Practices in Presence

2010-11-28T06:33:00.001-08:00

After writing four different blogs for almost a year, I find that all my areas of interest involve staying present, increasing self- awareness, releasing habitual patterns of behavior, and transforming relationships.

So I've consolidated to two blogs — one for clients and one for coaches.

The articles I've written here will continue to be available (or find a summary at my web site).

Mindfulness: Experience the Experience

2010-10-10T09:00:00.000-07:00

Listening to Dr. Ronald Siegel in a Mindfulness webinar, I was struck by his observation that the common factor underlying all psychological disorders is "experiential avoidance."

Notice how you typically handle painful experiences. Do you tell yourself "I can't stand it" or "If I let myself go there I'll never be happy again"? When we retreat from life this way we deny our own healing resources. When we're mindful we allow ourselves to be present to experience.

Mindfulness is not limited to meditating on a prayer cushion for 20 minutes morning and night. "Many of us are so busy," Dr. Siegel writes, "that the thought of adding one more thing--no matter how potentially beneficial--is just too much. The good news is that mindfulness practice can be taken up in different ways to suit different lifestyles."

Here's an excerpt from "Nature Meditation" in his book, The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems:

Turn your attention fully to the world around you. If you can get to a window or go outside, use the natural world as a focus. If you need to stay in a room and can't go to the window, you can do the same thing with the walls, floor, and objects in the room. The idea is to systematically look at everything in your visual field and describe it. If your mind wanders to thoughts or body sensations, just gently bring it back to the outside world. As with walking meditation, this can be used as a formal meditation practice, replacing breath meditation during particularly anxious times, or as an informal practice as you go about your day.

Think in the Beauty Way

2010-08-25T20:09:00.000-07:00

In Be Careful What You Pray For, Dr. Larry Dossey describes the Navajo belief in the power of words, the importance of positive thinking and speaking in "The Beauty Way."

Dossey, a physician and researcher who has helped bring credibility to alternative therapies and to spirituality in medicine, distinguishes between 'loosely coupled systems' and 'tightly coupled systems.'

A lawnmower's gasoline engine is a loosely coupled system -- the parts are relatively autonomous and can be individually replaced when they malfunction. Far too many physicians treat their patients as if a physical malfunction is much like a faulty lawnmower part. Instead, human bodies are tightly coupled systems and highly interdependent.

So while doctors don't usually intend to do us in, the harm is nonetheless real when they make such pronouncements as "You're a walking time bomb" or "There's nothing more I can do."

In contrast, researchers at Dartmouth Medical School have found the factor most highly correlated with survival and a positive post-operative course after surgery is the degree of spiritual meaning in a person's life.

Whatever crisis you face, medical or otherwise, think in The Beauty Way. Ask yourself:

How can I participate in my mental and physical health and not be a victim?

What is my purpose?

What is meaningful to me?

How might I make a difference in the world?

Vanishing into Something Better

2010-07-23T16:15:00.000-07:00

Sleeping in the Forest ~ by Mary Oliver

I thought the earth

remembered me, she

took me back so tenderly, arranging

her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds. I slept

as never before, a stone

on the riverbed, nothing

between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated

light as moths among the branches

of the perfect trees. All night

I heard the small kingdoms breathing

around me, the insects, and the birds

who do their work in the darkness. All night

I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling

with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.

From Twelve Moons (1979)

A Rose is a Rose

2010-07-03T04:25:00.000-07:00

A rose is a rose is a rose. Gertrude Stein, 1922.

Behold: the rose:

Pay close attention, be fully in the moment. This is mindfulness.

The inexpressible beauty of nature reminds us we, too, are organic.

We are not mechanical, not race cars, we do not need to "go from zero to sixty in sixty seconds" to prove our worth.

... glory does not stay / And early though the laurel grows / It withers quicker than the rose... A.E. Housman, To an Athlete Dying Young,

So, as you go through your day:

Engage in each task with full attention, without anticipating the next task.
When you read something interesting, take time to let it sink in.
Notice your body's responses; at the first sign of tension take a deep breath, relax.
If you're hungry, fully taste every bite; stop when you're full, appreciate that feeling as well.
When you realize you've been rushing around, stop and smell the roses.

"K" is for Krishnamurti

2010-06-16T12:43:00.000-07:00

The devil and a friend were walking down the street, when they saw a man stoop to pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket.

The friend said to the devil, "What did that man pick up?"

"He picked up a piece of the truth," said the devil.

"That's a very bad business for you, then," said his friend.

"Not at all," the devil replied, "I'm going to help him organize it."

This was a favorite story of Jiddu Krishnamurti, fondly remembered as "K" by community members of the Krishnamurti Centre in England, where I worked as a co-op for two weeks several years ago.

K maintained that "Truth, being limitless... unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized, nor should any organization be formed to lead or coerce people along a particular path."

Imagine the paradox Krishnamurti then faced: trying to teach the unteachable. He came to this pathless path years after being "discovered" in adolescence by leaders of the Theosophical Society and groomed to be the World Leader of what later became the Order of the Star.

After experiencing his own process, a state of clarity I would call presence, he realized he could only embody the teaching by not being a leader. His proclamation met with dismay within the Order, but to me is the ultimate example of "walking the talk":

"I do not know how many thousands throughout the world -- members of the Order -- have been preparing for me for eighteen years, and yet now they are not willing to listen unconditionally, wholly, to what I say... You use a typewriter to write letters, but you do not put it on an altar and worship it." (Proclaimed leader in 1912, disbanded the Order in 1929).

Krishnamurti frequently claimed that the great religious teachers had come not to found religions but to destroy them, and throughout his life he asked questions of his audience to lead them toward discovering the path within themselves.

"In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give either the key or the door to open, except yourself."

Dancing to a Larger Dance

2010-05-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

Guest blog by Tim Flood:

In The Presence Process Michael Brown argues that significant, authentic change can only be achieved by a full excavation of the psyche -- from external projection, back through behavioral and intellectual biases, to the emotive patterns that have kept the whole show up and running.

Though this may be old news, it comes alive again with presence as its vehicle and with metaphors bridging between behavior, thought processes, and emotive patterns. Presence is the nurturing receptivity essential to what Brown calls our witness-observer, and metaphors are the language of presence.

A transformative metaphor reduces resistance to zero by including and accommodating our complex emotional, intellectual, and physical patterns. Metaphors are the voice, the song, and the dance of the witty, kind, and intelligent inner observer.

Listen for the rich and various ways people express themselves in metaphor:

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I have lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. Diane Ackerman

Now listen for your own metaphors. Be present to yourself.

The Pattern That Connects

2010-04-19T05:35:00.000-07:00

"Premonitions open us up to each other and to the greater world... they show that we are part of something larger than the individual self, that we are an element in the great pattern that connects." Dr. Larry Dossey

The opening story of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking should convince even the most skeptical that there are ways of knowing beyond the ability to make logical connections:

"A team of experts with state-of-the-art measurement tools took more than a year to assure the authenticity of a supposedly ancient Greek statue the Getty Museum of California was going to purchase for $10 million. Then several art experts looked at the statue and knew instantly it was a fake. One said he "heard" the word fresh, which seemed odd to him, but on further examination he realized the statue was too "fresh" to be that ancient." (David Brooks, New York Times).

We all have the capability to access these versions of a "sixth sense" although many shy away from that possibility, especially those who fear the unfamiliar. Even the word premonition carries an aura of foreboding - that something "bad" is going to happen.

When we're fully present, however, the possibilities are neither good nor bad, we're simply open to a broader context of knowing, a larger "mind" or "field" as others have named it. One of my experiences is described in The Archives of Scientists' Transcendent Experiences.

Whether you experience this knowing as a feeling in your bones, an image, or a nagging thought, it is saying to you, in Larry Dossey's words, "Wake up. The evidence for a larger world is staring you in the face."

How to Walk in Someone Else's Shoes

2010-04-19T05:32:00.001-07:00

John David Hoag describes an NLP technique called Perceptual Positions as a way to "create a very rich sense of another person's experience using only your own memory, imagination, physiology, and very slight shifts in your spatial location."

I've used Perceptual Positions myself and with my clients as a concrete way to increase presence, leaving preconceptions behind and gaining in compassion and perspective.

First picture yourself sitting at a table with someone seated across from you. Anchor yourself by seeing through your eyes and hearing through your ears. Use all your senses to imagine every aspect of yourself in relation to this person, what you experience physically, what you think, feel, believe, say.

Second, mentally shift your position so you're in the chair sitting across the table. Anchor yourself there by imagining you see through the other person's eyes, hear through that person's ears. Notice what you experience physically, see, hear, feel, think, believe from this position about the person in the first position. Imagine addressing that person as "you".

Then, shift to a third position in space, slightly above the two people at the table, again anchoring yourself in this neutral observer position by seeing through these eyes, hearing through these ears. Hoag refers to this person as the "friendly visitor from outer space who has just arrived." Use the pronouns "he," "she," or "they" as you notice very descriptive details in the other two beings about whom you have no preconceptions or beliefs.

Hoag also suggests a fourth position is possible, "a synthesis of all the others, a sense of being the whole system. From this position you can see the genesis and effects of all the other positions and their interactions, and notice large patterns which transcend individual identifies, parts, and relationships."

Graphic from Vadim Kotelnikov:

Sand Mandalas

2010-02-11T13:31:00.000-08:00

What is the essence of presence? Perhaps it is having no desire to control. Thus the sand mandala.

Now often demonstrated by the Dalai Lama and groups of Tibetan monks, the ceremony begins with chants, music, prayers, and then pouring millions of grains of sand in bright colors from a metal tube called a chakpu. The finished mandala is about five by five feet in diameter, and takes three to five days to complete.

The creation process concludes with a consecration ceremony, and then... they dismantle the mandala!

For those of us who have become attached to our creations (our life, our image, our successes) this is astonishing, and we have much to learn.

Formed into traditionally prescribed Tibetan iconography that includes geometric shapes and historical Buddhist symbols, the sand mandala is a tool to consecrate and bless the earth and its inhabitants. The dismantling of the mandala symbolizes the impermanence of all existence.

Beyond Stereotypes: Presence in Law Practice

2010-01-20T08:21:00.000-08:00

True presence is absent of preconceived notions, and that includes stereotypes. Among others, lawyers have suffered from innumerable jokes that caricature them in stereotypical ways.

So I am delighted to say the best definition of presence I've found was created by CUNY Law Professor Victor Goode and Jeanne Anselmo, RN, author of chapter 15, "Relaxation" in Holistic Nursing: A Handbook for Practice.

Their presentation, "Law in the Service of Human Needs: Social Justice and Contemplative Practice," defines presence as a contemplative skill:

"Therapeutic Presence assists students and attorneys to bring a centered, grounded, open, aware, active, concerned connection with one's self, one's client and the environment. It is not detached, nor is it numbing out, but rather is remaining as fully present as possible in the face of chaotic, difficult and challenging circumstances."

To achieve this state, we develop awareness and trust in our own purpose and process, self care and self reflection, and deep listening. Borrowing from Goode and Anselmo's presentation, these steps are key:

Ground Yourself: Stand comfortably, breathe deeply and drop your breath to your center of gravity in the lower abdomen.
Center Yourself: Connect to your intention for the interaction and your deeper commitment; allow your personal and professional resources to arrive in the moment (spontaneously vs. planned).
Listen Deeply and with Compassion: Seek to understand the other person without judgment.

To Goode and Anselmo: Bravo, Brava!!!

I Grok Spock

2010-01-11T17:17:00.000-08:00

"Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed — to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science — and it means as little to us (because of our Earthly assumptions) as color means to a blind man." Wikipedia quoting Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land.

Michael, the hero of Stranger in a Strange Land, was born on Mars — where grokking was taken for granted. So he was unencumbered by the barriers to intuition many humans encounter. As an example, he grokked grass before walking on it to ensure he was not causing another creature pain.

Grokking seems such a natural concept and so appropriate to any conversation about presence — one can't logically explain exactly how to do it, but I think we're all capable of envisioning a connection so deep we are both one and all.

I've always considered the Vulcan mind meld to be a form of grokking - again, we must leave the Earth to find beings for whom such a deep connection comes naturally. So I was delighted to find there's still a craze for "I Grok Spock" t-shirts. Why is that, I wonder? Possibly because we are the strangers in our own land, longing to be able to grok, to meld.

What a combination - a deep mental understanding (which also requires physical contact) aligned with a complete emotional-intuitive awareness of another: body, mind and heart attuned.

Imagine!

Truly Inspiring Leadership

2010-01-03T09:30:00.000-08:00

Others who see the film "Invictus" (Latin for "unconquered") may be moved - as I was — to re-read the poem by William Ernest Henley that in the film inspired Nelson Mandela during his 27 years of captivity as a political prisoner.

Most potent for me in Henley's poem are the lines "I thank whatever gods may be / For my unconquerable soul."

And I found myself asking what is the source of Mandela's gift, his own unconquerable soul, that his depth of compassion allowed him to bring two former enemies together with such certainty and courage? He personally had suffered greatly for his beliefs, and yet he found a way to be so completely present that he changed the meaning of "unconquerable." In his actions the word has nothing to do with war metaphors of "beating" or "winning." His "unconquerable soul" instead is an unquenchable flame.

Mandela modeled what all of us - and especially our world leaders — must be able to do. He moved through his own grief to a larger space where innovative ways of thinking are possible.

From the Nov-Dec. 09 issue of Spirituality and Health Magazine, "Keening" by Lisa G. Weikel (page 47):

By permitting ourselves to experience and release the grief and guilt we feel as humans for what we've done to ourselves, to each others, and to the Earth and her children, we suddenly find ourselves capable of holding the space that is beyond grief... (to) a world that is perfect in its imperfection — and requires no tears. It is to that world we must welcome our brothers and sisters.

I See You

2009-12-30T10:19:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I saw Avatar and of course was entranced by the fabulous technology. What stuck with me the most, however, was how the Na'vi on Pandora greeted each other: "I see you."

I can't find the actual dialogue from the film, but the meaning of this phrase goes beyond the simple act of visual recognition; rather, it communicates, "I see into you, I see and acknowledge and honor who you really are."

In her Skin in the Game blog entry, Mutual Gaze, Sara K. Schneider describes how Buckminster Fuller returned "the 'Hello, how are you's' of others with the stolid reply, 'I see you'... a customary greeting in the central African highlands... the most intense of our mutual gazes imply deep connection, as well as the opportunity for sitting with both the dignity of our separateness and the beauty of our oneness."

Early in my coaching career, when I found myself disliking the behavior or values of a client, I would visualize myself bowing and giving the traditional Indian greeting, Namaste - as a symbol of my desire to be present to the person, without judgment.

So I wasn't surprised to find vimoh's commentary blog entry describing the Indian greeting in a discussion of "I see you" from Avatar: He defines Namaste as acknowledging "the spark of the divine" in another.

What better way to remind ourselves to be fully present?

Namaste.

I see you.

The Yin and Yang of Presence

2009-12-06T11:39:00.001-08:00

Any problem you encounter can either feed your old, destructive patterns or provide an opportunity for major growth. A primary goal of change is "waking up" to habitual patterns.

Borrowing from Stephen Gilligan (summer 1999 Milton H. Erickson Newsletter), my presence as a coach requires both yin (receptive) and yang (active) qualities:

In the yin mode, providing sanctuary, listening deeply, receiving with curiosity and open heart, and bearing witness with kindness and understanding.

In the yang mode being relentlessly committed to you, attending fiercely, guiding, setting boundaries, and challenging your self-limitations.

Our work together will draw primarily on the yin aspect. This is backed up by the fierce attentiveness of yang, but not overpowered by a belief that I must control your change process.

Together, we follow where curiosity leads, trusting you will find your internal resources in the space my presence provides.

Leadership Presence Assessment

2009-12-06T11:22:00.001-08:00

Assess your leadership presence below, as defined in Leadership Presence: Dramatic Techniques to Reach Out, Motivate, and Inspire:

Being Present: Are you completely in the moment and flexible enough to handle the unexpected?
Reaching Out: Are your relationships with others developed through empathy, listening, and authentic connection?
Expressiveness: Do you express feelings and emotions appropriately by using all means of expression (words, voice, body, face) to deliver one congruent message?
Self-Knowledge: Are you accepting of yourself, authentic, and living your values in your decisions and actions?

I Saw Myself

2009-12-06T11:15:00.000-08:00

I saw myself
a ring of bone
in the clear stream
of all of it

and vowed
always to be open to it
that all of it
might flow through

and then heard
"ring of bone" where
ring is what a

bell does

Lew Welch

Mantra Meditation

2009-12-05T06:47:00.000-08:00

I've used mantra meditation for more than twenty years, since I found the book Choose Your Own Mantra.

Chanting (sometimes singing) a mantra can support your intention to be mindful.

Some online resources present a "mantra" as an affirmation such as "I will be successful in my career" or "I will have plenty of money." This is not an approach I recommend, because these desires can reinforce ego-patterns rather than transcend them.

In Sanskrit the word "mantra" is derived from two words - manas or "to think" or "mind," and trai or "protect" or "free from." Thus, its literal meaning is "to free from the mind" (see Healing Mantras). Saying any word produces an actual physical vibration and — when coupled with intention — mantras carry high energy.

Because Choose Your Own Mantra is no longer in print, I offer readers a few possibilities to consider. (I recommend the Sanskrit instead of English because words in our own language have images that cause the mind to wander):

Om Sri Maha Saraswatjai Namah (ohm shree muh-HAH suhr-uh-swuht-YAI nuh-muh) — deep study, mystical and academic wisdom (OPEN MIND).

Om Namo Bhagavate Vasudevaya (ohm nuh-MOH b'huh'-guh-vuh-TEY VAH-soo-dey-VAI-uh) — invitation to Divine love (OPEN HEART).

Om So'Ham (ohm soh-hum) — liberation from limitations of the body and lower mind (OPEN WILL).

More at Choose Your Own Mantra.

Creative Listening

2009-12-05T06:10:00.000-08:00

In the executive summary of Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges, Otto Scharmer writes:

Why do our attempts to deal with the challenges of our time so often fail? Why are we stuck in so many quagmires today? The cause of our collective failure is that we are blind to the deeper dimension of leadership and transformational change. This 'blind spot' exists not only in our collective leadership but also in our everyday social interactions. We are blind to the source dimension from which effective leadership and social action come into being. ("Addressing The Blind Spot of Our Time").

To access the source dimension, Scharmer suggests we slow down our listening, moving from the limitations of downloading ("Yeah, I already know that") and factual listening (the scientific approach, noticing what differs from what you already know), and even past empathic listening (knowing how the world appears through someone else's eyes), to generative listening (attending to the emerging field of future possibility).

Presence

2009-12-05T06:02:00.001-08:00

While designing a 'playshop' with my colleague Tim Flood, I experienced an important lesson about staying present.

To keep participants moving and out of left-brain preconceptions, we had envisioned notebooks with instructions hanging from ribbons around their necks. But no matter what we tried, when testing the prototype the ribbon pulled the binding loose from the notebooks.

Finally, when we were feeling "brain dead" (a good thing, as it turned out), I started laughing hysterically. Tim thought I'd gone completely off my rocker. When I could speak, I shared the image of a kangaroo with a pouch, my internal judge translating it as something "silly."

As I slept that night my self-critic also slept, and I awakened the next morning with the clear image of a two-pocket folder that could be converted, with a little snipping, into two "pouches." Within a day we had our solution.

Open Mind, Open Heart, Open Will

2009-12-05T05:07:00.000-08:00

In a world stuck in old paradigms, it is becoming more and more necessary to access a right-brain space where something new can emerge: an opening of mind, heart, and will that suspends judgment and assumptions.

* open mind - curiosity vs. judgment
* open heart - compassion vs. cynicism
* open will - relaxing into the unknown vs. fear

Otto Scharmer has recently shown a parallel with seven sacred teachings from an aboriginal community--humility, honesty, truth, respect, love, bravery, courage:

humility, honesty, and truth deal with opening the mind (bypassing the voice of judgment),
respect and love deal with opening the heart (bypassing the voice of cynicism and anger), and
bravery/courage deals with opening the will (bypassing the voice of fear).