I want to talk about listening. Of course, it’s hard to listen while you talk, but I am writing so I don’t have to listen to anyone except the clamoring voices in my head that want to talk about listening.

I have so much to say about listening. About how I learned to listen.  About how important it is to be a listener. About my struggle to learn how to listen fully and then allow myself to respond instead of just plotting my clever response while the person continues to talk (and I am no longer listening). About how grateful I am that I learned to listen to my children. About how sad I am that I wasn’t always good at it, that I missed some things that I wish I had heard more fully when I was too busy, tired and/or overwhelmed.

First, my babies taught me to listen. Then I learned some practical skills in Reflective or Active Listening as a childbirth educator and La Leche League Leader. Then I took a course in Re-evaluation Counseling and that taught me the value of ONLY listening. Then I started my training as a craniosacral therapist, which requires profound listening.

Truly listening means that I trust that the person I am listening to has something valuable for me to comprehend or notice. Sometimes I lose track of that, but when I do manage to listen intently, I am rewarded with a tremendous sense of peace. Even if the situation is asking me to notice something disturbing, by listening I can stay in a place of accepting the realty at hand instead of hoping for a different version. Listening doesn’t support magical thinking; it supports radical acceptance.

Listening requires that I put my responses aside. If my monkey mind starts bouncing around, I ask it to still so we can be in reception mode. Action will come, but after we listen.

So how does this apply to children and clients and clients who are children? Children train me to listen because they have excellent fraud detectors. They know when I am not attending to them. They will not make excuses for my lack of listening. If I have promised to listen and I wander off, they will either call me on it and give me another chance, or they won’t trust me anymore.

When I am truly listening I am not assigning a value to what I am hearing. I am just listening. For example, do you know someone like this? They go to a movie (or they watched a television show or they came up with a solution to a problem) and they really loved it, so they need to tell someone all about it. And, since you are their special someone, you get to listen to their download of the whole blow-by-blow experience. I call those people talkers. I am married to a talker and we spawned another talker. Some people might call them verbal processors. I don’t know if that fits, because they usually aren’t looking for any input or any kind of a solution, they are looking to share with me this wonderful experience that they had.

I need to remember that these “unimportant” things are very important. When I listen to the downloads I am affirming my caring. When a client goes on about “unimportant” things they might be testing me. “Is she really going to listen to me, no matter what I tell her?” When I demonstrate that I am listening to all of it, then a quiet significant something might come. A quiet significant something that needs complete safety to emerge. We may just sit with that quiet something or maybe something else will happen, but we will both be different because we were both there when that quiet significance emerged.

When I am listening deeply I don’t need to pounce on that significant something. I don’t need to label it, change it, fix it, even if it scares me. I just need to love it, to love the person sharing it.

I wish I had more of this understanding with my kids. Often, with the significant somethings I wanted to spring into action and make the world safe and happy again for my daughters. But that action just communicates that I don’t trust that they will find answers of their own (with our help, if they ask for it, and the help of others in their lives) or that I fear the world is such a dangerous place that it is impossible to find a good solution for them.  And this is true for therapists, too: I need to believe that my clients’ inner wisdom knows what is best for them.  Instead of solving the problem, can I just witness their situation and their own insight? When the client senses that I can be a witness to their natural goodness and resources then they can also access those strengths and put their strengths to work on the problems.

It's not about my ability to say something insightful and "helpful", it's about my ability to listen and then respond from my heart.

As people relating with other people, especially as parents or heath care providers, we can nourish one another by facilitating joy.

Joy is food for our self-healing abilities; it is the fuel for our learning abilities. Joy is what gives us resilience. If we lose track of the joy in our lives, then it becomes harder to heal from everyday living. We need joy to recover from traumatic events. Recent research by the HeartMath Institute has shown that while meditating can help us feel more calm and safe, feelings of joy and delight are what make it possible to heal and renew.

One of the most important conversations I have with my clients is about resources. I use the word resources to refer to the people, places and things that nourish or foster joy. I ask them “Where do you find joy in your day?” Some people can access joy easily. They know where their joy is and can access it well. Others sit quietly and slowly realize that it has been a while since they have felt joy. Maybe it has been so long they aren’t sure where to find it. In the movie “City Slickers” Billy Crystal’s wife tells him to “Go find your smile” when he appears to have lost track of his joy. Other people respond too quickly: they assume their joy is in the same places they have always been, or maybe where they think they should be, but is that really where they find joy today?

My resources can be my husband (sometimes), my kids (sometimes), my dog (almost always), my cats (almost always), and quilting (usually). But small animals, babies, beautiful sunsets, and watching bugs pollinate my garden always bring me joy and delight. These are my personal sources of the joy found in delight.

We also need social resources. The feeling of being in a supportive community, part of a clan, or a contributing member of a team can provide a profound sense of the joy felt in satisfaction. We can play as we dance, sing, cook and eat together.

Health care providers become a social resource for the client. As I begin a treatment, my hope is that my caring demeanor and loving hands allow the client to feel safe, creating the opportunity for their body to settle deeply long enough to allow them to access their joy.

I use the example of a bucket when I talk about replenishing our body’s resources. We all have a bucket that represents our capacity for handling the difficulties/stresses/traumas that come our way. Some people have small buckets and some people have large buckets and most of us are somewhere in between.

Costly feelings, such as anger, disdain and sadness, deplete the resources in our bucket, they activate our sense of “not safe” and cause our body to fight, flee or freeze.  They are not “bad” feelings. Indeed, they are necessary for our full participation in life, but they do cost us resources to experience them.

Neutral feelings don’t change the resources in our bucket. We feel safe in the moment, calm, peaceful and meditative. While I would hypothesize that, if we experience neutral feelings as a discipline over time (like a meditation practice) then that discipline can make our bucket slightly larger and sturdier, according to HeartMath neutral feelings don’t replenish our resources. They also don’t use them up. We could say that neutral feelings prepare the way for joy.

Replenishing feelings like joy, delight, happiness and gratitude refill the bucket. They allow our autonomic nervous system to reset to levels that allow healing and repair activities to function efficiently.

When we are looking at another person, it is important to see them as a whole. If all we notice are the parts that aren’t working well, then we are missing the vast majority of the person: the parts that work perfectly 24/7 like a well-tuned machine. Holding this wellness in our awareness, while noticing the parts that might need some assistance, is a way of acknowledging the person’s resources. Instead of asking “How can I fix you?” We might ask, “How can I be present with you in your experience in a way that allows your healthy parts to give resources to the parts that are feeling overwhelmed?” This does not mean that we only allow “good” feelings, it means we are there to be a resource for the person as they process the difficult feelings. They can feel the joy of being cared for as they also feel sadness or grief or disappointment.

Maintaining a broad perspective allows us to see more than a small piece of the person. When we allow ourselves to see the whole person (not just the part with a complaint or a part we find lacking) we gain access to resources that are nurturing to the whole person. When we see the whole person we tap into compassion and the joy of connection, allowing us both to deepen into greater well-being, refilling the bucket.

 Originally published in Allen's Creek Living, April 2015

Have you ever considered your skin a “social organ?” We tend to think of our skin as a protective layer that gives us sensory information about the temperature, humidity and pressure of the air or objects around us. In his book, The Science of Hand, Heart and Mind, David Linden describes the skin as a tool we use to connect with others and read social cues.

Social theory on the subject of touch has varied.  In the early 20th century, physicians told parents to keep touch to a minimum in order to prevent childhood infectious diseases. Stories were fabricated to pressure parents not to “baby” their children with affection; lest they grow up to be languid ne’er do wells with no ambition.  But by the 1950’s touch (or the lack of it) was receiving scientific scrutiny.

Harry Harlow’s famous monkey experiments in the 1950’s were done to prove that children, particularly infants, required touch to develop healthy psychological attachments to their caregivers. Then, in the early 1990’s, Harlow’s theories were proved when the tragic consequences of Romania’s overpopulated orphanages were made public: infants deprived of human touch died, they needed more nurturing contact than being fed and changed.

Our need for touch does not dissipate as we grow out of infancy, but American culture discourages touch. Our society has reacted to those who abuse touch by keeping touch to a minimum. Immigrants to the US are often confused by our physical reserve: in Senegal two men often walk down the street holding hands, in France two women can stroll along the Seine arm in arm without anyone assuming a romantic relationship between them.

Our reluctance to touch deprives us of a valuable source of social information. In her article in the March 4, 2015, issue of The New Yorker, Maria Konnikova states "Certain touch receptors exist solely to convey emotion to the brain, rather than sensory information about the external environment. A recent study shows that we can identify other people’s basic emotions based on how they touch us, even when they are separated from us by a curtain."

Touch is a gift we can give to each other. After asking permission, a platonic hug, pat on the arm or shoulder or squeeze of the hand can soothe your friend or family member’s frazzled nervous system. We are built to sense and evaluate our environment with touch, and also be soothed, nourished and comforted by touch. Our children need to experience safe appropriate touch. When they do not experience affection, children may be vulnerable to those who would provide that attention and affection in inappropriate ways.

Our sensory organs crave input. Providing safe opportunities for your skin to experience safe and comfortable touch, particularly touching other humans, is as important as providing your body with healthy food.