Embodying Conversation

Can society engage in kind communication? Landing in the present moment by embodying our experience allows us to communicate with genuine expression.

A new year has dawned. Crystal sunlight sparkles off of freshly fallen snow here on my Vermont hillside. My mind turns to a vision of a society that is in tune with itself, that does not operate on the basis of fear and distrust, but rather takes the time to listen and feel. The best way I know of to encourage this is to engage in a practice of embodying conversation.

In my experience, the most important element of engaging in good conversation is to embrace our own visceral experience. Interestingly enough, in order to deeply connect with another human being, first we can come home to our own body.

Feel your feet on the earth, feel the strength of your legs, the softness of your belly, the uprightness of your back, the tender openness of your heart and any emotionality that might arise. Feel your arms and hands hanging from your body, notice your neck and shoulders and the weight of your head. Just notice what you feel.

This is not about changing how you feel or becoming something other than you are. This is about fully residing in the midst of whatever your experience is, this very moment. This can be done in a quick flash and you don’t even need to tell your conversation partner that you are doing it.

Once arriving in our own body, we can extend our awareness out into the space around us.

You can actually begin to feel the other person, and notice how they might be feeling. You can extend your awareness into the room around you, feeling the natural world outside, and after a while you might be able to go even further beyond your immediate surroundings.

This attunement allows us to expand our minds wider than our own irritation, fear, anxiety or judgement. We notice how we feel in anticipation of the conversation we are about to engage in, we notice how we feel about this person, but we don’t let any of those familiar responses guide our conversation. Rather, we show up respecting how we feel, but at the same time meeting another person with fresh curiosity.

Landing in the present moment by embodying our experience allows us to communicate with genuine expression. When our expression arises in this genuine way, there is not only a deeper level of kindness in our interaction, but there is fluidity and availability – we can be whoever we need to be to meet this particular conversation.

There is a deep wellspring of creativity available to us because we are embodied in the present moment. This creativity is the key to feeling a sense of freedom in conversation. We are not bound by traditional, habitual norms, and we can actually be brave enough to touch one another, and be of benefit in extraordinary ways.

I dare you, at this turn of the year, to give this a try. Then let me know how it goes!

This blog was originally published on The Presence Point.

Sarah Lipton has been a student of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche for seventeen years. Formerly the Shambhala Times Editor-in-Chief, she has a degree from Naropa University entitled Embodied Systems. After living in Nepal for a year, Sarah spent four years helping to run the Boston Shambhala Center, followed by two years living and working at Karme Choling. Besides being a mama, working in her garden and quilting, Sarah is writing a number of books about the path of leadership and has started a business called The Presence Point, through which she mentors leaders in clarifying their vision. She also has a new podcast called Genuine. She lives with her husband and daughter in a beautiful house on a hill in Calais, Vermont.