a range of other influences at that moment all contribute, in milliseconds, and without normally being consciously noticed by us, to a subtle “lean” into a specific direction. We are comfortable around older women, or we do not trust children, or tall men intimidate us and so on. That lean then gently nudges us into a direction of preference, and the rational mind or persuasion efforts must catch up with that lean.
We can helpfully see this process as us having emotional, physically-based predispositions (biases if you will), for which we then seek to find rational explanations. All of this happens in seconds, and we are generally blissfully unaware of the process.
What does this mean for our interpersonal conflicts?
One of the direct consequences of interpersonal conventional conflict strategies that do not incorporate an advanced level of this understanding of the bodily component of those conflicts, is that we assess an incomplete picture of the conflict itself, and then we design the solutions to that incomplete assessment, using only some of the tools available to us, and logically arrive at an incomplete solution.
This means, unavoidably, that some of our best conceived conflict strategies may be completely missing crucial clues and building blocks, and we may be allowing some very preventable escalations and consequences to interfere with conflict best practices. Most importantly, we may be missing out on easing what is already a difficult process for the conflict parties themselves, as this passage from Tim Hicks makes clear:
Neural networks are unavoidably activated by the perceptual stimuli of our surroundings. In a conflict relationship, just seeing the other can activate feelings of anxiety, fear, anger, or distrust, as well as one’s self-stories about the conflict. Patterns of behavior that are part of the conflict’s history, that are familiar and therefore, on some level, reassuring, will be triggered.
(Hicks 129-130)
So much of conflict strategies and practice, including specialist forms such as mediation, are still based on outdated concepts of what that process entails, and what it is capable of. As mediators we ask parties to be constructive, to be polite and to speak in gentle tones, to consider the other sides’ point of view, to accept that they do not know all the facts, and that compromise is a good outcome. While this mild-mannered dance is playing out, the parties’ neurobiological systems may be screaming at them, creating distrust, inefficient persuasion and decision-making spaces, creating a process that is experienced as coercive, and ultimately either to resolution failure, conflict rigidity, scepticism, and an escalation of the negative conflict effects experienced by one or more parties.
As we will see further on, in the specific strategies section, this is traditional, established, but ultimately ineffective advice and methods, in most cases. Multi-disciplinary sources being used in the modern understanding and implementation of conflict practice shows us how we all have an emotional, even irrational side to us to some degree or another, how limited that so-called rationality and evidence-based presentations and persuasion methods actually are in many interpersonal conflicts, and how emotion, used in the right and skilled manner, in the form of dignity, respect, storytelling and other methods, have far greater impact and better, more creative, more sustainable results in interpersonal conflicts.
Feelings don’t care about your facts – identity conflicts
I will not add to our already lengthy discussion here, and I have written extensively elsewhere on the crucial importance of understanding, at an advanced level, the dynamics, risks and potential of identity (or value) conflicts, especially as far as interpersonal conflicts are concerned. It is of course a conflict strategy in itself, but it is so important that I believe it deserves its own brief section here. In a very abbreviated form (see reference section for suggested links), our identity is our sense of self, the “me” we protect and try to advance in life.
That identity is made up of several layers, interlocked and existing of various levels of importance, but ultimately of existential value to us. This “me” belongs to various groups of “us”, based on race, gender, education, worldviews, football teams and so on. There is a sense of belonging in that “we”, and we get rewarded for belonging to (and complying with) these in-groups. Obviously, if there is an “I” and an “us”, there is a “you”, and a “them”. “They” are different from me, they believe, live and think differently from me / us / we. This has incredibly important conflict consequences also on the biological / physical level.
Several levels of our identity came to us through non-rational means, for example our born-into religion, our race, our gender, our love of Johannesburg, and so on. We are defensive about these levels, because an attack on them, is experienced, viscerally at times, as an attack on me, the “I” in our lives.
Keeping the “I” in place is hard work. We may be prepared to change banks, or ice-cream flavours, but my political party? My preferences for my tribe, however defined? Change here comes at tremendous societal and personal cost in many instances, and conflict strategies that are built on perceived rationality and “facts” naively miss the proverbial boat completely. You may be “right”, but what does it cost me to concede this? Or is it easier to find any reason to reject your argument, as much evidence as it may contain?
This is why we see reams of evidence in debates and arguments about political parties, Covid-19 injections and the dangers of climate change all end up being dismissed. Political arguments based only on better governance and policies run into walls of limitations resulting from these dynamics year after year.
The arguments may be perfect on paper, but they trigger this identity conflict red flags, and it must end in failure if we do not use the correct process to persuade people in these tightly held views. Get this conflict challenge wrong, and the rest of the strategy will collapse, often making things worse than they were.
A few practical conflict strategies to implement
How do we apply our expanded view of what is all included in the “me” that is involved in interpersonal conflicts, how do we best prepare ourselves incorporating this insight into our existing conflict strategies?
Let us examine a few of these available basic strategies:
1. Learn to slow things down, when appropriate. We make seemingly rational decisions based on what we fail to understand were earlier, more emotional impulses. Hicks again: We see, in conflict, shortening to the point of disappearance the time between stimulus and response. We are less able to reflect and consider new information. This reinforces how important it is, when trying to help people find their way through the thickets of a conflict, that we create contexts perceived as safe in which they will be less likely to be immediately or uncontrollably reactive. (Hicks 56) Try to form the habit of waiting before you respond in anger or irritation. These threats (as they are perceived by your neurological processes) dump all sorts of chemicals in your bloodstream, and this can influence your decisions. The calm, rational mind has no real chance in that fight. Slow things down by walking to the window, or go and make a cup of coffee, ask a question or two to clarify before you respond. Breathe. Like mom said, “Count to ten”.
2. Spend some quality time with the art of talking. Record yourself talking, listen to your voice. Listen to people talking to each other in your life, or in movies. Notice, and study, cadence, pauses, tone and delivery of voice, the impact of words and their alternatives, the value of silence, eye contact, a smile. Hicks has this partially correct: Communication through spoken language is a more intimate act than we often acknowledge. (Hicks 57) Communication through any of our nonverbal languages is a very intimate act, if we know what we are doing, and that is where trust is built, where walls are broken down. Communication in conflict is a dance, not of manipulation, but of the use of power, even of control, whether we like it or not. We influence, we persuade, we use humour, flattery, threats, facts, and a range of other emotions to persuade, to influence outcomes. Even sulking, or shutting down communication, is a form of communication. Use your body to enhance your spoken (or unspoken) word, as the circumstances require.
3. Train yourself extensively in using, nonverbal communication. This is the logical conclusion of recognizing the body as an important contributor to our conflict strategies. The art of nonverbal communication is not as exact as some practitioners would like to make it out to be, but it is an invaluable tool to increase your odds of accurately reading clues necessary in effective interpersonal conflict management. Here we read the biological signs and messages that other bodies, as well as our own, send out, and we respectfully apply that in the best interests of all involved. When ethically and responsibly applied, these clues can assist parties in better communication and improve conflict outcomes. Changing your mind can be a very physical event, and we should help people with that process.
4. Use safe spaces. One of the inevitable, and rather prevalent, results of misunderstanding or undervaluing the role of the physical in our conflict work is the fact that people are expected to say certain things, consider proposals and even conclude agreements where their bodies may not have caught up with the results that are expected of them. Parties are expected to act rationally, calmly, and take decisions towards resolution, while their hearts may be pounding in fear or anger, or where distrust, anxiety, embarrassment or other emotions may be in control of their thought processes. This situation can of course arise at any stage during resolution efforts. We incorporate this into effective conflict work by creating safe spaces in a number of ways appropriate to the specific event, such as verbal assurances, a disciplined approach to speaking turns, encouragement to show their true feelings, and a range of nonverbal techniques designed to calm and promote more accurate dialogue. Remember to create, and maintain, that safe space, especially where there is a disparity in the parties’ communication abilities, or a traumatic or abusive history still manifests. Trust and safety are not-negotiable goals and conditions if we understand the impact of the physical on conflict processes. Safe spaces can also be created through the considerate use of specific spaces and environments, all of which also have a remarkable bearing on our sense of safety, physiological comfort and decision-making processes. The use of family recollections, stories based in common experiences, past successful or fond recollections, sharing of a meal, expressions of understanding, and even expressions of remorse or apology can help create these environments where the physical aligns better with the emotional, rational expectations. Emotions destructive of the work that needs to be done, such as anger and aggression, often stem from fear and insecurity, and the skilful handling of those physical and mental safe spaces can be very effective countermeasures. Breathing techniques and the use of mindfulness can, in appropriate instances, be employed to assist parties (and practitioners) in creating and maintaining these safe spaces. Systematically return people to the ability to feel and execute their own agency, where the frustration triggered by fear and anger makes them participants in their own conflict outcomes.
5. Our memories and recollections have physical effects in the present. As Don Matera said, “Memory is a weapon”, and perceptions of past experiences with a particular individual, group or even type of person can bring important complexities into conflict resolution. Whether we are experiencing this in our own conflicts, or working with it as conflict practitioners, this must be studied and incorporated at all levels. Sitting down with a stranger to discuss a corporate transaction is one thing, sitting down with your ex-husband after a long and abusive marriage is another. Performance anxiety, personality traits, and several other physical realities must be understood, effectively integrated and made a part of the solution. This often includes careful consideration of conflict dynamics such as timing and sequence, and relates to effective practice as much as it does to the comfort of the parties. Ask someone to consider your proposal while they are having difficulty breathing properly and you may be rejected outright, regardless of the merits of your proposal, ask them when they feel safer and comfortable and your probabilities of success have increased. The insight here is that memory itself can cause that anger, anxiety and so on, and this must be managed skilfully. This may require careful memory narrative revision (“Is everyone at ABC Co. abusive, or just some of them?”)
6. Study and incorporate perceptions of bias in your conflict work. This is an ongoing debate in conflict and legal work, and it has an important physical basis. If we distrust someone, with or without merit, we experience that in our bodies and our minds. This may extend to decision-makers and mediators. Explain to parties, if necessary, the difference between bias and prejudice, how we all have certain biases and how this can be a positive aspect in conflict work, how true neutrality can simply be indifference, and Kenneth Cloke’s wonderful concept of “omni-partiality”, where a conflict professional is not indifferent, not even neutral, but wishes the best result for all parties involved. This has a direct bearing on trust and anxiety concerns, and if successful, immediately improves that safe space so necessary for hard and difficult conversations. When trust is broken it has an actual physical impact, with neural networks and pathways being broken, and needing to be rebuilt, among others in how we perceived someone as a “safe” person, and we now have to revise that process. Restoring trust in the process in this way can go a long way towards enabling parties to meaningfully take part in that difficult journey.
7. Revisit the role, function and potential of emotion in interpersonal conflict. To this day, conflict resolution processes, especially in marital and workplace conflict settings, are often still insistent on politeness and a suppression of emotion. To a certain, limited extent, this is of course correct, but where that becomes a restriction on parties surfacing their own emotions, accessing their sincere thoughts on the conflict, or shutting down necessary, if difficult, conversations, this practice must be discouraged. The experienced conflict practitioner will allow emotions to surface the complete and accurate issues at hand, and for parties to break through walls of pretence and the polite phrasing of their differences. Bluntly put, a few early tears and insults often sets parties off on a more constructive path, and if done skilfully, it actually potentially builds trust and a feeling of safety, when parties can feel assured that they can safely express their views. The line between this and continued abuse and a shutting down of communication is of course a thin one, and must be treated with care and experience. Study and incorporate a few modern best practices involving the powerful effects of storytelling and narrative effects, and remember our earlier discussion about the elephant and the rider. Emotions, memories, stories can reach places that those cold facts cannot.
8. Incorporate a few basic techniques based on these physical realities in your conflict work. Neurobiology and –psychology teaches us the simple but effective part that our bodies play in creating trust, safe spaces and persuasion itself through conflict techniques like priming (suggesting indirectly a specific result), mirroring (copying certain gestures of a counterpart) and reciprocity (the wish to return a favour, even of a small kind), and these techniques display very effectively the link between body and mind, and how that affects persuasion and decision-making processes.
9. Understand the role of the physical in the quality of resolutions. Conflict is often approach as a zero-sum winner takes all scenario, and aiming at a result that is beneficial to you is of course part of the very nature of conflict. We are wired that way, and it is one of the mechanisms that can lead to improvement and prosperity. We need to stop working towards compromise and meet-you-in-the-middle “solutions” that only increase distrust, resentment and cyclical conflicts. If we incorporate the physical effectively into our conflicts, we will enable people, even our opponents, to make better, more reasoned decisions. This will, in turn, translate into more resilient, more sustainable agreements, especially in the interpersonal space. Case studies show clearly how humiliation, perceived unfair processes, or breaches of the dynamics of face-saving during conflict resolution, are experienced inter alia as physical events, all adding up to significant additional and preventable conflict resolution obstacles.
10. Study and incorporate your own understanding of the nexus between the physical and decision-making processes. For example, if a party is feeling threatened, scared or overwhelmed, he will, quite literally, receive and process information differently from a calmer version. We take in less, we respond differently to rationality, and fight-or-flight dynamics take over. This is often unwittingly built in to the way we conduct our conflicts, through the language we use, the threats and demands we express, and we can often see how anxieties of one party creates similar reactions in another party, creating a complex and challenging escalation that becomes difficult to walk back. The physical dynamics of group emotions, and the role of the physical on these conflict realities, are also well-worth study and incorporation if you work with groups or communities.
11. See conflict as opportunities. Taking care not to become sentimental or too much sounding like a Hallmark card, we can point out to parties experiencing conflict that many of their physical experiences of a particular conflict (tension, stress, sleeplessness, various symptomatic illnesses) are also reminders of the opportunity presented by conflicts – opportunities to use those physical reminders as guides and incentives to work at our conflicts, and to meaningfully resolve them.
12. Do some simple work on your own body. Whether you are a conflict practitioner or a directly involved party in a conflict, the subtle but important benefits of small physical improvements are noticeable. This, mercifully, need not involve the running of marathons or gym contracts, and simple adjustments to your walking routines, simple exercises, your diet, sleeping habits before and during actual conflict work can make meaningful differences in how you experience these processes, and with that will arrive improvements in your decision-making patterns, creative ability, patience, problem-solving reach, and so on.
Blurring of boundaries
In global developments, especially in law enforcement, workplaces and surveillance environments, we are starting to see the logical conclusions of these insights, and some of it is of course cause for concern. Neurotech is increasingly finding ways to influence the physical and emotional aspects of our innermost selves, and to monitor it for the sake of control. Wearable tech now tells the employer when the bus driver is tired or when the employee is inactive for too long, while surveillance cameras and drones invade our physical and psychological boundaries. That is a discussion that I explored elsewhere, but it underscores the fact that our conflict work needs a wider, and a more informed, understanding if they are to remain effective.
The increasing prevalence of artificial intelligence in our lives should, far from increasing our general disembodiment experienced in recent years, in especially the West, remind and inspire us to center our world, of which our conflicts are such an important part, in our physical selves.
Conclusion
Science and modern conflict studies’ willingness to embrace and incorporate the steady stream of knowledge emanating from a range of connected disciplines make available to us conflict techniques and strategies unimaginable a few years ago. To gain access to those tools, we need to expand our views of what conflict is, how it works, and this includes an advanced knowledge of how emotions and the rational are affected and shaped by our physical selves.
As we can see from even this relatively brief exploration, this connection is not a minor, superficial one. Our physical selves, our bodies, our biological realities, are major partners in our decision-making processes, in how we react, how we form and change our views, and it directly affects our interpersonal conflict outcomes. In working with conflict, our own or that of others, we need to understand how to speak to the heart, and not just the mind, and we need to understand how to not just base our strategies on perceived rationality. It is, for most humans, rational to occasionally be irrational.
I hope that you have also noticed that these physical realities do not make our emotions and results inevitable, we are not enslaved by our biological foundations. We need to understand that we are predisposed, not predestined, and that with the expanded view of the link between our physical and emotional selves, we become increasingly able to guide and influence our conflict outcomes.
The Buddhist tradition has the wonderful view of seeing the body as a precious vehicle to enlightenment, and we can learn from this that our bodies are certainly directly involved in our conflict and decision-making processes, and that we can learn to trust and make use of our bodies to form a more constructive, more successful relationship with interpersonal conflict. We are wired to collaborate, it is just necessary to understand those processes and obstacles, and to help others with that journey.
Summary of main sources, references and suggested reading
1. Embodied Conflict, by Tim Hicks, (Routledge), 2018
2. The Battle for your Brain by Nita A. Farahany, (St. Martin’s Publishing), 2023
3. Our Brains at War by Mari Fitzduff, (Oxford University Press), 2021
4. Wired for Peace by Jeremy Pollack (John Wiley & Sons), 2026 5. For articles dealing with the conflict strategies and tactics discussed, see our blog index at Conflict Conversations
(Andre Vlok can be contacted at andre@conflict1.co.za for any further information.)
(c) Andre Vlok
June 2026
* Author’s note on the use of artificial intelligence in writing this article
I learned to draft, argue and write in the hard school of litigation. I enjoy and value the very human process of creating ideas, of testing my own knowledge and thoughts. It is a process that I need, for answering some of my professional and even personal questions, it is cathartic and inspiring. Other than the most basic research assistance I do not use any AI in the creation of my written work, this article included. It is a matter of pride, of preference, and of mental health. Whether that is a wise choice, I will leave to the reader to decide.