Tag: Listening

Attending, listening Yoga-style

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“The art of listening is the marriage of ear and space.” – Remski interpretation of Patanjali’s sutra 3.41

In my Theory and Practice Course for Social Work, we are learning the art of interviewing. Step one involves achieving a compassionate and empowering balance between attending and reflecting. Here is an ancient yogic way to develop the super power of deep listening by being mindful of our tendency towards “automatic self-referral” as explained by Matthew Remski,

Internal space is also utilized to broaden the gap between “your story” and “my story”. This space is most commonly disrupted by communication habits that fail to nurture the gap of otherness. For instance, if one friend begins to tell another friend of her marriage problems, the second friend can begin to “hold space” for the first by simply reflecting the feelings she hears. This allows the first objective of communication — being heard — to be fulfilled. But if the second friend begins to “false-empathize” with the first by immediately saying, “Oh I know what you mean: let me tell you what my partner did”, she has blocked the space of otherness through a pattern that Miles Sherts (2009) calls “automatic self-referral”. The first friend will not feel heard, and her feelings will become more isolated and compressed, a combination that invites suppression.

Remski, Matthew. Threads of Yoga: A Remix of Patanjali-s Sutra-s, with Commentary and Reverie (p. 180). BookBaby. Kindle Edition.

I’m still working on this super power. Maybe you are too.

Happy listening to “the gap of otherness,”

Hungryphil

 

The Gift of Grief Recovery

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Last weekend I had the joy of attending a certification training for the Grief Recovery Method.  What a gift! I have to admit that I stepped into the training with trepidation and a healthy dose of skepticism. As a philosopher, I worried that the training would be a trite appeal to non-discursive subjective feelings. As a yoga instructor, I worried that it would deny the grief harbored in the body and become a cerebral lecture. My worries were unfounded.

The 12 and 8-week group programs and the individual 7-week program (among others) that made up our training, focused on a sequence of questions and actions that were individually addressed and then shared. There was attention to systemic progression, individual exploration, and small group communication. The focus on giving voice to specific and embodied experiences of grief through visual, verbal and performative expression protects the process from abstraction. The role of the facilitator is just that. No lectures, no advice, no judgments. Similarly, small group partners are asked to be “soft hearts with ears” and to refrain from verbally reacting. We were all there to simply listen, to others and most importantly to ourselves (much like a yoga practice). The logo of a heart in a speech bubble is exactly what the program offers.

I am thankful to have made 11 new friends who have listened to my heart and look forward to sharing the program and learning more as a newly certified grief recovery specialist.

May we listen to our hearts,

Hungryphil