Listening Liberates

a note from Erin

I’d love to share with you an excerpt from one of my favorite books of recent years, called Seven Thousand Ways to Listen, by Mark Nepo. It’s so gorgeous. It reads like poetry. It’s one of those books where I’ve dog-eared at least 100 pages and filled my journal with gorgeous quotations. Here’s a snippet:

“In real ways, we are invited each day to slow down and listen. But why listen at all? Because listening stitches the world together. Because listening is the doorway to everything that matters. It enlivens the heart the way breathing enlivens the lungs. We listen to awaken our heart. We do this to stay vital and alive. 

This is the work of reverence: to stay vital and alive by listening deeply.

The truth is we spend much of our time on Earth listening and waking. When awake, we come upon the risk to be honest and vulnerable in order to live life fully. If we get this far, we are returned, quite humbly, to the simple fate of being here. Ultimately, a devotion to deep listening remains the simple and sacred work of being here.

To awaken our heart through the reverence of listening strengthens the fabric that knits us all together.” 

 

This morning, I’m thinking of listening.

As Mark Nepo says, it’s the simple and sacred work of being here.

As I type these words, I hear the tiny goldfinches chirping at the feeder on the porch, the starlings squeaking on the wall covered in ivy. I hear neighbor kids playing, their grandmother calling to them, “Give your brother a turn!” I hear Carl backing out of our driveway, taking our son and his friend for a morning walk in a nearby canyon, crunching over the gravel on our street that is being repaved today. I’m listening to my left hip telling me it might be nice to shift my position to be a bit more comfortable. I’m listening to the enthusiasm for this topic that feels like a warm, expanding sun rising in my chest.

True listening liberates. It’s a form of love.
And sometimes, it’s really freaking hard. (Have any loved ones who hold political views that seem crazy to you? It can be extremely challenging to truly listen to each other.)

When we listen, we make sacred space for what IS to simply be there. This is a profound act of love.
I love Mark Nepo’s title. There must be many thousands of ways to listen. How humbling and exciting that is!

Listening with our ears. With our hearts. With our whole bodies. With our eyes.
Listening to nature. To ourselves. To each other. To life.

What do you hear if you listen to your life in this moment? 

So many of the practices that are central in my life have listening at their core.

In the many forms of movement work we teach, the heart of the practice is to listen to the quality of our experience as we move. We refine our movement skills by paying intimate attention and then responding to bodily cues with care. In the hands-on work we do, a listening touch is central.

In meditation practice, in some deep sense, it’s a practice of listening to this fresh moment of life with our whole self – noticing when we’ve drifted, and returning to this moment, to “the sacred work of being here.”

Writing practice is a way of listening to my own heart-mind, making space on the page for what wants to emerge from my inner life, unbeknownst to me until I listen it into existence on the page.

And the profound Listening-Speaking practices we do in Embodied Life work? Wow.
Listening to my own thoughts/feelings/sensations/life-situations and then speaking out of the freshness of my listening? It’s profound.
Listening to one of my dear friends and listening-partners as she or he does the same? What a gift!

One of my friends and clients just emailed me about this yesterday saying of the practice,“All I could think of was – if people had these skills so many people wouldn’t be in therapy! It’s a skill I want me and everyone around me to have.”
I feel much the same way!

The first time I met Russell Delman, who in recent years has become a dear friend and important mentor, I was most impressed by his way of listening. I’d never seen anything like it before. It seemed like a superpower. I was stunned by the quality of presence he brought to each interaction, the way he’d repeat back some of what the speaker had said, making sure he really understood their meaning. I watched people blossom in the light of that kind of attention. Being deeply listened to invites a kind of blossoming, the way the sun brings forth flowers. What a gift we could give to one another and to ourselves!

I shared with Russell years ago that one of the main reasons I wanted to do a 3-year mentorship with him was because I wanted to learn to listen in such a beautiful way as I saw him doing with others. He chuckled and said, “You can’t listen to anyone else with such presence until you can listen to yourself in that way.” 

I’m not yet as skilled a listener as I aspire to be, but I’m aiming in that direction, and trust the practices I’m blessed to know to grow such skills over time.

Today I’m so happy to share with you that I’m opening registration for a special class I’ve been dreaming of for some time.

Learning to Listen is a new offering for the summer. Below I have a description and details about
the class. I’d be honored if you’d like to join me, if learning to listen well calls to you too.

In the meantime, I’m wishing you a day of listening, and being well listened to, especially by your own self.
(Anyone in there needing a “Hello, Sweetheart?”) :) 

With all the warmth of summertime,
Erin

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Erin

By training and profession, I am a somatic educator. Over the past 25+ years I have trained in and taught modern dance, tai chi, Indian and Tibetan yoga, yoga therapy (specializing in back pain). I completed a 4-year professional Feldenkrais training in 2007 and a 3-year Embodied Life training in 2014. I also study and work with somatic meditation and the profound practice of embodied inner listening known as Focusing.