Stillness and Expansiveness

After having a second surgery to repair a broken radius bone in my left arm, I spent a lot of time walking in nature.  I could not do a lot of the things I love to do.  No yoga. No surfing. No bicycling. No tennis. No swimming.  No roller skating.  The combination of the heavy cast on my arm and the fear of re-injuring the bone slowed my roll considerably.

Hikes in the forest and along flowing creeks were very therapeutic and soothing.  I felt a sense of ease in the expansiveness of nature.  Trees grew to the sky.  Clouds floated by high above.  The sun shined.  The rain fell.

Being in nature helps modern humans like me open our apertures to take in the great beyond - beyond our selves.  We constrain ourselves with our pains, our limitations (see above), our fears, regrets and anxieties.  So opening the aperture of the mind brings in more light and ease.  This opening allows space for stillness and expansive being.  It makes it easier to wait for the return of the activities I miss in my life - the things I like to do.

After my cast was removed, I wanted to do everything but felt vulnerable.  My arm felt weak and tender.  The surgeon was cautious about letting me leave with only a removable splint.

I kept the splint on for a day and then I unwrapped it.  Still tender, weak and vulnerable, but it felt like the arm needed to experience some of the movements and applications from before the injury.  So I put on a wetsuit and went into the ocean - without a surfboard (I’m reckless, but not completely irrational).  The cold ocean water enveloped my wounded arm with a soothing chill.  I imagined the swelling going down.

Today I returned to the yoga studio for the second time since the surgery.  The vulnerability and tenderness were still with me, but I was able to get through 90 minutes in the 105•F room with more ease, strength, flexibility and… expansiveness.  That feeling of expansiveness in some of the poses made me realize how important the concept is for wellness.  It’s beyond flexibility and stretching.  It’s making room for your body and mind to do the healing and restoration it needs.

We tend to get in the way of healing as we develop unbalanced habits and patterns.  Places in the body and mind get stuck and things feel constrained and closed in.  When you go through a sequence of yoga postures with awareness and intention (my intention from my morning meditation was “healing”), those stuck things that are in the way loosen and soften.  The stretching that is often identified with yoga goes beyond the muscles and impacts the function of glands, internal organs, the spinal column and everything in-between.

The expansiveness comes with an awareness of all the places in your body and mind that are opening up.  Sometimes it comes with pain.  Sometimes there are huge revelations and breakthroughs.  Other times just a feeling of ease and relaxation.  Whatever the result, the practice promotes wellness if you are open to it.

Strategic Planning and Trust Building

Strategic Planning and Trust

In my role as an executive director of various nonprofit organizations I found myself responsible for wrangling the board of directors, staff and other stakeholders through a strategic planning process.  Strategic planning often went longer and became more arduous than anyone anticipated and produced plans that few people ever read. The reason that traditional strategic planning does not generate the desired results is that some fundamental ingredients get lost along the way. 

Trust, for one thing, gets overlooked as the foundation of any good team process. But building trust is not easy. It requires people to pay attention to each other in ways that tend to make people uncomfortable. 

A couple of other key pieces that get lost are shared purpose and accountability. People who don't feel trust have a hard time feeling a sense of shared purpose or holding each other accountable for achieving the goals associated with that shared purpose. 

So what to do?

If we take a step back,  all of us, and allow ourselves the literal and figurative breathing room to become more aware internally of what’s going on inside, it sets us up to approach others with greater awareness and likelihood of connection.  That connection can build trust and help us feel that critical sense of shared purpose.

It’s popular in workforce culture to say “people just need to feel heard.”  Or: “everyone just needs to vent sometimes.”  Well, this is a good starting point except that a better starting point is hearing yourself first.  

Get uncomfortable with your own pain points first.  Sit silent and listen to your breathing.  Hear the chatter of your super ego telling you all the sadness, anger and fear that swirl around your own mind.  And just breathe.  Let yourself drop into an awareness of those thoughts and feelings.  And just breathe some more.

This is is a mindfulness path to hearing and healing some of your stuff so you are better able to raise your awareness of what other people are about.

Strategic thinkers can evolve into someone with strategic awareness when they develop the ability to:

1. detect when emotions, feelings and thoughts are running rampant inside the self

2. create space, a pause button if you will, that gives them time to choose a response to the input of others

3. pivot from a reactive mode to a relaxed intensity grounded in kindness, respect and grace

4. Radiate a sense of trust-worthiness that comes from an authentic place of trusting others and allowing them to express their truths - however different

It’s not easy, but the process is worth exploring.  If you want to learn more or comment on this article, send me a note Charles@practice.place.

Adventure Wellness

I continue to spend a great deal of time in nature - in places that provide opportunities for adventure and promote a sense of wellness. Recently I hiked back into a canyon by following the bed of a flowing creek. The hike required that I cross the creek at various points and scramble up the bank to traverse the canyon as it got steeper.

The experience and life in general inspired me to consider the term “adventure wellness” to describe the work I am doing with clients. The work does not have to involve hiking without a trail to follow, but being in the forest and navigating a flowing stream make it real.

The idea of adventure wellness can be an overlay for life in general. On my birthday last year, I spent a good part of the day volunteering at a horse ranch in Point Reyes. It was my first day as a volunteer and I had gone on four or five rides into the Point Reyes National Seashore before, but that day, my birthday, I was raking and scooping manure and mud. There was something surreal about that choice. It felt right and I continue to go up one or two days each week to volunteer. Now I ride as a guide as well, but the cleaning of the corrals is always part of the day.

So what’s the point of adventure wellness? I suppose it’s that if you treat the challenges in your life as adventures and welcome them with as much joy and ease as you muster, that you are a lot more likely to experience wellness. Of course, it’s nice to be able to choose your adventure and pair it with the experience of wellness. Indeed, do that too. Get out into nature; breathe the air that the trees are providing for you; feel the blood flowing through your aching body as you move; and breathe some more.

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I am my own client

Some years ago I played in a tennis tournament in Golden Gate Park. I lost match match and was talking with my opponent afterward. He had won the great majority of the points, so I asked him what he did to make his Game so good. He said, “I am a student of my own game. “

The first thing I learned when I studied the integrative wellness framework was that I needed to be my own client. I needed to practice the framework on myself on a daily basis.

Lately, I have been considering my diet and where I may be out of balance and at risk of dying young from heart disease, like my father. He dropped dead at the age of 63.

So I looked online to research what foods are good for combating inflammation and calcification in the arteries. I have been telling myself that I eat too much dairy and that I need to reduce that. What I had not examined is the roster of foods that I should be eating. Much to my surprise and delight, all of the foods listed on one of the websites I reviewed are already in my diet!

This list comes from healthline.com:

Berries, beans, fish, tomatoes, onions, citrus, ginger/cinnamon/other spices, flaxseeds, broccoli, beets, oats, nuts/seeds, leafy greens/kale/Romain lettuce, dark chocolate, olive oil.

Another article cited avocados, another of my favorites. It’s so nice to discover that I don’t let have to make huge changes in this particular area of balance.

Everyone is a bit different. Some people can tolerate dairy and gluten, for example, while others have terrible reactions. Being a student of your own healthy balance is the starting point to living with wellness.

Rebooting You

As life becomes more complex and hectic, we are more likely to react to things, carry unhealthy attitudes and experience stress at home and in the workplace.  We feel tightness and rigidness that makes us more susceptible to breaking. We are blocked from doing the work we want to do and being the people we want to be in our lives.

Doing and being are two different things but they are inter-related. When we can step out of our busy lives for a moment and just settle on being, we have the opportunity to reset our clocks and reboot our systems. The more time we put to being and settling, quieting the cacophony of thoughts, the more we are able to proceed gracefully to the doing.

A retreat, whether it’s a walk around the block or ten days in Bali, can open things up so that we appreciate the world around us in new ways.  Openness helps us imagine what is possible and tolerate the viewpoints of others around us as we go about the doings of our lives. 

Openness is a good predictor of creativity. Openness stimulates brain activity that might be stuck. For now, try this:

Close the door. Stand or sit up straight. Let your breath exhale and relax.

Now breath in threw your nose on the count of six. Hold for one count.

Exhale with a “Haaaa” sound, as loud as you want, as if you are fogging a mirror.

Repeat ten times. You’re welcome.

Integrative Wellness and Life Coaching

I was drawn to the Integrative Wellness framework after years of coaching staff, board members and participants in various nonprofits where I was executive director. One of the first things I learned in a training with the Integrative Wellness Academy was the critical importance of deep listening that allows you to fully express your truth without wanting advice (or interruption). As an executive director, my first instinct was always to jump in and fix problems. It was hard for me to step back.

As an integrative wellness coach, my role is to ride along side and explore the horizon of options and possibilities together. On the horizon are issues of balance and imbalance in four areas: mental, emotional, physical and spiritual. The term integrative manifests how each area of the four is connected to all the rest. When we are out of balance in one area, it leads to imbalance in at least one more. Listening carefully quiets the noise of integrated signals among the four.

There are lots of examples of how this works. Many might show up as physical on the surface (e.g. pain in the body, feeling out of shape, carrying the burden of financial debt or disorganization in the home), but when we take a look below the surface we find causal factors in the mental or emotional spheres. So an inside-out and outside-in approach will lay out options for bringing things more into balance. Sad feelings in the emotional sphere or negative self image in the mental sphere can lead to lethargic habits, unhealthy eating patterns, impulsive spending and personal disarray in the home.

If there is a bunch of stuff out of balance in one particular sphere, it is a priority for focus. However, finding the best solutions can include detours into other spheres where subsurface issues are lurking. As we excavate, we listen to the messages that come forth and we listen for the clues that lead us to greater balance and wellness.

This is not therapy. And it is not tough love. It is a sort of co-creation space where the coach and the client imagine and illustrate what’s going on and what could be better.

Attributes of Effective Teams

Attributes of the Best Teams at Google
A Review of Findings from Two-year Study

(Inc. Magazine Apr 12, 2016)

As I continue to consider how individual behaviors, beliefs and attitudes affect the health, happiness and performance of teams and organizations, I come across studies and theories that provoke thought.  Most recently, I came across an article about a Google research project that outlines…

Attributes of the most successful teams:

1.     Psychological Safety such that team members feel they can say anything that is on their minds without offending other members and without fear of ridicule or retribution

2.     Dependability – team members need to feel that others are really showing up and are accountable for their roles on the team and that everyone can depend on everyone else

3.     Structure and Clarity – team members should feel a sense of efficiency and effectiveness for the time and effort they are devoting to the group dynamic of a team

4.     Meaning – everyone wants to feel that the work of the team is meaningful and goes beyond just the short-term outputs of the team’s work

5.     Impact – similar to meaning, team members want to feel that their efforts make a difference in the greater scheme of things both for the organization and the world at large.

What’s interesting to me is how these five attributes correlate to the pyramid of successful teams (from the 2002 book “Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of Teams”).  In that book, Trust (psychological safety) and Fearless Communication (psychological safety and Clarity) are the foundations of teams that have Commitment or Shared Purpose (meaning) and Accountability (dependability) among members.  And these four components, stacked on top of each other, supporting the pyramid structure, allow for Results (impact) to happen.

It is interesting to consider as well how a low score on one attribute can be balanced by a higher score on another attribute.  For example, teams that have a low dependability score because not everyone is really showing up can be helped by stronger structure and clarity.  Alternatively, if a team has very high scores on meaning and impact, they may be able to function with lower scores in structure and clarity (e.g. some people are o.k. with uncertainty and greater flexibility).

Why does Awareness Matter?

Our minds process thousands of thoughts every day and each thought competes to dominate our awareness.  Thoughts are powerful and they proliferate endlessly.  We get trapped in a fragmented way of being by clinging to thought-based sense of self. Often thoughts are about bad or sad things that happened in the past or things that we are fearful or angry about.  Sometimes they are projections into the future. 

Our identities get immersed in perspectives that are just fragments of truth and sometimes are not true at all - they are assumptions.  Thought (and the belief patterns that come with thought) is relative - not absolute nor complete.  I saw a billboard at Kahn & Keville Tires some years ago that said: "Worry is interest paid on a debt you may never owe."

This dynamic causes us to be blocked from real awareness most of the time.  When a stimulus comes our way, we react to it as if it was an incoming missile.  We have our thought shields up to protect our vulnerable insides.

In order for us to experience relief from the turmoil of the problem-based thought mind, we have to step back from total reliance on thought.  We must develop an awareness of how thoughts come and go, trying to dominate mind space.  Our impulse is to ride the emotion that comes with thought.  "That is me," says the ego self "and I must defend myself." 

Of course, thought is a useful thing.  "I think, therefore I am," and all that.  But if we suspend reliance on the thought mind, how can be function in the daily grind of life? Challenges still come at us in the present and we deal with them with a sense of presence of mind rather than a false sense of self. 

We still have the ability to respond and even respond quickly to stimuli.  Suspending the problem-based thought mind simply frees us up to handle challenges in a more even-tempered manner.  We no longer submit to the impulse of reaction and we are no longer operating just from a place of fear, anger or sadness. 

Bringing presence to each moment opens us up to the possibility of feeling joy much more, even in the face of challenges and pain.  Presence allows us to play simultaneously the role of actor and observer. 

"Oh, I see that there is anger here," notes the observer to the actor, "you have a choice of how to respond to it."  This is a rather merciful alternative to the anger identity that most of us have in the moment when we perceive injustice or threat. 

So why does awareness matter?  It matters because it gives us better choices, more space and freedom from conditioned patterns that tend to get us in trouble.  Awareness allows us to see thought as a relative thing rather than the only thing. 

This post was written as I prepared to lead a pair of stress-reduction retreats at the end of April and the end of May, 2018. I had been listening to a set of audio discs of Eckhart Tolle.  More than 15 years ago he talked about "Becoming a Teacher of Presence" and bringing awareness to the service of others.  In some cases, I used his own words and in others I interpreted what he said. 

Reconciling Your Humanity

As I rode my bicycle through the Tenderloin the other day, I had a familiar feeling of sadness about people living on the streets and suffering.  It is not a new thing, but it triggered a reflection on my personal ledger and how I live my life with as much joy, gratitude and kindness as possible.  It brought up feelings of inadequacy and guilt about a variety of issues.  Why am I not doing more to help people in need; more to save the environment and the glory of nature?

Sometimes I feel paralyzed and stuck.  I feel astounded at my good fortune in having the nice life that I have, but I carry with me suffering both from my own trivial trauma and the meta trauma of my community and the world at large.  “Carry it lightly” a friend once said. 

What I have realized is that I am no good to anyone or anything unless I can reconcile my own humanity and carry forward that reconciliation to every interaction, every effort, every thought, every action and my awareness of being.  The suffering that we observe and the suffering we experience are not likely to decrease.  If anything, the world will continue to get more chaotic and suffering will seem to get worse.  But there are ways to experience it all with a sublime ease and even joy of existence during these remarkable times.

Sometimes I imagine the experience of a monk who set himself on fire in protest of an unjust government.  Is that the kind of martyr mindset we need to develop as catastrophe looms?  Whoa, I hope not.  But if we take an honest look at the state of the world, we are increasingly forced to reconcile what seems irreconcilable.  The injustices, the environmental collapse, the crush of humanity living in poverty and desolation – it’s overwhelming.  I ask myself: How do you reconcile this stuff?

For me, it comes down to a twice-weekly yoga practice and daily meditation.  But it’s not easy. Lately, my meditations have included techniques that were developed for soldiers with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from a book by Richard C. Miller, PhD*. 

The first three of these techniques are helpful to jump-start reconciliation of my humanity.

1. Affirm your Heartfelt Mission. This, according to Dr. Miller, is “the energy of life within you that gives rise to and sustains your inner felt sense of purpose, meaning and value.” In the book, he outlines daily practices that will help affirm a heartfelt mission. For many of us, the heart of our lives is our children, our partners and the people we love. Love. Care. Nurture.

2. Affirm your Intention. “Like a compass,” Dr. Miller writes “intentions keep you on course so that you can accomplish your heartfelt mission.” They can be as specific as “I will stop smoking” or as general as I will be a good parent. Intentions act like the banks of a river on which you are floating and keep you going with the intended flow of your life. You can let go, and allow the current to take you downstream, but you should do so with the joy and ease that come from your heartfelt mission.

3. Affirm your Inner Resource. Dr. Miller writes that your inner resource is “designed to empower you to feel in control of and at ease with every experience you have during your life.” It is a place of refuge. By integrating the tools in this practice, you will find your inner resource is a constant well from which you can draw feelings of being grounded and secure.
   
   Feeling in control of your life is an illusion, but feeling in control of how you experience your life is a powerful way to reconcile your humanity. Life brings with it all sorts of challenges and suffering. It also reveals, in every moment, great beauty and mystery.

Much like reconciling your checkbook (who does that anymore?), reconciling your humanity is a regular exercise.  If you keep on top of it, you don’t experience as many unpleasant surprises (like bounced checks and notices of insufficient funds).   Your humanity is an abundant and infinitely sufficient resource, but it needs tending and reconciliation to stay resilient and strong.

* The Book: The iRest Program for Healing PTSD; Richard C. Miller, PhD; 2015; New Harbinger Publications, Inc.  www.newharbinger.com