After a morning that felt frenzied in my efforts to get the kids to school and prepare for clients, I returned home to this message from my friend Kate. I love her wisdom.
Conscious Living for Higher Levels of Health
The Sound of the Body’s Voice
June 2011
Monthly Reflections by Life Coach Kate Hafeman
Long long ago in a book by Richard Bach, I remember a sentence that has always stuck with me. It stays in the shadows almost like a haunting. For thirty years while working in the service field, every now and again while I am listening to myself offer suggestions to a client or teaching a class, I can sense this message moving like a silent traveler through the unseen channels of my neural network until it is finally delivered as a quiet whisper to my consciousness. Similar to the dog whose ears can hear a frequency of noise that no one else can hear, I can hear this whispered message only if I pause in a moment of silence. It looks just like our chocolate lab that suddenly sits at attention staring off into the distance, his floppy ears propped up for maximum noise channeling, his head in the slightest head-cock position, indicating that he is dialed in on high-laser-alert specifically for sound frequencies. The recurring message whispered is, “We teach best, what we most need to learn.”
“We teach best—what we most need to learn.”
If I choose to stop and pay attention to these nine words delivered in a quiet whisper, I find myself paying especially close attention to exactly what it is that I am trying to convey to a class, a client or my kids. I know that there is a message in this information that is also specifically important for me. My most respected teachers and mentors openly admit that we are a teacher and a student sharing the same space in the same moment-- because gaining personal insight and wisdom travels in both directions. I know that the whispered voice is calling for me to pay attention to what I am teaching because there is something more for me to learn personally. If I choose to pay attention, I am usually struck by some “aha” that I need to personally address. If, however, I choose to stick my fingers in my ears and chant—“I can’t hear you…I can’t hear you”—it is only a matter of time before the volume gets turned up and I am unable to ignore the message.
I find that I won’t be able to ignore the message for long because my body doesn’t know how to lie. We can mentally or emotionally run away, rationalize, or pretend consciously that we didn’t hear the whispered information, but our organic body will never be able to lie. For example, I have a friend who, like me, will get one of those annoyingly twitchy eyes when under stress. Nobody else can see this twitching when it is happening, but like a pebble in your shoe, the repetitive twitching seems like it is of juggernaut proportions—like a lighthouse beacon telegraphing the dangerous shoreline ahead. In this case, the twitching eye is telegraphing to us that our biological body is in the stress response despite the fact that our brain and our mouth’s are saying, “No I am not stressed.” Our body’s, however, know the truth no matter how inconvenient that truth may be.
If I continue to ignore, rationalize, stuff down my emotions or ignore my body’s attempt to provide information in the feedback loop, my body will simply turn up the volume until I have no other option except to address the issue. I should have been listening all winter to myself while coaching with a client who is learning what kind of self-care practices she needs to honor in relation to balancing her life with “adrenal fatigue”. I heard the whisper, but I chose to block it out.
My body was screaming at me and my hair care professional finally asked the question. “Are you stressed out?”
I lied. “No. Why?”
She knows me. She and I share the same inside stress joke about the “twitchy eye”. It was clear to her that I was beyond the twitchy eye symptom.
She dropped the dreaded hair bomb, “Because you are losing your hair.”
The horror of hair loss hit like lightning. I always listen to my hair. My weak biological links are my kidneys and my hair. After bouts of big stress in my life such as childbirth, anorexia, poor eating etc., my body is forced to resort to turning up the volume by pulling the “hair loss” card. I always listen to my hair. What do you listen to when you have ignored your body’s subtle stress response indicators? What does your body’s voice sound like?
Coaching Questions:
• How does your body give voice to stress or unresolved mental or emotional issues?
• If you ignore your body’s voice, what symptoms tend to present themselves?
• How does your body respond differently to low, medium, or high stress situations?
• If we teach best what we most need to learn…what patterns of teaching do you find yourself often engaged in, that are also your learnings?
• Track or list what happens in your body before the very first stress symptoms present themselves.
• What would need to happen for you to do an intervention earlier in the stress response chain?
• Who is both safe and bold enough to be an honest mirror to help reflect your stress?
This is your new blog post. Click here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar.
Conscious Living for Higher Levels of Health
The Sound of the Body’s Voice
June 2011
Monthly Reflections by Life Coach Kate Hafeman
Long long ago in a book by Richard Bach, I remember a sentence that has always stuck with me. It stays in the shadows almost like a haunting. For thirty years while working in the service field, every now and again while I am listening to myself offer suggestions to a client or teaching a class, I can sense this message moving like a silent traveler through the unseen channels of my neural network until it is finally delivered as a quiet whisper to my consciousness. Similar to the dog whose ears can hear a frequency of noise that no one else can hear, I can hear this whispered message only if I pause in a moment of silence. It looks just like our chocolate lab that suddenly sits at attention staring off into the distance, his floppy ears propped up for maximum noise channeling, his head in the slightest head-cock position, indicating that he is dialed in on high-laser-alert specifically for sound frequencies. The recurring message whispered is, “We teach best, what we most need to learn.”
“We teach best—what we most need to learn.”
If I choose to stop and pay attention to these nine words delivered in a quiet whisper, I find myself paying especially close attention to exactly what it is that I am trying to convey to a class, a client or my kids. I know that there is a message in this information that is also specifically important for me. My most respected teachers and mentors openly admit that we are a teacher and a student sharing the same space in the same moment-- because gaining personal insight and wisdom travels in both directions. I know that the whispered voice is calling for me to pay attention to what I am teaching because there is something more for me to learn personally. If I choose to pay attention, I am usually struck by some “aha” that I need to personally address. If, however, I choose to stick my fingers in my ears and chant—“I can’t hear you…I can’t hear you”—it is only a matter of time before the volume gets turned up and I am unable to ignore the message.
I find that I won’t be able to ignore the message for long because my body doesn’t know how to lie. We can mentally or emotionally run away, rationalize, or pretend consciously that we didn’t hear the whispered information, but our organic body will never be able to lie. For example, I have a friend who, like me, will get one of those annoyingly twitchy eyes when under stress. Nobody else can see this twitching when it is happening, but like a pebble in your shoe, the repetitive twitching seems like it is of juggernaut proportions—like a lighthouse beacon telegraphing the dangerous shoreline ahead. In this case, the twitching eye is telegraphing to us that our biological body is in the stress response despite the fact that our brain and our mouth’s are saying, “No I am not stressed.” Our body’s, however, know the truth no matter how inconvenient that truth may be.
If I continue to ignore, rationalize, stuff down my emotions or ignore my body’s attempt to provide information in the feedback loop, my body will simply turn up the volume until I have no other option except to address the issue. I should have been listening all winter to myself while coaching with a client who is learning what kind of self-care practices she needs to honor in relation to balancing her life with “adrenal fatigue”. I heard the whisper, but I chose to block it out.
My body was screaming at me and my hair care professional finally asked the question. “Are you stressed out?”
I lied. “No. Why?”
She knows me. She and I share the same inside stress joke about the “twitchy eye”. It was clear to her that I was beyond the twitchy eye symptom.
She dropped the dreaded hair bomb, “Because you are losing your hair.”
The horror of hair loss hit like lightning. I always listen to my hair. My weak biological links are my kidneys and my hair. After bouts of big stress in my life such as childbirth, anorexia, poor eating etc., my body is forced to resort to turning up the volume by pulling the “hair loss” card. I always listen to my hair. What do you listen to when you have ignored your body’s subtle stress response indicators? What does your body’s voice sound like?
Coaching Questions:
• How does your body give voice to stress or unresolved mental or emotional issues?
• If you ignore your body’s voice, what symptoms tend to present themselves?
• How does your body respond differently to low, medium, or high stress situations?
• If we teach best what we most need to learn…what patterns of teaching do you find yourself often engaged in, that are also your learnings?
• Track or list what happens in your body before the very first stress symptoms present themselves.
• What would need to happen for you to do an intervention earlier in the stress response chain?
• Who is both safe and bold enough to be an honest mirror to help reflect your stress?
This is your new blog post. Click here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar.
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