By Dominique Antiglio, Sophrologist, Wellness Entrepreneur, and Founder of BeSophro

The pace of modern life, especially for women leading in tech and innovation, can feel relentless.

We’re constantly processing, planning, problem-solving, and pushing forward. Yet behind every strategic decision and creative breakthrough often lies a hidden burden: cognitive overload.

This invisible mental strain – the accumulation of tasks, decisions, and emotional responsibilities – is something women frequently carry more heavily.

It’s the unseen work of managing details, anticipating needs, and holding it all together. And when you add the demands of entrepreneurship and leadership, the result is often a sense of chronic overwhelm that no amount of productivity hacks can fix.

I’ve seen this pattern again and again in my work as a Sophrologist. Brilliant, driven women, deeply capable and accomplished, yet quietly running on empty.

What they need isn’t another tool to optimise their schedule; it’s a way to reclaim their mental space. That’s where Sophrology comes in.

A Modern Method for a Modern Mind

Sophrology is a structured, science-informed mind-body method that combines relaxation, breathing, gentle movement, visualisation, and meditation.

Created in the 1960s by neuropsychiatrist Alfonso Caycedo – who I was fortunate to train under – it has long been used across Europe to manage stress, improve focus, support sleep, and build resilience, often prescribed alongside traditional medical solutions and reimbursed by health insurance.

Unlike traditional meditation, Sophrology is active and practical.

It doesn’t ask you to switch off your thoughts or retreat from the world, but rather to cultivate presence and balance within it.

By using simple physical and mental exercises, you learn to regulate your nervous system, release tension, and quiet the constant internal dialogue that feeds stress and distraction.

For women in fast-moving, cognitively demanding industries like tech, Sophrology offers something rare: a sustainable mental toolkit for staying centred, creative, and clear-headed amid the noise.

Releasing the Mental Load

Dominique Antiglio

Sophrology helps calm the mind and release physical and psychological tension. Through conscious breathing and guided awareness, it clears the mental clutter that builds up from multitasking and decision fatigue.

A few minutes of practice can shift your state profoundly.

By anchoring your attention in the body – feeling your breath, relaxing your shoulders, softening the jaw – you interrupt the stress response and restore a sense of clarity.

Visualisation then helps you to let go of unnecessary worries, reconnect with priorities, and approach challenges with renewed focus.

When practiced regularly, this process builds mental resilience – not by forcing yourself to do more, but by learning how to reset efficiently and recover quickly.

Self-Awareness as a Strategic Advantage

In entrepreneurship, self-awareness is often framed as emotional intelligence or leadership maturity.

In Sophrology, it’s also physiological, tuning into the body’s signals before they escalate into burnout.

Through practice, you notice signs of overload: tension in the neck, shallow breathing, fatigue, restlessness, or difficulty concentrating.

These are not inconveniences to be pushed through, they are data points. Information from your body that something needs to shift.

By responding early, taking a few moments to breathe deeply, stretch, or visualise calm, you can prevent stress from becoming chronic.

This kind of embodied self-awareness is a powerful leadership asset.

It supports better decision-making, emotional regulation, and ultimately, more sustainable performance.

From Overwhelm to Empowerment

One of the most profound effects of Sophrology is its ability to reframe mindset.

It teaches self-compassion – the recognition that your worth is not defined by productivity or output.

By reconnecting with your personal values and intuition, you gain clarity about where to focus your energy.

You start saying yes only to what aligns with your goals and no to what doesn’t serve your wellbeing or mission. You delegate more easily, prioritise more intelligently, and stop chasing the illusion of doing it all.

This is especially transformative for women in leadership, where the pressure to perform and prove oneself remains high.

Sophrology empowers you to lead from a place of grounded confidence – to remember that you are not your to-do list.

Real, Measurable Benefits

Over time, consistently practicing the modalities of Sophrology brings tangible, science-backed benefits that directly support the entrepreneurial mindset:

• Improved sleep quality: Restorative sleep fuels sharper thinking and better emotional regulation.
• Enhanced focus and concentration: A calm mind processes complex information more effectively.
• Greater emotional balance: You respond to challenges rather than react to them.
• Sustained energy: By reducing internal tension, energy is used more efficiently.
• Expanded creativity and clarity: With less noise in the mind, insights arise more naturally.

These benefits don’t just improve wellbeing — they enhance leadership capacity.

A centred, self-aware founder or executive is not only more productive, but also more visionary and empathetic.

Reclaiming Your Inner Bandwidth

In tech, we talk often about bandwidth; the capacity of systems to handle information efficiently. But human bandwidth matters too.

Without space to think, reflect, and rest, innovation stalls and burnout takes over.

Sophrology helps women reclaim that inner bandwidth, decluttering the mind, restoring focus, and building the resilience needed to thrive in high-pressure environments.

It’s not about doing less; it’s about showing up differently – grounded, present, and fully yourself.

Because the truth is, when you reclaim your mental space, you don’t just feel better – you lead better.

Try It Yourself: A 3-Minute Sophrology Reset

If you’re feeling mentally overloaded, try this short exercise to calm your mind and refocus your energy:

1. Find a comfortable position sitting. Close your eyes.
2. Scan your body from head to toe. Notice the presence of your body and your breath. Any areas of tension: Your neck? Shoulders? As you exhale, encourage releasing tightness from those areas.
3. After the body scan, stand up with your arms alongside your body and clench your fists. Now inhale, hold your breath and move your shoulders up towards your ears and back down a few times until you need to exhale. Exhale through your mouth and release your fingers, hands, arms and shoulders fully, visualising the mental load leaving your body. Repeat twice, observing your sensations.
4. Now sit back and relax in your chair and take a moment to simply feel the sensations in your body: warmth, relaxation, or anything that shows up – even tension or worries. Simply make a mental note of it without judgement.
5. Before opening your eyes, take a moment to welcome a positive word of your choice – such as “calm”, “confidence”, “joy” or “energy”.
6. Open your eyes and notice how you feel; lighter, more centred, and ready to continue with renewed focus.

About the Author

Dominique Antiglio is a world-leading sophrologist, best-selling author, and founder of BeSophro, an online sophrology platform making this transformative method accessible to English-speaking audiences worldwide.

Her clients include Silicon Valley Founders, top athletes, and leading corporate organisations.

Maternal stress hormones in pregnancy are linked to earlier tooth eruption, with infants showing about four more teeth on average by six months, new research has revealed.

Researchers studied 142 mothers from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds who were pregnant between 2017 and 2022.

They measured hormone levels in saliva during late pregnancy, including cortisol, sex hormones and thyroid hormones.

University of Rochester researchers then tracked when babies’ milk teeth emerged through regular dental checks at one, two, four, six, 12, 18 and 24 months after birth.

Women with the highest cortisol levels had babies with an average of four more teeth at six months compared with those with the lowest levels.

By six months, 15 per cent of infants had between one and six erupted teeth, while 97.5 per cent had between one and 12 teeth by their first birthday.

The study included mothers from varied backgrounds, with 52 per cent of children identified as African-American, 60 per cent of mothers having a high school education or lower, and 53 per cent employed.

While 36.6 per cent of women had depression or anxiety diagnoses during pregnancy, this was not directly linked to hormone levels or tooth eruption timing.

Dr Ying Meng, associate professor at the School of Nursing, said: “High maternal cortisol during late pregnancy may alter foetal growth and mineral metabolism, including the regulation of levels of calcium and vitamin D, both essential for mineralisation of bone and teeth.

“Cortisol is also known to influence the activity of so-called osteoblast and osteoclast cells, responsible for building up, shaping and remodelling bone.”

The findings suggest prenatal stress accelerates biological ageing in children.

Premature tooth eruption could serve as an early warning sign of compromised oral development and overall health linked to socioeconomic deprivation and prenatal stress.

Researchers also found weaker associations between maternal sex hormones, including oestradiol and testosterone, and greater tooth numbers at 12 months.

Similar links appeared between progesterone and testosterone levels and tooth count at 24 months, and between the thyroid hormone triiodothyronine and teeth at 18 and 24 months.

Meng said: “These results are further evidence that prenatal stress can speed up biological ageing in children.

“Premature eruption of teeth could thus serve as an early warning sign of an infant’s compromised oral development and overall health, associated with socioeconomic deprivation and prenatal stress.

“We still have key questions that need answering, for example which maternal hormones or downstream developmental pathways drive the change in the timing of tooth eruption, what the exact relationship is between accelerated eruption of teeth and biological ageing and development, and what such speeding up says about a child’s general health.”

IVF-conceived mice show about 30 per cent more DNA mutations than naturally conceived pups, researchers report, though they caution the findings do not directly translate to humans.

Researchers compared genome sequences of laboratory mice conceived naturally with those conceived through assisted reproductive technologies, including hormone treatments, in vitro fertilisation and embryo transfer.

Fertility-treated pups had about 30 per cent more single-nucleotide variants, tiny one-letter DNA changes.

The Jackson Laboratory team found these mutations were spread across the genome rather than clustered in specific genes.

Single-nucleotide variants can occur when cells replicate their genetic material.

Beth Dumont, a geneticist who led the study, said: “What we are seeing is a true biological signal, but we cannot make an apples-to-apples comparison relative to what happens in a clinic.

“Still, the fact that we see this trend in mice does argue for additional research investigating this possibility in humans.”

The mutations observed appear unlikely to cause harm. Scientists estimate fewer than 2 per cent of new mutations arising in a genome are deleterious or affect an individual’s characteristics or disease susceptibility.

“Even though we see an increase in mutation rate, most of these mutations are peppered across the genome, and they are neutral mutations that have no impact overall on the organism’s phenotype.” said Dumont.

Because it is not a large rise in mutation rate, the risk that any one new mutation would be deleterious is very small, almost negligible.

For roughly every 50 mice conceived with assisted reproduction, researchers expect one additional harmful DNA change compared with natural conception.

This is one problematic change among the mouse genome’s 2.7 billion DNA letters.

The effect is comparable to what would be expected if the male parent’s age increased by about 30 weeks, since paternal age significantly influences mutation rates in mammals.

The biological mechanisms remain unclear. Possible factors include hormone treatments that stimulate ovaries to restart meiosis, a cell-division stage prone to errors.

Physical handling of embryos or laboratory culture conditions might also contribute.

“Nothing in our study directly speaks to the potential of mutations in human IVF, but there have been associations in the literature suggesting some steps in IVF might induce genetic changes. That is clearly worth studying to ensure patients are maximally informed.” said Dumont.