Dear Friends,
I’m on retreat right now, but I haven’t forgotten about you! Here’s a reflection for today. I won’t be online to read your emails or comments, but feel free to write anytime. If you post a comment below, your words may inspire another! I’ll be back online Tuesday, so I’ll be able to respond to you then.
A couple of days ago, I wrote about the generosity associated with giving another your full, mindful presence.
In the Search Inside Yourself course and book, I learned a practice that can us develop skills in this regard – mindful listening. There is both a formal practice, and an informal (stealth) practice.
In the formal practice, you work with a partner – for example, a friend or family member. Each person takes a turn being the speaker and then the listener. As the speaker, your job is to speak, uninterrupted, for 3 minutes. If you run out of things to say, you can sit in silence until you have something else to say. As the listener, your job is to listen, giving your full attention to the speaker. You can provide subtle acknowledgement of the speaker, by nodding your head or saying something like “I see”, but the idea here is to let the other person have all the space. After 3 mintues, take a short moment to settle, and then switch roles. After both people have had a chance to be both speaker and listener, then have a three minute “meta-conversation” to discuss what this experience was like.
You can read more about the formal practice here:
https://siyli.org/resources/improve-communication-mindful-listening
The informal practice is to “adopt a generous attitude by giving [a friend or loved one] the gift of your full attention and the gift of airtime.” So the other person doesn’t even have to know you are doing mindful listening. Instead, they will speak, and you will give them more time to speak without interjecting your thoughts or questions. Even allow some for periods of silence.
Here is some more about the informal practice:
https://siyli.org/resources/listening-is-siyli
As an introvert, I love the mindful listening part. (The 3 minutes of speaking is torture for me!) There was one other aspect that I learned when Susie Harrington led a relational practice last November: when listening, really stay embodied with the experience – what does this feel like in the body to be listening like this? For me, this was an interesting concept, as when I am listening, I often think of having to put my attention “out there” where the person is – but really, I listen right here, in my own body. So maybe play with that too.
With best wishes,
Andrea