The lineage of my communication skills ;>)

I don’t know if this will be interesting to anyone but me, but it was interesting to me and so I write it down. After a group session that ended with a meditation, my co-leader complemented me on my communication skills. “You’re so present; you’re so patient; you’re so attentive; you’re so precise.” She asked me how I learned to speak that way.

I thanked her, but had no real response. On the way home in the van, I offered the following explanation:

1. As a young teenager, when I started to go out with friends as a group, it was for some reason very important to me to never say anything that I or someone else had already said. I spent a lot of time being quiet. I was very critical (in my mind) of those who said the obvious or the trivial or who repeated what they or anyone else had said. This phase of my life was neither pleasant nor comfortable; nor was I seen by anyone as someone who really said the important stuff. Nonetheless, this seems related to how I speak now in “therapeutic” situations. I look to say what’s important; I don’t talk a lot; I try to find the “deeper truth”, the essence of the issue and bring it to the surface in a simple way.

2. The next time that came to mind was as a junior in high school. Both my mother and my father had scared me away from taking chemistry; so instead, I took speech. My teacher was named Dr. Sam Sherman. He was a real “trip”. Early in the year he said to me, “I will give you any grade you want if you participate in all the speech contests that we – the speech department - have to compete in.) I agreed; so I was in the American Legion Oratorical Competition – topic: National Labor Relations Act, state competitions for public speaking, impromptu speeches, radio commercial competitions, plays, debates, etc, etc. Long story short (it actually lasted 2 years), I got used to speaking in front of large and small groups of people.
3. Six years later, I started teaching Kundalini yoga. Our saying at the time was “Ong Namo and here we go”. I’ll try to explain. At the beginning of each yoga class we chant Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo. As Yogi Bhajan explained, this connects us to the “Golden Chain” of teachers (to our teacher – Yogi Bhajan, to his teacher, to his teacher, etc, back to antiquity). When leading a class after chanting this, there is the feeling that you are “covered”, you are not alone. When approached from a humble, prayerful perspective, there is a feeling that what needs to be said will be said; that what is said will have value, relevance, impact. From this experience, over time, I came to feel that I could show up in any situation and (with the right attitude on my part) open my mouth and something of value would come out. It sounds very weird to me as I write this down, but is true from my experience, nonetheless. (As an aside: I kind of feel that way while writing this Blog, in that I have no idea who I am writing this to, or why exactly, but it feels important to me to write it anyway. I trust that writing this has value, at least for me.)

4. The last part of this development has come from my training and practice and own therapy in bioenergetics. This part has allowed me to be more fully present in my own body., to feel what I feel. It has allowed my communication to become more human; more connected to myself and others. To be sure, I can still “get out there”, abstract and convoluted; but when I am connected to my own humanity, there is “heartfelt expression”

In summary, I look to say what is important, I’m not afraid to say it in public; I trust that it will have value and its personal, an expression of my own humanity.